Sustainability Planning and Monitoring

PARTICIPATORY TOOLS USED IN THE MPAdescribed earlier. Each participant sorts the cardswith scale options on agency policy on sustainedservices, from the lowest to the highest order. Emptycards of a different color are provided to addanother option if needed. Sorting is done in smallgroups of different categories of participants, oreven individually if the number of participants isless than 15.Each person selects the card, which, in his/heropinion, best matches the project approach theiragency used at the time of establishing the servicesin the selected communities. Each person uses acolor-coded voting token or sticker to mark theselected card. The colors represent participantcategories, i.e., whether the person is technical,social or village level staff or community memberand whether male or female. The groups displaytheir cards and markings on the floor or a wall.The facilitator helps the group to draw conclusionsabout the similarity or divergence of views andscores by different participant categories. Majorvariations stimulate discussions on underlyingreasons, meanings of concepts, problems andrequired actions.The activity is repeated for the other indicators -i.e., policies regarding demand-responsiveservices, community ownership and managementand gender-sensitivity and gender balance.The groups examine the degree of consensus andagree on overall scores in the scoring tables withthe whole group. When consensus cannot bereached, it is important to explore reasons for thedivergence of scores, which may be too sensitiveto do in the plenary discussion. Facilitators shouldnote if there are agreements within certain subgroups.Smaller, more homogenous groups canbe formed to discuss people’s rationales for givenscores and the results gathered from all. Persistentlack of consensus should be recorded byfacilitators as such, identifying which groupsagreed with which scores and why.Assessing enabling organizational systemsThis variable (see footnote 28) requires assessorsto have experienced the relevant organizationalsystems themselves, and thus can only be assessedby agency personnel. Community representativesmay however be invited to comment on the resultsof the assessment, as described below. The aspectscovered include planning and monitoring systems,skill mixes of agencies, expertise in field teams,and use of team approaches.Several creative techniques have been used tomeasure the degree to which the organization isperceived to have gender- and poverty-sensitivesystems. One such technique was using ribbonsin different colors for each category. Participantsfolded the ribbons conforming to their opinion oflevel of support (fully open if the support is 100percent to folded four times if the support is only25 percent) and stuck the ribbons on to a board.It is interesting as well as revealing to see howcolleagues in the same organization or in otherstakeholder groups view the organizationalculture.Another alternative is to use pocket voting for eachscale. Empty envelopes are taped to individualcards carrying descriptions for scores of 0, 1, 2, 3or 4 for each scale. Each set of cards is placed ona board turned towards the wall. Participants gobehind the board and vote using color-codedtokens, one at a time. Since the topics covered inthis section may be sensitive, more honestassessments are made possible through voting inprivacy. Results are then tallied in front of the wholegroup, so everyone can see the voting pattern,88