Plan | Wait... What?

Posts Tagged ‘Plan’

Child Protection: from Emergency Response to a Sustainable Mechanism

Posted in children, disaster and emergencies, protection, tagged adoption, aid, child, children, community, Crisis, disaster, emergency, Haiti, IDP, lest, Plan, protection, separated, Timor, toolkit, unaccompanied on February 3, 2010| 8 Comments »

There is a lot of talk about “Child Protection” these days and an increased awareness of the vulnerability of children who are separated from their parents or who have lost them due to the Haiti earthquake But what exactly does “Child Protection” mean? What does a child protection system look like on the ground? How can child protection mechanisms be set up during an emergency phase, and how can they be turned into a sustainable mechanism post-crisis?

Jose Francisco de Sousa (“Quico”), a co-worker of mine at Plan Timor-Leste, sent me written information on Plan’s child protection work in the 2006 crisis response there and talked me through some of details below. Photo: Quico.

Plan was active in the broader emergency response in Timor-Leste following the political crisis of April 2006 through work in over 40 camps for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). (For some deeper insight into Timor-Leste, check out this post by my twitter pal @giantpandinha).

In Timor-Leste, Plan was one of the first agencies to respond as Site Liaison Support (SLS), responsible for the coordination, operation and management of camp activities within days of the crisis. Plan’s specific focus was on addressing the needs of children in the camps, covering service provision such as the delivery of potable water to 15,000 IDPs, addressing hygiene and sanitation issues to improve health, and training youth in conflict resolution skills to aid the nation’s peace building process, and child protection.

Plan’s child protection approach included identifying, monitoring and protecting children at risk, setting up referral systems, training communities in child rights and child protection strategies and mechanisms, and ‘seconding’ Quico as an advisor to the government to strengthen its child protection systems.

Quico was “loaned out” to the Ministry of Social Solidarity (MSS) to build upon existing capacities in the Ministry of Social Solidarity (Child Protection Department) and to ensure a strongly coordinated sectoral, systems-building approach to the child protection response. Through this process, the government came to see child protection as a priority in the long term and eventually established a Child Protection Department under the MSS. So, in other words, the emergency child protection mechanisms established during the crisis were successfully built into a sustainable child protection system in the long term, and services are now available in the district and sub-district levels across the country.

As part of the process, a complete toolkit around Child Protection was created for Child Protection in Emergency and Crisis Situations.

“When the crisis began in Timor Leste, it was very difficult for us to get any resources on how best we could assist internally displaced people. During the emergency, there were many NGOs and other organizations trying to support the internally displaced through different approaches. The focus was mainly to provide the basic needs. There was no proper coordination strategy/mechanism that included broader child protection issues.

I would say that if we look at the nature of the disasters in Timor-Leste and what is happening in Haiti right now, It’s different, but I imagine (correct me if I’m wrong) that the impact of the disasters might be same, where instability is created in different sectors leading to broader child protection issues.

Plan responded to the emergency in Dili (the Capital of Timor-Leste) with immediate practical child protection measures focusing on the prevention of family separation, and the promotion of safety, and health and hygiene in camps. We also prioritised co-ordination of child protection actors by initiating a Child Protection Working Group. This filled a leadership vacuum whilst building the capacity of the Government to gradually take over leadership responsibility.”

Keep reading for an overview of the Toolkit…..or download it here.

————————————————–

Plan Timor-Leste’s Child Protection Emergency Toolkit is divided into 7 parts:

1. Overview of Framework & Standards Related to an Emergency Response in Timor-Leste

This section aims to give an overview of the international, national and organizational laws, policies, standards and approaches to child protection in emergencies in order have clear guidance on how to create an appropriate framework for a potential response that is in line with global, national and internal organizational laws and policies on Child Protection in Emergencies. (If replicating the toolkit, these documents would need to be adapted to the country context). Users of the toolkit should read this section before they go on to use the other sections in the toolkit. These overviews are important to integrate into Child Protection in Emergency trainings and orientation for new staff recruited in the event of an emergency.

Some of the legal instruments and Humanitarian Principles Applicable to Child Protection in Emergencies in Timor-Leste included:

Overview of Approaches and Guidelines in Child Protection in Emergency
Timor-Leste Structural Framework of the Current System for Child Protection
Timor-Leste Legal Framework for Child Protection
Plan’s Approach to Emergency
Summary of Learning and Recommendations from 2006 Emergency Child Protection Response

2. Emergency preparedness

The section includes an overview of steps that should be taken to ensure that Plan offices are prepared for an emergency. It’s divided into two areas – programmatic preparedness and administrative preparedness. It also includes the practical internal financial codes for general emergency preparedness activities so that these are compiled and readily available to support and inform activities and rapid proposal writing in the event of an emergency. These are also useful for Country Offices to be prepared for emergency in the long term.

Programmatically, the tools include government and Child Protection Working Group contingency planning, risk analysis and scenario planning, child protection activity mapping and definition of roles and responsibilities. They also include tools developed specifically for the geographical areas where a child protection response might potentially be needed, such as contact lists for child protection actors at the municipal level, and community-based hazard, risk and capacity maps developed by children and their communities as part of Plan’s on-going mitigation activities.

The administrative tools cover generic job responsibilities, a general child protection in emergencies orientation session for newly recruited staff or those who are new to emergency response. The human resource structure of a response is defined and responsibilities are allocated within the current staff organigram. Advocacy and media standards and a stock list of necessary items for the first phase of an emergency response are also included.

3. Initial emergency response

This section contains the basic tools relevant to an initial emergency response. The emergency planning tools included in the previous section are also relevant to ensuring the most efficient response possible, in line with Plan’s community-based approach. The shape of the response will depend largely on the type, scale and location of the emergency, and any tools need to be adapted according to this context.

“One of the tools here is a child protection message to Camp Managers. During the emergency period, Plan was assigned to be responsible for a certain number of IDPs. One of our focuses was to establish and ensure that the structure in the IDP was functioning to assist the IDP’s and that we established the camp. But we also wanted to make sure that child protection was understood and prioritized in displaced persons camps. This meant that we discussed children and child centered programming with camp managers, and they worked to ensure that there would be no discrimination towards children and their families during the emergency.”

This was difficult for us to introduce in the beginning of the crisis, as people tended to have different thoughts and priorities, and it gave additional works to the IDPs. In addition to that, some organizations did not have a mandate for “child centeredness.” So we started facilitating child protection focused workshops for camp managers and other NGOs, and getting their commitment to be involved in process. Aside from that we also guided the camp manager on using the checklists as well as we assigned Plan, government and other NGO staff (who were also in IDPs) to support throughout the process, and it worked.

One of the problems that we encountered was related to volunteers. Since we were establishing a new system, we needed people to take responsibility at different levels. Camp managers already had additional child protection tasks for the whole camp, so they were supported by child protection focal points and child protection teams in each block of IDPs. I wouldn’t say it all worked perfectly. There were issues among volunteers that were brought to the Child Protection Working Group to discuss. Some NGOs who were also assigned in the IDP camps had a policy of paying camp managers and teams, which created jealously and conflict between them and the volunteers. But in the end, we developed guidelines for volunteers, establishing from the start that we would not give them cash but rather give them recognition and reward such as:

· identification cards recognizing them as volunteers

· training and continuing refresher courses

· certificates for every completed training course

· promotional t-shirts, hats, umbrellas & bags, whenever available

· public acknowledgment

· certificate of community service for every 3 months of services rendered

· access to information about suitable job vacancies in NGOs”

4. Child protection assessment

This section contains tools for use in assessing child protection-related needs. It draws heavily from the Inter Agency First Phase Child Protection Resource Kit developed by the IASC Child Protection Working Group. The assessment contains generic questions relevant to a range of child protection issues common to emergencies. They are adapted and modified according to the context of the emergency and the child protection issues that are identified as emerging. Training on ethical considerations and assessment methodologies should be conducted as necessary.

“There are 8 main focus questions in the Questionnaire for Children, for example. To find out about children’s psycho-social well being, we ask the questions:

· What are the things/activities that you like the most?

· What kind of things makes you happy or comfortable?

· What are the things/activities that you dislike?

· What kind of things makes you angry or sad?

· What kind of activities would you like to have here?

· What are the main problems that you face now?

· What would help you solve these problems?

· What are your biggest concerns or worries about the future? What do you think would help?

· Which people make you happy in the community? Why?

· Which people make you unhappy in the community? Why?”

5. Building a Child Protection System in an Emergency

The section looks first at developing child protection systems in the context of displacement. It then looks at supporting district, sub-district and village child protection systems to respond to the needs of displaced people living in host communities and other disaster-affected communities. It goes on to look at the implementation of the Child Protection Policy and ensuring the effective management of individual child protection cases. This sub-section contains guidelines on monitoring and reporting grave violations of children’s rights.

6. Key issues for children in emergency

This section looks at some of the issues that children commonly face in emergencies and appropriate child protection responses in line with international standards and according to Plan’s mandate and experience. The three key issues covered in detail are: Family Separation, Sexual Violence against Children, Psychosocial Support for Children. Each of these three issues has a sub-section containing a summary of standards and guidelines, process for prevention and response, necessary tools, and a training module for staff.

7. Monitoring and Evaluation

This section contains the tools used to monitor and evaluate child protection in emergencies interventions. These are based on tools already used by the Plan Timor-Leste Office. They are adjusted according to the needs of an emergency context and are supplemented with additional tools in line with good practice.

“In Haiti, I would say that children separated from their parents will need to be especially considered, while people will also need to be alert for the effects that the crisis may have, for example, increased violence. This will be a special concern if there were any political issues before the crisis. Psychosocial activities are very, very important too, the other key areas are likely to be water and sanitation, heath problems and education. Coordination mechanisms between aid organizations must be considered, as each organization will have their own approach but in this situation each organization needs to think about the wellbeing of children and the community.”

More resources:

The Child Protection Working Group in Haiti has created the following Guiding Principles for Unaccompanied and Separated Children Following the Haiti Earthquake, 2010.

These principles represent the views of the following agencies: the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the International Rescue Committee (IRC), Save the Children, Terre des Hommes (TdH), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), World Vision International (WVI), Plan International, War Child UK. Organizations wishing to work on behalf of separated children are strongly encouraged to endorse these principles.

Save the Children Toolkit entitled Child Protection in Emergencies, Priorities, Principles and Practices

Plan International: Children and the Tsunami

World Vision: Protecting Children Post-Disaster

—————

An Example of Youth-Led Community Change in Mali

Posted in development, Mali, participation, protection, YETAM, tagged arts, birth, circumcision, female, Mali, media, participatory, Plan, registration, school, violence, YETAM, youth on January 11, 2010| 3 Comments »

For the past couple years, I’ve been supporting the Youth Empowerment through Arts and Media (YETAM) project in 6 African countries. One of the best things about being involved in the project is the opportunity to work with some incredible people who are developing the program strategies and implementing YETAM on the ground. Bedo, the child media program coordinator in Plan Mali, is one of those people I’ve been lucky enough to work with. He’s kind, gentle, thoughtful and soft spoken yet solid in his opinions and knowledge. His face totally lights up when he’s working with the youth. He has clear vision and gets things done, writes excellent reports, and isn’t afraid to clarify things if he’s not sure he’s understood correctly. It’s been a real pleasure working with him. On Friday, Bedo told me about some of the short-term positive results that the Mali team is seeing in the YETAM program there, which I’ll summarize below. Photo: Bedo in December 2008 at the Social Media for Social Change Workshop in Kenya.

YETAM
The YETAM project aims to help youth develop their skills to communicate, educate and advocate at local, national, and global levels about issues impacting on their lives using the arts, traditional media, and new media tools.The project methodology consists of hands-on workshops and activities where youth can improve their communication and analytical skills in order to effectively raise their viewpoints and enter into dialogue with families, peers, community members, decision makers, and the general public. Youth go through a process of participatory mapping, discussions to prioritize their key themes, topics or issues. Then they learn to use arts and media to get their messages across to those that they want to engage in helping them find solutions. To date the project is being implemented in 6 countries in Africa (Senegal, Mali, Cameroon, Rwanda, Kenya and Mozambique).

YETAM in Mali
In Mali, around 60 children and youth in a community in the Kati District have been involved in the YETAM project for about a year and a half so far. In an initial workshop, the youth raised a number of issues through participatory mapping. They researched, investigated and developed opinions on these issues further through song, poetry, theater, photo and video, and later in the process, prioritized their most important issues:

· many children do not have birth certificates

· rural exodus

· violence at school

· excision (female genital cutting).

Integrating YETAM into school curriculum

Following the prioritization of their topics, youth began an education effort around the 4 themes with the local population and local authorities from their village and surrounding villages. As part of this effort, six school teachers were appointed by local school authorities to support the youth and supervise extracurricular activities around the youths’ 4 themes. They were trained by local consultants and Plan Mali staff on participatory methodologies using arts and media as participation tools.

During this training, teachers learned to adjust their teaching styles and to address the 4 topics not as lessons taught in the classroom, but as information sharing and advocacy topics through drawings, poetry, crafts, dance, and theater. New students joined the small arts groups according to the type of activity that they were interested in. Students who had been involved longer supervised and trained newer students and helped integrate the program within the school.

In addition to the arts, youth and adults worked together on several short drama films. One of these was about female circumcision. It discusses the medical complications of circumcision in a married woman during her 1st birth. The complications were due to excision, done in infancy, and resulted in vesico-vaginal fistula. Rejected at first by her husband, the woman is eventually accepted after the husband’s becomes aware of the existence of appropriate care (free in Mali) and the commitment made between spouses at marriage.

Engaging the public and local authorities through arts and media
Through the training workshops and the production of the different arts and media materials, youth were able to form their own opinions, messages and ideas for solutions to the issues that they had prioritized. They organized a public event in the community where they performed their drama, songs and poetry pieces, showed their film, and held a panel with local authorities to discuss how to improve the four areas that they had identified. Photo: youth performing a drama piece in the village.

Short term results to build upon
According to Bedo, “Integrating the YETAM methodology with the school environment enabled teachers to learn to address and manage issues with children and youth in a participatory way. The education methods have changed and the student / teacher relationships have become less tense, especially when it comes to discussing subjects such as violence at school or practice of female circumcision.”

Bedo explained that “the introduction of the ‘violence in school’ theme by the students initially caused some frustration among teachers. At first, they felt directly targeted. But when we integrated the teachers into the process, their frustration dissolved and trust began to grow between students and teachers because teachers are discovering another way to teach and discuss sensitive issues – they are behaving as coaches.” Bedo also said that since the discussions took place at the school, the education authorities have become more interested in the topics and the project.

“At the community event,” said Bedo, “the mayor declared that the council was taking all steps to ensure that all children have birth certificates. He also addressed the migration of young people from the rural to the urban areas, saying that one of the main reasons is lack of employment. He promised to create jobs to reduce the mass exodus of young people.” Photo: Children interviewing local authorities.

One of the most extraordinary things that happened as a result of the youth’s education and advocacy, according to Bedo, was that “the village chief also made a pronouncement…. He announced that ‘The practice of female circumcision is part of our traditions. As it has adverse consequences on the health of women, I have decided to end female circumcision in the village.’”

Teachers are engaged
Teachers have been happy with the new ways of teaching and the integration of the YETAM project within their school curriculum. One teacher told Bedo that “there have been developments in many areas, especially in the areas that teachers and students developed together – birth registration, rural-urban migration, female circumcision and violence at school.”

The teacher explained that the youths’ messages have extended to parents and those who practice these phenomena. “Those who practice circumcision have pledged they will stop it. Corporal punishment is now prohibited by school rules, because we now know that violence undermines the intelligence of the child. The teachers have agreed to end it. They are ready to make every effort to pass the message of awareness among their colleagues so that together we can make every effort to end school violence….”

Youth see concrete results

Participating children also commented that they think that there have been improvements due to the project’s integration into the school. One 14 year old participant in the project said “With this new formula of YETAM, the suffering of children through corporal punishment in schools and the harmful practice of female circumcision has decreased. Before, we children, we could not stand before the public and parents to discuss the subject of female circumcision, but now we can do it. This has greatly reduced the practice of female circumcision. In our village, many people practiced circumcision, but now they say they will stop because they have learned from our messages about the harm it causes.“

Another participant, who is 12 years old, commented that “with YETAM, teachers have ceased to beat us in school. Many of our schoolmates have their birth certificates. We are noticing an improvement in our situation.“

Next steps
Bedo says that given the positive impact so far of the project, they will ask school authorities to institutionalize an annual special day for each of the 4 topics. They will continue to support the work that the youth are doing and try to involve more youth, teachers, community volunteers and surrounding villages in this type of project. Plan Mali also has plans to conduct a participatory assessment with stakeholders to evaluate the project so far and learn how to improve it.

Within the next month or so, the overall project website will be complete, and the maps, art work and videos of all 6 participating countries will be uploaded so that youth can connect with their peers in Africa as well as share ideas with youth in non-African countries. A curriculum for teachers and youth groups based on the arts and media work that the youth have done around their priority topics is in the works and will be available for schools in the participating countries.

Read Full Post »

Is This Map Better than That Map?

Posted in development, ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, m4D, mapping, participation, random, musing or confusing, tagged better, digital, map kibera, mapping, MobileActive, NiJeL, outcome, participatory, Plan, Ushahidi, why, wikimapa on December 16, 2009| 11 Comments »

I come up against a nagging question when I’m thinking about mapping, when I’m talking about the projects I’m involved in, or when I’m working directly with staff and youth in rural communities using participatory mapping methodologies….

Why is this kind of map:

(source: MapKibera, on Wikipedia)

better than this kind of map?

(Source: Plan project in Kwale, Kenya)

Well… is it actually better? And if it is better, when is it better, for whom and why?

I understand how useful mapping information is for big picture decision making, trend spotting and knowledge sharing at different levels. Mapping in various forms is incredibly useful for program and advocacy work, and there are many examples of how crowd sourcing, digital mapping, and information geo-visualization can be done successfully (mapping stockouts, elections monitoring, human rights incident reporting, crisis management, public health). The potential is huge and exciting.

But when I’m sitting around with a group of people in a rural community without many services, it can be pretty hard to remember or to explain the benefits of digital mapping over low tech map making. Why should people make a digital map if they only have sporadic electricity and internet access (if at all) and not many smart phones. How will they access that digital map on a regular basis once they make it? Does the fact that they could make a digital map, necessarily mean that they should?

I guess my key concern is around how digital mapping is directly useful for the folks who are inputting the information, building the map. The “what’s in it for them” question.

As I was pondering this nagging question, @NiJeL_mapping posted something on Twitter that caught my eye and helped spur along the idea of working through these thoughts. He was at the Mobile Data for Social Action in the MidEast conference, hosted by UNICEF Innovations and MobileActive. He tweeted: “what data are we going to collect, how will we collect it, and from whom?” Then he tweeted: “Again, the push for technology w/o any knowledge of the intended outcome is frustrating” And a last tweet “overhearing whispers about how we need to focus on the technology, but impossible w/o knowing info to collect”. This really reminded me that you need to have clear objectives and reasons for collecting data before you decide what cool new technology will be used to do it. A few days ago I read JD’s blog post giving an overview of the whole conference. The key point for me was that the ‘target’ population delegation “felt overwhelmed by the host of tools and projects presented to them and were unsure how any of this could benefit them”. Luckily, he said, the conference organizers realized this and quickly altered the course of the event.

——————–

Well, if you have ever asked yourself a question, it’s pretty likely that someone else has asked it too, and you can find some answers online. So I went digging around for thoughts from 4 initiatives that I’ve been following over the past year or so: Ushahidi, MapKibera, Wikimapa, and now NiJeL too.

In very quick summary, Ushahidi is often (but not exclusively) used as a crisis mapping tool for rapid crowd sourced information, decision making, and trend analysis. Map Kibera and Wikimapa both use mapping and user-generated media for social inclusion, community voice, community media and community planning. NiJeL works with participatory mapping, bringing it to the web for a variety of geo-visualization uses such as planning, resource allocation, impact visualization and advocacy.

Mine must be not be a unique query, because I found that Erica from Map Kibera answered it pretty directly a couple weeks ago in a blog post called Maps and the Media “…the question about benefit to those who aren’t online misses the point. The digital divide is a fact and needs to be addressed, but when it comes to community information there is also a need for expression outward and collaboration within Kibera. Something like the Kibera Journal or Pamoja FM allows Kibera to talk to itself, while putting facts and stories online allows it to speak to the rest of the world (including wired Nairobi, politicians, national press).”

The objectives of Map Kibera seem similar to those of the YETAM project, the initiative that has taken up most of my work hours over the past couple years. YETAM’s main goals are engaging youth in the local development process and helping them develop the skills and tools to communicate and advocate for their rights and their ideas with local, national and global audiences. The project starts off with map making to visualize community profile, community history, community resources, and risks to child rights and protection. Group discussions ensue, issues are prioritized by the youth, and they then create art and media around those issues.

The arts and media materials that youth produce throughout the project are shared with community members, district officials and national authorities to generate dialogue. They’re also plotted onto a digital version of their map and uploaded to the web for the global audience.

Since the local audience is the main one for the media and arts that youth produce during YETAM project activities, followed by district, national and global audiences, it would seem then that the same is true for the map. It must first speak to the local audience, to the community. It should be first useful to users and producers of the information, as a learning/discussion tool and as a decision making tool, and secondly be useful to a national and then a global audience. Perhaps this will be the case for many of the initiatives that Plan supports and facilitates, given Plan’s child-centered community develop approach and the fact that we use participatory mapping methodologies in our community work all the time. So we need to find a way for the hand-drawn map to be transformed into a digital map (this is what we’ve been doing up to now in the YETAM project), or find a way to make a digital map attractive and useful to local people. Or we could also keep doing both the low-tech and the digital versions.

[Update: “Paper rocks!” Mikel from Map Kibera (read his comment below) shared some additional tools that Map Kibera uses to ensure that information collected is available in the community. One is called Walking Papers. It is a paper based GPS where you print the map, re-draw it or add details, scan the new version and it automatically geo-rectifies the paper. They will also be printing and distributing paper maps, and considering forums around the paper maps to increase participation from people who don’t use computers. Also Mikel commented that drawn maps like the one in the image above can be stored and/or made available to the community using Map Warper. Here you scan and upload a map, set control points, and then get a geo-rectified version for use online. Excellent. This gets better all the time. :-)]

The Wikimapa Brazil project (paraphrasing from their website) aims to promote social inclusion using virtual and mobile mapping in low-income areas and slums, since available mapping services have not offered information from these marginalized areas. The project aims to democratize access to information and raise low-income youth’s social participation from simple consumers of information to providers of information and change agents promoting local development and broadening perspectives and creating new cultural and geographical reference points. In this case, the project goals are similar to YETAM and Map Kibera, but the project is primarily aimed at reducing marginalization and exclusion within available mapping services. Therefore it seems relevant that on-line mapping is chosen as the mapping methodology. It may also be the case that residents in the project area have easy access to internet, meaning they would be able to continually use and benefit from the on-line maps.

Patrick Meier from Ushahidi and the Harvard Humanitarian Institute talks specifically about the concepts of participatory mapping, social mapping and crowd feeding during this 30 min video. He comments that the information that’s collected via “crowd sourcing” needs to go right back to ‘the crowd’ who provided it (crowd feeding). One way that Ushahidi is doing this in communities that do not have regular access to internet is by allowing people to subscribe to SMS alerts when a crisis event hits a particular area where they have a special interest. Another way to ensure that map makers have information returned to them, he says, is to use transparencies in a manual approach to GIS where information is made more compelling by laying thematic transparent layers over a base map to show dynamic changes and trends.

Patrick points to Tactical Technology Collective’s Maps for Advocacy booklet which documents a number of different mapping techniques and mapping projects and how they have been used for advocacy. So, I would conclude that in the case of Ushahidi and crisis mapping to see trends in time and space, to have immediate and up to date information, and to manage a broad set of information for crisis decision making, it also is logical that an online map is the primary mapping methodology. In this case, the information is crowd sourced, so it comes from many, and it’s processed and aggregated on Ushahidi to go back to many. Because the information in a crisis situation is changing rapidly, it would be difficult to use a static map, a hand drawn map or one that is updated less frequently.

In the case of Plan, as part of the Violence Against Children (VAC) project we are planning to pilot incident reporting by SMS of violence against children and subsequent mapping of the situation in order to raise awareness among families and community members, and to advocate to local, national and global authorities to uphold their responsibilities and promises in this aspect. The question here will be how to make both crowd sourcing and crowd feeding something that is easily accessible by the participating youth and communities as well as to the other audiences in order to have the desired impact and reach the desired outcomes. The participating youth have already been trained on violence against children (VAC), its causes and effects, and ways to advocate around it. Now the key will be training them on the technology so that they can discover and design ways to use it to meet their goals. A key point will be evaluating whether the outcome is a reduction in VAC.

So in conclusion I would have to say that one map is not better than the other map. They are both amazing tools and need to be selected depending on the situation. There is no one size fits all. It goes back to the point of having defined objectives and outcomes for the initiative, knowing what information will be collected, why, with whom, by whom, and for whom first, analyzing the local context as part of that process, knowing about what tools exist and finding the right tool/technology/information management process for the goals that people want to reach based on the context. It’s also about keeping the end-user in mind, and ensuring that those who are producing information have access to that information. I think I will have to keep my question in mind at all times, actually.

——————

Mobiles to teach real-world statistics?

Posted in development, ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, m4D, Mozambique, participation, YETAM, tagged data, gathering, media, mobile, Plan, YETAM, youth on November 26, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Saturday, was the last day of the 2-week Youth Empowerment through Arts and Media (YETAM) workshop with the youth. Each of the sub-groups had the task of prioritizing 2-3 areas that they wanted to focus on over the next 6 months and developing a basic plan. The plans included their focus issues, analysis of the causes of the issue, what they would do about it using their reinforced media and arts skills, when they would do it, and how they would know that they had achieved their short term goals (indicators). Photo: members of one of the media teams.

Nathalia, age 18, presented for the theater group. “We are going to work more on the issue of devaluation of girls by their parents. This is caused by the belief that men were made to dominate and women to serve, the idea that girls don’t bring any benefit to their parents, but bring only trouble, and the idea that girls are physically and mentally weak.”

The other 4 groups’ topics are:

· Music/Dance group: children’s rights in general, education as the key to a successful future, the value of local culture and traditions.

· Media group: disaster risk reduction and risks to youth in the community such as the discotheque, alcohol and drugs, and violence.

· Painting group: child rights in general, drug abuse and protecting children from violence/risk.

· Journalism group: sanitation and hygiene, education.

Mobile data gathering?

The groups will prepare work on these topics and extend their messages out to the school community and the surrounding villages. To track their progress, they plan to survey audiences that have seen their work (eg., their films, paintings, songs, theater, newsletters, etc). This made us think about the idea of using mobile phones to do the surveys (Nokia Data Gathering or Frontline SMS Forms, depending on which is more feasible and cost effective).

The youth could create surveys on a few devices, and then go around to survey people who have attended their events or viewed their work and heard their messages. The youth could then have immediate results by exporting the survey results into excel for analysis. In the process, the youth can learn about statistics, charts and graphs. Eventually they could also take surveying to another level, such as looking at behaviors and practices, and use the information to inform the outreach work that they are doing. Photo: Thinking about mobiles for more than calls and SMS.

“The kids see charts and graphs sometimes in their books, but they never have a chance to learn what actually goes into making a chart or graph, or to cover anything about statistics. This would be a fabulous hand-on way to see how data is collected and used for decision making and to measure results,” said Lauren, the Peace Corps volunteer teacher at the school. “It would be great for them to get to see immediate feedback on their own work!”

Feedback from youth

Photo: journalism group shows their newsletter.

At the closing ceremony the youth were sad to go. “This is an opportunity that we had to participate in something that has never happened here at Cumbana,” said one girl. “I encourage my fellow students here to show through their behavior, actions and their studies this coming year that they are now different. That they are changed.” (theater group)

“I never imagined that I could be a painter, but now I have the dream that I can do it. I am happy because I showed what I’m capable of and I expressed my feelings through art.” (painting group)

“My favorite thing was making the big mural. I feel very proud and I can show my friends what I’m capable of.” (painting group)

“This initiative allowed us to show light on our reality. I also know now that I have talent in my mind and in my hands to express myself now and to build my future.” (journalism group)

“I really thank Plan and Nokia because with this workshop I saw myself transforming my life. I will become an artist and I will make something out of my life” (painting group)

“I liked helping to raise awareness in people and to change things in our community and in ourselves. I want to share the success we’ve had in this project and our work, and to involve more people. There are many things we can achieve.” (media group)

“The best thing about the workshop was the way that they listened to us, they gave us courage to believe in ourselves. They reminded us that nothing comes from nothing and that only through education can we prepare for our futures.” (theater group)

“I liked working with equipment that I had never seen. Now I know how to use it. I feel able to learn without fear.” (media group)

And facilitators?

“It was great to see the youth increase their knowledge about their culture, history, rights and the role they can play in their community as agents of change. I loved seeing the youth apply the things that they learned and then do the work by themselves. I would like to see more adults in the community participating in a workshop like this. There are many things that we can benefit from as well.” (Facilitator)

“I thought the workshop was fantastic. The kids gained so much experience and confidence and really took advantage of these new opportunities.” (Facilitator)

Read Full Post »

Being a Girl in Cumbana

Posted in gender, Mozambique, YETAM, youth media, tagged am, because, gender, girl, i, media, Mozambique, Plan, YETAM, youth on November 23, 2009| 2 Comments »

Sometimes being a girl is no piece of cake. For the Youth Empowerment through Arts and Media (YETAM) workshop we hoped to have 50% girls participating, and we ended up with about 15 girls and 40 boys. The boys raised this on the 3^rd day of the workshop (through no prompting by the facilitators). “Why aren’t there more girls here? And the girls who are here, they never talk, they just sit there.” “They don’t have the ambition or the drive to improve themselves so they don’t even come to workshops like this when they have the opportunity”. Photo: Painting the mural.

Most of the girls listened to this criticism without responding. “Girls – what do you have to say about this?” asked one of the facilitators. Silence. “See, even now they just sit there and don’t defend themselves,” complained the boys. More silence. Finally one girl spoke up “You don’t know what it’s like. We can’t get permission to come. It’s very difficult for us. Our parents don’t trust us. They think we are just coming to play. They want us to stay at home to do work during our school break.” “But you have the same letter from the school that we do! Why can’t you learn to negotiate with your parents like we do?” More silence. The discussion turned to effective negotiation skills to communicate with and convince parents to allow both girls and boys to participate. “Our parents and grandparents are not ignorant donkeys; they are just from another time. They have never had the opportunity to participate in projects and workshops or even to go to school. They don’t know why we think it’s important. We need to become better at talking with them, to counsel them and help them to see what we are doing so that they will allow us to join in these efforts.”

Being a girl isn’t only an obstacle to participating in workshops. In the community over the past 3 weeks, I saw and heard about the challenges girls face to achieve an education, avoid unwanted advances, including from teachers, and avoid early pregnancies. Most of the time there is no space for these issues to be discussed openly among both boys and girls, and with adults. Plan’s two campaigns, Learn without Fear and Because I am a Girl, seem extremely relevant to the context.

A Conquista

The hottest debate of the 2 weeks was not “poverty” or “lack of water” or anything typically thought of as a “development” issue. It was “a conquista” or the process of getting a girl/being wooed by a boy. It was nice to see the girls getting more vocal as we got further along into the workshop. “We try to talk to girls and they don’t respond. They just ignore us! So it makes us angry,” said one of the guys. A girl countered “We are afraid when someone approaches us, because if we don’t agree, a boy or a man may get angry and they can find us and take out their aggression on us, they can rape us.” “Sometimes if girls talk to one of us, and then talk to another of us also, what boys do then is to join together and show her that she can’t play with us, show her she can’t act like that,” said one of the boys. “It’s true,” said a girl, “We are afraid because they get mad if we don’t talk to them.” “You should talk to us then!” interrupted a boy. “What, can I give myself to every single male in the village just because he wants me?” exclaimed one of the girls. This forum was incredibly important for guys and girls to have a time and a place to hear each other out, see each others’ points of view and try to understand each other. There is a lot of room for awareness building on gender violence. I even heard one teenage girl in one of the nearby communities say “if it’s just one man, it’s not really a rape…. it has to be 3 or 4.”

So I was really happy that the theater group decided to do their play about the things that girls face, even more so because there were only about 4 girls in the theater group, and the 3 facilitators were male. (There are not many female teachers and facilitators to work with). Now that we had divided into small group and we’d been working together for several days, the girls’ voices were much louder. Photo: the issues chosen by the theater group included early marriage, drug abuse, physical aggression in families, corrupt police, professors/student fights, lack of value placed on girls within families.

Community Showcase

The groups had their showcase on Nov. 20, coinciding with the celebration of the 20^th Anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Some 300 people from nearby primary schools and communities attended the event.The painting group’s mural greeted people as they came into the school grounds. Under giant orange tarp (which pretty much ruined any chance of getting good photos/videos since everything had a very strange light) the music group sang 2 songs about education and HIV prevention and performed a traditional dance. The media group showed 6 of their videos, on life in the community, the importance of the river, trash in the market, the discotheque, and the local cinemas. The journalism group shared their community newspaper, and the theater group performed their play.

On being a girl…

The storyline in the play is of a girl whose father marries her off for money; she is taken off to her new husband’s place and becomes pregnant. Her husband is abusive, alcoholic and brings other women home. He beats her, but her mother finds out and they report it to the police. The police come to take a report, admonishing the husband and telling him that he is going to jail. No matter, nothing a little private conversation and bribe won’t solve. So the tables turn with the policeman admonishing the girl that she should not treat her husband badly and she deserves what she got. As soon as the police leave, he beats the girl again, shouting as her father had shouted at her mother “In this house it’s the man who’s in charge!” He throws her out on the street. A friend tries to convince her to prostitute herself and make good money and she refuses. The play ends as she looks at the audience, carrying the small bundle of her child, and asks “Why will people say this is my fault?” The other actors come out one by one, calling on governments, parents, friends, school, teachers to see the situation clearly and to take on their responsibilities to change this scenario. I have to say it was one of the best theater pieces I’ve ever seen, and it was written entirely by this group of 9^th and 10^th graders. Photo: Theater group closing out after a day of rehearsing.

The best tools to get the message across

Each different art or media form carried the messages on issues that the youth want to raise and change in their communities. Once more it was a reminder that it’s the communication objectives and impact on the audience that matter, and the choice of the tools should be secondary, based on the outcomes to achieve. We are not “doing media projects”, but helping kids to use different tools, including media, to dig into their realities and then use those tools as effective means of communication to make change in their communities. What may be a great topic for a video, may not work so well as theater, and vice versa. In the process of discussing the issues and the media forms that would be best to make change in the community, both boys and girls learn new personal skills and improve their self esteem as well as their own communication skills. They also have an opportunity to openly and deeply discuss issues among themselves and to understand each other better. The discussion around gender issues and how the same challenges may affect girls and boys differently is one of the most important that they can have.

Read Full Post »

Inhambane: land of palm trees and cellular networks

Posted in ICTs, mobile and technology, Mozambique, travel, YETAM, tagged cell, coverage, ICT, Inhambane, mobile, Mozambique, Plan, YETAM on November 3, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Landing in Inhambane, Mozambique, the first thing you see is the blue Vodacom sign: ‘Welcome to Inhambane – a land covered by palm trees and the best cellular network’. I don’t usually believe ads and this time was no exception. But I have to say, it seems to be true. My sim card is actually on mCel, not Vodacom, but the coverage is still damn good. And the two cell phone companies are everywhere. I’m not sure which I saw more of – yellow Frelimo t-shirts (elections were last week), yellow mCel kiosks or blue Vodacom kiosks.

Which reminds me that I saw a statistic last week saying that more people have mobile phones than latrines. And I’m not sure how I feel about that…. And then I start thinking about the hierarchy of personal needs – which perhaps needs some revising. So does communication rank higher now than toilets? What about food? I was certainly more worried about getting online than about eating for the past 4 days (as a vegetarian, your choice is limited unless you really make an effort). I mean, at least I got to complain about the 4 days of fried eggs on Twitter…. but what if it were access to food in general? Where would I put my effort? hmmm. I digress….

My travel diet (in addition to the eggs) has been around 5 hours of mobile internet on my laptop a day (skype, email, blogging, Twitter, maps, google translate, and a few doses of Facebook thrown in), and several mobile internet snacks from my phone itself in between. I’ve gone through about 600 credits in 5 days, or around $4/day. I fully recognize that is expensive for someone who is not earning a US salary, but I love that I was able to just purchase a sim card, put it in my phone, hook up my phone as a modem, and ta-dah.

Yes I’m using a ‘smart phone’ (Nokia E-63), but my point is that it’s much easier to use your phone as a modem in Mozambique than it is in the US (seems the latest i-phone update disables that so I’m afraid to download the latest update) or in the other African countries that I’ve been in over the past year. Compared to Cameroon, Senegal and Kenya where we had to purchase a special data package and get help/permission from the phone company (or were we just not doing it right? It does get easier to figure out the more you do this stuff). In any case, internet hardly worked once we finally got connected. So in that sense, Mozambique is an internet junkie’s dream.

I asked about internet as a precursor to the social media session of the Youth Empowerment through Arts and Media (YETAM) training of trainers workshop yesterday. We are working from a secondary school about 30 km outside of the town of Maxixe, where I expected internet would be nil (and it is, except by mobile phone modem). Several teachers and partner organization members from the area are participating. Starting on Sunday, for two weeks they’ll work with youth to use arts and media as tools in the community development process. The same arts and media are a way for youth to put themselves, their community and their issues on the global map by uploading the photos, drawings and videos they will make to the web.

As an example during yesterday’s session, I Googled the name of the school. All we found in the first couple of pages was Maxixe and nearby towns listed, with content related to tourist beaches. There was also a blog by Lauren, the Peace Corp Volunteer who is teaching there. Several months back when we were planning the training, Lauren’s blog was the only information I was able to specifically find about the school and area. Because of her blog, I was able to connect her and our local staff to work together on the whole training. After the YETAM training, the ideas is that people will be able to find information created by the community and youth themselves, from their own perspective.

I’m really excited about the good internet, because maybe then the whole process can be done from the community – including the uploading and subtitling of the videos (usually is done from the Plan office in the US due to slow connections). That will be huge in terms of community and youth ownership. Im crossing my fingers that we can make this happen. Or we’ll have to sue the land of palm trees and the best cellular network for false advertising :-).

It’s all part of the ICT Jigsaw: Plan Mozambique ICT4D workshops
Putting Cumbana on the Map

Read Full Post »

Feet back on the ground: Mozambique

Posted in development, Mozambique, YETAM, tagged arts, ICT, media, Mozambique, Plan, YETAM on October 31, 2009| Leave a Comment »

I got into Maputo (capital of Mozambique) around 3 on Friday and stopped by the Plan Mozambique office to meet the staff on the way to my hotel. The office here is small. Plan’s only been working in Mozambique since 2007 and in one province only so far. Maputo is absolutely gorgeous. It’s calm, not at all crowded, and on the coast.

I’ll be here for about 3 weeks working on the Youth Empowerment through Arts and Media (YETAM) project in a community near Maxixe, which is a 50 minute plane trip north. The coordinator for the project in Mozambique is Pedro, the IT Director, and we had a nice discussion today over lunch.

Pedro is from the IT sector and used to work for a government ministry and came to Plan right when we opened here. He’s convinced that “Plan is not in the IT business. We’re in the business of community development, so our IT has to be in service of community development, not just the office.” So ICT4D is high up on his list of interests, and he’s hoping that over the next few weeks we can share lots of ideas. We discussed how just like media, ICTs are becoming more easily accessible for people, so a good ICT person should know how to support and train other people, to take the mystery out of ICT. He or she also has to know how to see the trends coming down the line to stay ahead of the game.

Aside from lunch, we spent most of the day installing software on the computers that we’ll be using in the media project. We got the anti-virus going on all of them – a lesson learned and never forgotten on my part. We also got the Nokia phones and laptops synced so we can use them for mobile internet while in the community. Pedro said that mobile internet is a huge eye opener. “If it works there, communities will know that if they can get the phone, they don’t need to go all the way to the city to access the internet.” I’m crossing my fingers that the signal will be strong enough to make this a reality. We shall see…. That social media session I have planned will not make much of an impact if we can’t get online. Which reminds me how great it always is to get your feet back on the ground and adjust ideas to reality.

It’s all part of the ICT jigsaw: Plan Mozambique ICT4D workshops
Inhambane: land of palm trees and cellular networks

Read Full Post »

Pop!Tech: Oh!

Posted in ICTs, mobile and technology, tagged desig, innovation, Plan, Poptech on October 28, 2009| 1 Comment »

I’m on the train to NYC on the first leg of my journey to Mozambique, toting my new solar FLAP bag and a suitcase full of gadgets. I seem to be somewhere in the middle of nowhere, the rain’s pouring down outside and I’m surrounded by red and gold leaves. The best thing about my insane day so far is that the orange juice I spilled on my keyboard this morning seems not to have done much damage…. But now I have a few hours to stop and reabsorb PopTech.

What an experience, really. You’re in a room of brilliant people in an environment that promotes sharing of ideas across domains. Not only are the people on stage presenting a cross-section of the most brilliant ideas on the face of the planet, but every person sitting around you is brilliant as well.

Some major “Oh!” moments for me were related to design and innovation (surprise):

Design. I realized I’ve been totally unaware of “Design” (or is it “design” with a small ‘d’?). I’d understood design to be about fine art or architecture, or coming up with products to sell. I’d never thought about the relationship between design and the participatory community planning process that we (Plan) support and facilitate in hundreds of communities around the world in which communities design their own programs. I want to learn more about the intersection here. What can the non-profit sector learn about participatory design processes that are born in other sectors? We seem to wrestle with some of the same issues: Do you focus on quality or quantity? Eg., do you design something humble, elegant, good quality for a niche need, or do you go for broad, widespread, shallow, without so much meaning? Seems to be the question of scale and how we measure impact.

I’ve been recommended to read Liz Sanders, Participatory Design Methods, check out the Design Research Conference at IIT, and read Interactions magazine for some insight – thx Jon Kolko (@jkolko) from Frog Design. Also, check out Jon’s book Thoughts on Interaction Design.

Innovation. It’s hard to attend Pop!Tech and not feel humbled by the brilliance around you. As Erica Williams tweeted while Neri Oxman was presenting “Did you ever think you were kinda smart and then realize that you’re not?” I’m known for being innovative in my own circles, as someone who’s ahead of the curve. But that idea gets shaken up when I’m in a roomful of people with the same reputation, who are really hard core innovative, or who are innovating in areas that I know nothing about. The take-away for me here is the importance of constantly being exposed to new areas and people you wouldn’t normally be around so that you can be stimulated in your own innovation and motivated to keep moving. In the Pop!Tech environment, it was easy to see how things all fit together, how innovators at different levels can work together, or can work with non-innovators to improve existing things, and the sum is greater than the parts. This cross-pollination of people, fields, domains, ideas, ages, and sectors is exactly what makes the experience so useful.

Now comes the urge for action and the desire to see the connections we traced out in our minds while listening to someone speak or on paper during dinner become a reality. For me, that means being a bridge between the different programs that Plan supports on the ground and the people involved in them, and the new ideas I’m carrying with me from Pop!Tech.

A small step will be taking a solar Flap bag to Mozambique next week. We heard 2 weeks ago from staff in Mozambique that power is one of the main challenges at the community level. However, who knows if a solar bag is the right solution. (As I heard Emily Pilloton from Project H Design say – “we’re not designing a bridge, we’re designing a way to get across the water”) Will people like it? Will it fit their needs? Will it power what they want it to? What improvements to it would they make? Are they even interested in it at all? Is it yet another cool thing someone brings from the outside, or would they see it as something they could take, use, and own? Do they see it as a part of their daily life? I will ask them. And while I’m at it, what do they think about paper diagnostics being available to them? What about using SMS to improve their healthcare? Or a virtual SIM so that they can have their own identity on a shared mobile phone? Maybe I can hook them up! 🙂

Read Full Post »

Breaking it Down: Violence Against Children

Posted in participation, protection, VAC, tagged Africa, cartoon, comic, media, participatory, Pictoons, Plan, UNVAC, VAC, west on September 27, 2009| 1 Comment »

How do you break down a high level UN study and connect children and youth with the information so that they can use it for their own purposes, engage others and push for a change? Through participatory arts and media, of course!

My colleague Anastasie (in the photo above) in Plan’s West Africa office is working on a project to stop Violence Against Children (VAC). “We want to make the content and follow up mechanisms of the United Nation’s VAC study widely known among children, youth and their caretakers in West Africa and mobilize a wide representation of children and youth in the region to prevent and respond to violence against children.” Anastasie told me.

“People need to know about the VAC study and its outcomes. Children and youth especially need to know so that they can participate in finding solutions. We are working to strengthen the capacities of existing children and youth organizations to play their full role in civil society. We’re helping develop their capacities to communicate efficiently and effectively about this issue so that they can influence decision making processes.”

What does that actually mean, and what does the project look like?

“We work with the participating youth and children’s organizations and the adults that work with them to build their capacities through producing comic books, cartoons, information booklets, and radio and television programs that inform about the topic of violence against children,” Anastasie told me. “We have a website with a blog to give room to children, youth and adults to share opinions on violence.” The participating groups have also formed a network and an action plan to focus them as they go forward.

For me, it’s clear that child/youth participatory media is again (disclaimer – I’m obviously passionate about this) an ideal method for both building individual level skills and capacities in children and youth, generating discussion, research and reflection among children and youth on the topic, and identifying real stories and messages that can have a strong impact on viewers and which can be used to share ideas, opinions and generate dialogue. Social media tools open the project up even further to additional audiences and allow space for those not directly participating to also join in on the discussion. Photo: Youth in Ghana filming opinions about the topic of violence.

The cartoons (go about halfway down on the page click on ‘dessins animes’) and comics (click on ‘BD’) are drawn by the children and youth themselves with the support of partner organization Pictoons (amazing short feature video about Pictoons on Africa Open for Business!). They are based on real life stories that the children and youth bring to the workshops. Once drawn and animated, adults do professional voiceovers. Currently the materials are only available in French, but they will be dubbed in additional languages to spread their impact further. The website itself has a wealth of information about violence against children, including statistics, radio discussions, videos, comic books, and the cartoons mentioned above.

In the next phase of the project, additional tools will be incorporated. “We plan to use SMS, blog and mobile reporting, and maybe Ushahidi and Frontline SMS,” said Anastasie. “I heard about these tools in a workshop last December at Plan. I thought these tools would be good for mobilization and monitoring/evaluating the project.”

The idea would be for the youth groups to collect and report on incidences of violence in their communities using SMS. They would refer people who report violence to institutions that can provide support. The incident reports would be visualized on maps to show the extent of the problem, and these maps would be used to advocate, along with the other communication materials, to local, district and national decision makers. “We plan to begin this next phase of incorporating more social media and new technologies starting in January,” said Anastasie. Photo: youth learning to use the computer to share opinions on the VAC blog.

Check out some of the materials made by the youth at the Violence against Children site. Really nice work!

The Violence Against Children project takes place in 7 countries: Benin, Ghana, Mali, Togo, Guinea Conakry, Cote d’Ivoire and Gambia in partnership with Save the Children, Curious Minds (Ghana), Child Protection Alliance of Gambia, youth and children’s clubs in all these countries, the African Movement for Working Children and Youth, and Planet Jeunes (a popular magazine for youth in West Africa). The United Nations Violence against Children (UNVAC) studywas released in 2006. It identified 5 specific places where children face violence: home, school, work, community and institutions. Recently a Special Representative on Violence Against Children (Marta Santos Pais) was appointed by the UN Secretary General to look specifically into this issues.

————

I and C, then T

Posted in development, ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, tagged ICT, ICTs, mobile, mobile and technology, Plan, workshop on September 13, 2009| 6 Comments »

Last week some Plan USA staff got together at Plan’s Washington, DC office as part of our ongoing discussions on how Plan globally could better use ICTs and social media as enablers in our work and to improve program outcomes. We had the honor of some amazing minds to support us, including Josh Nesbit (@joshnesbit) from FrontlineSMS: Medic, Dave Isaak from SixBlue Data (@sixblue_data), Michael Downey from Indiana University (@downeym), and Wayan Vota from Inveneo (@wayan_vota).

Photo: Mwendar and Ali using mobiles during a meeting on modernizing the birth registration process in Kwale, Kenya, in June 2009.

We started with an overview of ICT4D, emphasizing the importance of not starting with the tools and devices, but rather a mapping of information and communications needs.

The presentation was based on Plan’s “Mobiles for Development Guide” by Hannah Beardon. (See the presentation here). For me, a key aspect was the 3 ways that organizations can incorporate ICTs in their work:

1) Directly: Addressing the digital divide through improved connectivity, capacity, access

2) Strategically: Applying ICTs to enhance the impact of development projects and programs

3) Indirectly: improving their efficiency and effectiveness

The Mobiles for Development Guide also proposes a three-step process for arriving at decisions on how ICTs can be incorporated:

Stage 1: Assess the need/potential for ICTs/mobile technology

Stage 2: Analyze the socio-technological context

Stage 3: Choose the technology and content

For me, this is kind of obvious but we seem to often forget it. Most sound organizations wouldn’t decide that building a clinic or a school is the solution without looking at the broader situation together with community members, and analyzing together what the desired outcomes actually are, what the local resources are, what the barriers are, how sustainability will be achieved, issues of upkeep, local ownership, power and control, usability, etc. In the same way, we clearly shouldn’t slap on 100 mobile phones and some computers and call it an ICT4D or m-Something initiative.

But sometimes technology seems like such an obvious solution that organizations start with the technology tools rather than looking at the desired outcomes: let’s do a radio project, a video project, an m-Health project – when rather we should be stepping back and seeing what the larger goals are, how we plan to reach them, what kind of information and communication needs to happen to reach project goals, how is information and communication currently happening in the local situation and who has control over it, and lastly what types of tools might work best for relaying that information and communicating.

As an action item from the workshop, we will begin work on a more concrete methodological guide for Plan staff to use at the local level. The concept is in place, but how to actually do this concretely when we are developing programs with communities is perhaps not so clear. The idea is to develop a detailed and participatory methodology that could be used locally (by staff, community members, district officials, etc.) to identify information and map out communication needs in existing (or developing) initiatives, to better understand the local ‘socio-technological’ context, and to have some sort of ‘decision tree’ that could help suggest the most appropriate ICT enablers for the local context. We hope to gather input from others who have done similar work (in and outside of Plan) and to field test it in Cameroon in a Child Survival project early next year.

11 concerns about ICTs and ‘social media for social good’

It’s all part of the ICT jigsaw: Plan Mozambique ICT4D workshops

ICT ideas from Plan Cameroon

ICT4D Kenya: ICT and community development is real

Modernizing birth registration with mobile technology

In Kenya brainstorming on mobiles

Chickens and eggs and ICTs

On Girls and ICTs

7 (or more) questions to ask before adding ICTs

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »