Sustainability Planning and Monitoring

PARTICIPATORY TOOLS USED IN THE MPA●●Community organizations that were involvedin the service establishment, e.g., members ofthe then water and sanitation committees orvillage development committees.Special categories/groups who madesignificant contributions to serviceestablishment, such as female masons, healthworkers involved in hygiene education, etc.The stakeholders’ meeting is organized at the districtor project level. In situations where geographicdistances are vast, two or three such meetingsmay have to be organized and the results collatedfor reporting. The stakeholders’ meeting shouldnot be held at the office of the service agency. Aneutral place with adequate meeting space isneeded.ProcessThe process and group dynamics are significantand revealing. It is therefore critical that thefacilitator is assisted by recorder/s who take notesvery carefully and use them for reporting on thequalitative aspects. The full meeting is conductedin the local language.IntroductionThis is the formal opening at which all theparticipants give a brief background of themselvesand their interests. Some introductory icebreakerexercise compatible with the local culture isnecessary at this point, to neutralize hierarchicalbarriers to interaction and create an informal,relaxed climate conducive to sharing and learningtogether.Open discussions focusing attention onsustained and effectively used servicesare important in establishing a sustainable andeffectively used service?”Identified factors can be those that have eitherpositive or negative influence. Rather than lettinga dominant person speak up and answer for therest, it is advisable to have the different types ofparticipants record their views on color-codedresponse cards, e.g., blue cards for technicalagency staff, pink for social development agency’sstaff, yellow for village level intermediaries, whitefor community representatives and so forth. Ifwomen and men write cards of different shapes,e.g., men write rectangular cards while womenwrite oval ones, the results are visually very“telling.” Writing is done with thick markers, andonly one idea may be written on one card. Thecards are displayed on the wall or floor.The participants subsequently cluster the cardsbased on the similarity of ideas expressed on them.Each cluster is given a self-explanatory label. Thisactivity reveals the answers to the above questionas expressed by the whole group. The facilitatorthen helps the group to draw conclusions on thenature of factors and observed patterns, relatingexpressed views to the participants’ backgrounds.For example, do technical staff have views thatare different from those of the social developmentstaff or the village leaders? Do women thinkdifferently from men?The presence of hierarchical relationships amongthe participants may inhibit honest responses aboutagency factors. If that were the case, the firstexercise is done in three separate but parallelgroups with the help of three facilitators and theresults collated. This helps bring out majordisparities in views among different categories ofstaff without threatening anyone.The first step in the group process is an opendiscussion on the influence of institutional factorsaround the question “What agency factors were/Assessing agency objectives and strategiesThis may be done using the card sorting technique87