10 Seeds From Across the World Give Communities Their Voice
The importance of developing a community-based needs assessment
Have you ever been to a village and seen the remnants of a development project that has been abandoned? Sometimes this is due to well-meaning NGOs initiating a project that the community never had a sense of ownership in. Consequently, it is important to make sure that a community has ownership so that they will maintain the project long after the NGO is gone – and one of the best ways to do this is to ask the community what they need.
Here are some reasons why
1. Community members may have a greater depth of knowledge about their problems than we do, and so will be better able to identify important and underlying causes for the challenges they face.
2. If they are engaged in the process of needs identification, and feel their voices have been heard, then they will have a sense of ownership; this leads to long-term project sustainability. Ownership can be thought of as the community's demand for the products and services that your organization will provide.
3. Working with the community to address their needs will develop trust on their part in working with your organization in future projects or activities.
How to get started with the process
One needs to begin by developing rapport with a community; a good approach is an initial meeting with village leaders or village elders and asking their help in gaining access to community members.
Communities are very diverse so we need to be sure we are working with a representative example of members. It is also important that individuals feel safe in voicing their thoughts and feelings. This may mean holding separate meetings for men and for women or for teenagers and for their parents.
The Ten Seed Technique: A Quick Overview
There are several simple techniques for facilitating a participatory needs assessments, but my favorite is called the Ten Seed Technique developed by Ravi Jayakaran of World Vision China.
Gather together small groups of between 10 and 20 people. To start off a discussion for a community-wide needs assessment, ask the group to imagine all the problems and needs that are faced by the community as a whole. Active participation can be enabled by encouraging all of the members of the group to voice their concerns.
Each individual community need, as it is identified by a community member, is drawn graphically on a sheet of paper. Draw simple pictures. For example, if housing is a problem, draw a child's illustration of a house. The technique is a very visual one that allows the literate and illiterate to participate as equal partners and contribute meaningfully to the discussion.
When the group is done voicing their concerns, each workshop participant is given 10 seeds as voting tokens to be used in prioritizing the needs with a 10-Seed vote. Villagers vote in privacy and place seeds on the illustrations of the identified needs they feel are the most important. They are free to spread their seeds across several needs – or to place all 10 on a single need that is most important to them.
Once all of the individuals have voted, the participants are asked to discuss the results. The collective tokens will show a prioritization of the needs identified by the community -- by which needs have the greatest number of seeds.
As students in our Online Course finished this first assignment I began receiving photographs of the voting process from all over the world—and the lists of priorities that their communities developed.
From needs assessments sent to me by course members, I was able to see that there are many common problems worldwide including:
income generation, clean water, access to education, poor sanitation, gender equality, migration, lack of vocational skills, chronic diarrhea and malnutrition in small children, lack of roads to villages, marginalization, shelter, food shortages, illiteracy, environmental degradation, drought, lack of irrigation for agriculture, and overpopulation.
It is with a community’s prioritized list that you can begin designing a sustainable, impact-oriented project.
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Ejaz Gul on -
Well, i agree with the contents... we should have some implementation framework
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Permalink Reply by Nelson T. Enojo on -
Marketing is also crucial. In 2007, I started outreach activity and introduce composting for our city dump scavengers, viz: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=16250&id=722418233&l=.... Find difficulty selling the product and end up utilizing it as composite material for seedling production.
In 2009, manage to create a tree plant nursery in one school in the community in anticipation to supply the needs for reforestation projects, viz:http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=133817&id=722418233&l... but selling our seedlings remains a hurdle to this date.
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Permalink Reply by Erik Tilkemeier on -
We use a similar technique of "charting" in our structured sessions, but find that the best information is gleaned in informal settings, or gathering places, such as coffee shops, parks, community centers, etc. People tend to be more honest in their opinions when they are in their own environments and not influenced by a planned process. Of course this works best in situations where language and cultural barriers don't exclude participation.
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Permalink Reply by Tim Magee on -
Hi Erik,
I can't agree more, plus you get to know people and make new friends.
You might enjoy a couple of newsletters that I wrote last year:
Capturing Compelling Stories from the Field
http://www.csd-i.org/sept-2009-compelling-stories/
Capturing Compelling Photos from the Field
http://www.csd-i.org/october-2009-capturing-photos/
Enjoy!
Tim
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Permalink Reply by Erik Tilkemeier on
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Good stuff, Tim. Thanks!
Erik
Tim Magee said:Hi Erik,
I can't agree more, plus you get to know people and make new friends.
You might enjoy a couple of newsletters that I wrote last year:
Capturing Compelling Stories from the Field
http://www.csd-i.org/sept-2009-compelling-stories/
Capturing Compelling Photos from the Field
http://www.csd-i.org/october-2009-capturing-photos/
Enjoy!
Tim
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Permalink Reply by KMAM Sohel on -
Well, It's a fine concept. I can follow the technique in survey of my ongoing research project on climate change impact on agro-fisheries characteristics of a selected coastal area(Chandpur) of Bangladesh.
I will let you know the result very soon.
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Permalink Reply by Robert Matengula on -
Tim, thanks for the prioritized list.
Robert
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Permalink Reply by Aisha Khadar Desince on -
Thanks for sharing, great information
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Permalink Reply by Bob Sutton on -
Lack of voice and ownership truly do make a critical difference in the 'afterlife' of projects!
In both Honduras and Guatemala I have seen many projects that either wither slowly or sometimes die quickly at the end of the external involvement. People might even tell you that they are glad that is over! Often the lack of community understanding means that they can not sustain the investment... solar and water systems that can not be maintained etc etc.
Building in participation from the start, prioritizing with the recipients the goals and proposed actions and sharing the learning as the project unfolds really helps to ensure that it is their project! Simply selling the project, (no matter how well done!) is not the same as building it together.
Takes time, energy and resources but given the time, energy and resources in 'failed' projects around the world..... it is time to change the approach!
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Permalink Reply by Clive John Smedmor on -
Agreed Bob
South Africa has many projects implemented by meaningful organizations now left in disarray. All focus has been on starting a project not realizing the importance of growing an actual establishment. Exacerbating the issue specific to South Africa is the lack of capacity and expertise for new beneficiaries of what was once productive land. Land expropriation was necessary to address past imbalances but until recently the budget was focused on the purchasing of land where there was very little by way of any other assistance. While private land can be leveraged, restituted and tribal land is rather complex and each still handled differently. The complexity is in creating economy for a larger group as opposed to individual. There really does need to be a sense of ownership, a managed structure and with each aspect of the project run as a growing enterprise. Considering the extent of a community one needs to consider various land use initiatives at the same time. What I have noticed about many communities I have dealt with, as rural as they may seem, is they are fully aware as to what could work and how but are so seldom heard.
Bob Sutton said:Lack of voice and ownership truly do make a critical difference in the 'afterlife' of projects!
In both Honduras and Guatemala I have seen many projects that either wither slowly or sometimes die quickly at the end of the external involvement. People might even tell you that they are glad that is over! Often the lack of community understanding means that they can not sustain the investment... solar and water systems that can not be maintained etc etc.
Building in participation from the start, prioritizing with the recipients the goals and proposed actions and sharing the learning as the project unfolds really helps to ensure that it is their project! Simply selling the project, (no matter how well done!) is not the same as building it together.
Takes time, energy and resources but given the time, energy and resources in 'failed' projects around the world..... it is time to change the approach!
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Permalink Reply by Doris Karambu Kaberia on -
Dear Tim,
Thanks for the ten seed technique, it has really opened my eyes as well as added another skill to me. I have been involved in alot of needs assessment, PRAs, DRR assessment and climate change and vulnerability assessment but i had never used the ten seed technique before. I promise to train my colleagues in Kenya. I absolutely agree with you that community needs to be involved right from problems identification otherwise the ownwership and sustainability of projects started by NGOs or any actors will literally fail.
Thanks
Doris
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Permalink Reply by bernard on -
Dear,
Team this is good to sustain development activities but some times we find some communities which are corrupted and when you go there and you try to ask them about their views on existing issues they give you wrong information because they have some expectations on NGOs.i think we can find out the holistic way of approaching some communities and what you have demonstrated above are the prerequisites to attain this long term development.
thank you!!
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