Catalog

Background

We always believed that we need the support of government or a foreign donor to make our ideas come true and develop our village. We always wanted to have a community school, but we did not know how to go about it. We felt helpless and could only think of waiting for the government.

But now we are confident. We have learned techniques that will help us move forward.

These were the words of a participant in Espirito Santo, an outer island of the South Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu, after being trained in participatory planning and community leadership by ADB. But getting to this stage required a lot of work—and the courage to think differently.

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Building Capacity in Rural Areas

In 2000, an ADB-funded nonformal vocational training project for women and youth in rural areas of Vanuatu was being prepared. Community consultations and training needs assessments were the key components at that early stage. The participants were diverse, including representatives from women’s and youth groups, church leaders, village chiefs, provincial and local government officials, and extension workers from various government departments.

The participants said they appreciated the simplicity and action-oriented approach of the participatory methods used during the consultations. The methods helped generate detailed information on community issues, aspirations, and perceptions, and assisted the participants in specifying their training needs. Through these methods, even illiterate community members were able to take part actively in the consultations and contribute to their outcome. Recognizing the potential of these methods as effective tools for addressing community issues, the participants requested to learn more about them.

This was the starting point for a series of training of trainers (TOT) workshops on the use of participatory planning methods.

The program included five workshops in selected rural communities and one culminating workshop to build a cadre of lead trainers and moderators. Ninety-one participants were trained in four of Vanuatu’s six provinces; 29 participants continued with an advanced TOT workshop and now form the core of lead trainers and moderators in rural Vanuatu. Consultants Lulu Zuniga and Peter Kalmos conducted the workshops, which only cost a total of $15,000.

The primary objective of these workshops was to build the capacity of selected members of local communities to use participatory methods for planning, implementing, and monitoring their community projects and activities. A secondary objective was to provide hands-on experience with these methods. This was achieved by identifying and analyzing the current problems of the village community, debating possible solutions, and preparing an action plan to change the situation.

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Taking Charge of Their Futures

The training program consisted of four topics:

• the development framework

• the roles and functions of leaders

• project development and planning

• the appropriate use of participatory methods

The first topic, the development framework, focused on three questions: What is development? For whom is development? Who should initiate development in the local communities and at the national level? These questions helped the participants put into context the strategic importance of community participation and provided a framework to reach a common understanding of what development means to them.

Small groups prepared collages that provided the answers.

It was their first experience in using a visual method of information sharing. This technique assisted the participants in focusing on complex issues and encouraged critical and analytical thinking. They appreciated this method as a means for consensus building.

The roles and functions of leaders formed the second topic, where leadership styles and their effectiveness were discussed. In traditional societies like those in Vanuatu, village chiefs and councils of elders continue to dominate decision making. The participants expressed a general feeling that problems have become more complex, so community leaders appreciated active community participation to ensure that the right decisions are made.

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Sense of Helplessness Revealed

The third topic consisted of needs assessments and problem identification, strategic planning, monitoring, and evaluating community projects. The challenge was to systemize and simplify the organizational planning process—while not losing sight of the problem and focusing on the resources available in and to the community.

Community mapping was used as a first step in identifying problems and assessing needs. Small groups prepared community maps, which were presented in the plenary.

This “community and mind mapping” exercise was used as a structured brainstorming tool to collect as many elements of community issues as possible and demonstrate their linkages and interrelationships. It was seen to be a very effective—yet simple—visualization technique.

The exercise also revealed a prevailing sense of helplessness among communities being generally overwhelmed with the complexity of community projects. The general reaction was to wait for the Government in far away Port Vila or a foreign funding agency—even farther away—to take the lead and respond to the needs of the community. These included improving the village water supply, building schools, maintaining rural roads, providing credit, and creating jobs. When analyzing some of these problems, the participants realized that the methods used illustrate the possibilities available to the community. They also provided some direction on how best to move forward.

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Confidence to Start Initiatives

The project planning matrix, or logical framework, was the most complex and challenging exercise. The participants used it to formulate the objective, activities, required resources or inputs, time frame, and responsibilities of a project.

The sense of achievement was best expressed by the participants’ confidence that, with the help of this tool, they can now start their own small community initiatives.

Because the community members were used to traditional forms of learning and a culture in which village elders and chiefs make the decisions, it was important to demonstrate and practice the use of these techniques and discuss how they encourage participation. For this to happen, the village elders and chiefs must be involved early to get their support and consent.

The participants realized that facilitating a participatory process is very demanding. It requires concentration—and the ability to hold back one’s own opinion while others share theirs. This remained a challenge even for more experienced moderators, who often slipped back into a more directive teaching and leadership style. Feedback sessions were used to alert participants of the areas that needed refinement with practice.

Course evaluations revealed that the participants not only learned more about planning techniques and leadership skills but also gained self-confidence in making presentations in front of a group. A sense of achievement and confidence emerged from knowing that solutions are much easier to find when people work collectively with the help of some simple, but effective, participatory methods.

The exercise also reminded the participants that the communities have a very important resource—knowledgeable and skilled people—that too often is ignored or forgotten, particularly by national governments and foreign funding agencies. Participatory methods can be used to mobilize these untapped resources effectively.