Community dialogues - Nelson Mandela Foundation

As for evaluating the success of the community conversationsprogramme, Phillips suggested that the following questionsshould be asked:• Are more people more involved in the community dialogues?• To what extent do participants evaluate information before theyuse it?• Are communities beginning to talk about thingsother than HIV?• How are community members linkedto outside support groups?Phillips went on to advocate forresources with documentationand information on HIV/AIDSissues, and on the conversationsthemselves being made accessibleto members of the communitieswhere the conversations are held.He concluded by saying thatcommunities themselves mustparticipate in the strategic plan for the2012 dialogues.Ailish Byrne, from the Communication for SocialChange Consortium, opened her presentation byhighlighting the complexity of the context in which communityconversations on HIV and AIDS take place, speaking of people’slives and the non-linearity of the development process.Byrne explained that most evaluations are about being able toaccount to donors and not to the communities themselves. Shewent on to explain that if monitoring and evaluation are to beeffective and useful, “it is essential to look for local strengths interms of what the community has and to question if the evaluationencompasses this”.This means that there has to be a deep understanding of thecommunity concerned, and that distinguishing features of theparticular context need to be considered when deciding howto implement the evaluation process. The evaluation processshould itself be an integral part of the dialogue process, Byrneemphasised. “Participatory evaluation is a powerful dialogue tooland critical questions need to be asked, and not just for the donorsor team of facilitators.”“Participation isuseful because [it]allows for one-ononeinterviews whichreveal the true impactof the communityconversationengagement in thelocal context.”Motlatsi LekhuleniCritical questions that demand deeper,more rigorous thinking about theevaluation process help determinethe type of support the facilitatorsand participants need and goodquality answers are fundamentalin determining how greatersupport for the monitoring andevaluation process can be gained,Byrne said. Capacity developmentwas always going to be a long-termprocess, she continued, and theskills of critical thinking and learningwould remain with the communityeven when the dialogues were overand facilitators long gone.Motlatsi Lekhuleni, a lead facilitator forthe Nelson Mandela Foundation, thenrecounted some personal anecdotes from histime working on the community conversationsprogramme. He told of how he relies on reportsfrom other facilitators to write his own reports, but thatthis becomes problematic, as reports only encompass what happensin the conversation and not what goes on outside or beyond it.“Participation is useful because [it] allows for one-on-oneinterviews which reveal the true impact of the communityconversation engagement in the local context,” Lekhuleni argued,suggesting that this is why monitoring and evaluation is vital.To illustrate his point, he told of learners in Kimberley who wereinvolved in local community conversations. When the dialoguesbegan there were 24 instances of teenage pregnancy in a localschool. By 2008 this number was down to 12. By 2010, there wereonly three instances counted. Stabbing and drug use at the school30 HIV/AIDS community conversations programme findings and lessons