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Attitudes and Behaviour
Drawing from the experience of the NGO staff conducting assessments in Bangladesh, Cambodia and Sri Lanka, the attitudes among staff that appear to be most important to promoting community participation in the assessment process include:
- A desire to build a strong relationship with the community;
- A respect for communities;
- A belief in the expertise that communities possess about their own lives; and
- A sensitivity to the power dynamics and inequalities that exist within communities and between communities and NGO staff.
For many of the NGOs concerned, the question of building a relationship with the community was made easier because they already had links through their existing work. This was true in Cambodia, where most of the NGOs selected to take part in the assessment process were already carrying out community development work in their communities. Even so, each NGO made careful preparations for the assessment by meeting with community leaders, explaining the purpose and process of the assessment, and seeking specific permission for it. These preparations were important in alleviating people’s fears and suspicions. For example, the Sevalanka Foundation, working in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka, reports that: “There was suspicion, among some persons, at the beginning that the purpose was to suppress, through legal means, illicit taverns and prostitution by obtaining information about them. Nevertheless, they became enthusiastic in providing the information after the purpose was made clear by us.”
All of the NGOs which conducted participatory assessments took great pains to consult with communities to identify the best places for the work to be carried out. Difficulty getting community members involved was the most frequently mentioned problem in the assessment reports, and one which was usually overcome by being prepared to work late into the night in the homes and public spaces of the community. This flexibility on the part of NGO staff clearly contributed to creating the climate of trust necessary to engage community members in the assessment process. An attitude of respect toward the community was also critical. The Community Development Centre, working in Bagherhat district in Bangladesh, reported that the participatory assessment process “has helped mobilise several groups in the village...[and] is working in this village with respect and dignity, and has created an enabling environment for working in the village.”
In some cases, this ‘enabling environment’ was also helped by the community grounding of the NGOs. As Md. Shah Newaz Selim, a Community Educator with Association for Community Development in Bangladesh, points out: “One important thing is that we are all ourselves from the community...not outsiders from somewhere else. Our families and peers know what we are doing.” More commonly, however, NGO staff conducting the assessments were outsiders to the communities in which they were working. Sensitivity to the many possible facets of being an “outsider” (e.g. different educational and class backgrounds), and their implications for the assessment process is very important.
Alliance technical support focused on this issue, for example by stressing the importance of non-verbal statements such as sitting in a circle at the same level as community members during the assessments. KHANA’s workshop on Participatory Community Assessments for partner NGOs emphasised the ‘facilitating’ role that NGO staff should play; in other words, facilitating the community’s own assessment of itself rather than leading the assessment from outside (and from an outsider’s perspective).
Participatory Attitudes and Behaviour Participatory Attitudes and Behaviour
In order to be able to facilitate participatory community assessments, it is sometimes necessary to “unlearn” existing attitudes. Mallika Samaranayake, Director of the Institute of Participatory Interaction in Development in Sri Lanka, described this process of unlearning at a workshop for Alliance Lanka partner NGOs:
- Sit down with the community; listen, learn, respect;
- Use your own best judgement at all times;
- Believe that the community can do their own work and can understand their own needs; and
- Relax; be humble, accept and admit your mistakes; embrace error in order to learn.
Reference: Alliance Lanka PRA workshop for Sexual Health Needs Assessment, February 14-19 1997, Colombo, Sri Lanka.