Listening to African Voices - FPZ

Ideally, the government of Hamburg and Plan and/or otherdonor organisations will agree to partner the project.7.3. Recommendations regarding the implementation ofthe action planOnce the general action plan established by the PAC is approvedfor financial and technical support, a start-up workshopshould be held, uniting the different actors in orderto allow them to clarify and define their roles, and to put inplace effective monitoring and evaluation mechanisms. Thefollowing reporting lines are recommended: the communitybasedactivities should be implemented as defined in thespecific action plans by the immigrant associations. They willreport on their progress to the PAC which is responsible forthe monitoring of their work. The PAC will compile a reportsummarising the activities of all immigrant associations aswell as their own doings and submit it on a regular basis tothe financial and technical partners.Last but not least, we recommend initiating further researchprojects in order to gather relevant information relating toFGM/C from immigrants of the following countries: Egypt,Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea Bissau. We also proposethat additional data be collected for the communities fromNorthern Benin, Northern Togo and Burkina Faso.7.4. Recommendations regarding the previewed outputs,outcomes and impactThe typical process of abandoning FGM/C can be brokendown to three stages: (1) increased awareness on the issue,(2) attitude change favouring the abandonment of thepractice and (3) abolition of the practice and protection ofyoung girls from the supporters of FGM/C. The stages takeplace at individual as well as community level. It is possiblethat individuals might decide to abandon FGM/C while thecommunity continues to practice it. It also happens that thecommunity decides collectively to abandonment FGM/Cwhile individual members choose to continue. In bothcases, the behaviour change cannot be considered as stableand it can take years, even decades to consolidate it. Therecommendations at this level revolve around the nature ofbehaviour changes:As a gradual process, the definite abandonment of FGM/Ctakes time. It is recommended to design a pilot project oftwo years that can be extended into a long term projectafter the testing and adjustment phase.In order to be able to measure the outputs of the activities,the definition of solid monitoring indicators is crucial. Werecommend that evaluation indicators measuring potentialchanges of awareness be defined in the first phase of theproject. Indicators assessing individual and collective attitudechanges can be evaluated in the second phase of the project(once the awareness of the target population has significantlyincreased). Evaluations from projects implementedin Africa can provide useful guidance for the definition ofmonitoring and evaluation indicators.Listening to African Voices 97