OL 343 Assignment Seven Homework
Online Learning: OL 343 Adapting to Climate Change: The Community Focus.
https://csd-i.org/ol-343-the-community-focus/
This week’s resources:
Assignment Seven Discussion
Magee Example Project Assignment Seven
OL 343 A7 Lesson Plan – Forming a Community Agricultural Committee (Download Class Documents)
Why some Village water and sanitation committees are better than others
https://www.wsp.org/wsp/sites/wsp.org/files/publications/327200744509_saybetter.pdf
Gender Mainstreaming Field Manual for Water Supply and Sanitation Projects
http://www.mowr.gov.et/attachmentfiles/Downloads/Gender%20Mainstreaming%20Field%20Manual%20English.doc
The Key Steps in Establishing Participatory Forest Management – A field manual to guide practitioners in Ethiopia
https://theredddesk.org/resources/key-steps-establishing-participatory-forest-management-field-manual-guide-practitioners
Village Forestry Training Manual. Forming and operating a village forestry core group. Pp. 155 – 161
Village Forestry Training Manual. This is the entire 800 page book.
http://www.mekonginfo.org/assets/midocs/0001415-environment-village-forestry-training-manual.pdf
SSN: Community-Based Technology Solutions (Urban Gardens) — Adapting to Climate Change pp. 15-16
India Case Study: Community-Based Institutions
https://www.eda.admin.ch/dam/countries/countries-content/india/en/resource_en_192483.pdf
Assignment Seven. Sustainability through Community Management Committees.
Part 1.
Most of the information on forming community committees that I found seemed to be focused on water, forestry and health projects—but your projects cover a much greater diversity of themes. So my suggestion is to look at the resources above in order to get general ideas—but then do a quick Internet search to find resources for developing community committees within your own projects focused on the theme of one sub-goal of your project.
Search using Google or Google Scholar for a handbook, manual, or scientific paper that includes information about how to establish a community-based committee for overseeing the implementation and long-term management and maintenance of a program that relates to the sector in your project for which you are setting up this committee (agriculture, water, reforestation, etc.).
Provide the link to the resource that you discovered and a very short two or three sentence paragraph summary of the resource.
Part 2.
The resource above called Gender Mainstreaming Field Manual has good information on identifying potential committee members beginning on page 28, and methods for developing appropriate governance beginning on page 48. I would suggest scanning this information—but also realize that it may be more sophisticated than is required for this assignment.
The Key Steps in Establishing Participatory Forest Management has a good overview on page 9 and 10.
The best step-by-step guide that I found however, is:
Village Forestry Training Manual. Module 1-5: Forming and operating a village forestry core group. On 155 – 161
It will give you a framework and lesson plan for developing your workshop. Your workshop should have a mechanism for:
1. Introducing the concept of a specific village committee in a participatory workshop setting. Consciousness-raising about the importance of having a committee and a better understanding of skill sets that will need to be developed by committee members in order to manage the outputs of the project
2. Going through the step-by-step procedure of forming a committee with the workshop participants
3. Electing or appointing committee members
One suggestion might be to propose electing or appointing an interim committee who over the course of six months will develop the ultimate committee, develop its structure, establish committee member selection criteria, ensure gender inclusiveness and marginalized group inclusiveness, set goals and management responsibilities, determine training requirements, establish a project implementation plan, and establish a monitoring and evaluation plan.
At the end of this interim period (based upon the committee member selection criteria), the interim committee could be elected for a second term — or they could be replaced by new members. Taking this approach might make it easier during next week’s workshop for workshop participant’s to select committee members if they realize it’s simply for an intern basis.
One other thing that I’m going to do, at the end of the workshop, is to ask the newly formed committee, as their first formal activity, is to look at the list of project activities and make a list of those specific activities that they feel community members would like to do on their own, or activities that they would like to do in conjunction with NGO field staff. This will accomplish several things. It will continue building on project ownership, it will provide hands-on training on project activities so that the community will be able to maintain the project after your NGO is gone, and it will ensure that the community has provided input into the project. Depending on what your project is, you may even have funds in your budget for manual labor that community members could benefit from too.
Part 3.
Aside from developing your materials, I would begin organizing the workshop itself a week in advance. If you arranged the workshop for the Saturday of next week, then you really have almost two weeks of preparation time.
Make sure that you have all of your materials together—like large sheets of paper, and pens and markers for doing the drawings. Because this is an all day workshop (unless you break it into two shorter workshops) you may also need to plan snacks, drinks, and lunch.
My suggestion would be to have two three colleagues accompany you to help with the workshop. This will be especially useful if you decide to break the participants down into sub-groups (men and women, or teenagers and parents). Also, if you are considering providing snacks and drinks—or lunch, you should put someone completely in charge of that (including a helper or two) so that you aren’t distracted with the details and are free to focus completely on facilitating the workshop.
The homework to turn in will be:
1. Provide the link to the resource on forming committees that you discovered and a very short two or three sentence paragraph summary of the resource.
2. A brief overview of your plan for the workshop—and when and where the workshop will be held.
Go to Magee’s Example Project Assignment Seven to see what this could look like.
See you next week.