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8 Participatory Self-Evaluation of World Neighbors, Burkina Faso

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8 Participatory Self-Evaluation of World Neighbors, Burkina Faso PLA Notes CD-ROM 1988–2001 _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ 8 Participatory self-evaluation of World Neighbors, Burkina Faso Paul Bandre · Introduction This article discusses the participatory self- evaluation process in Liptougou, which is part of one of the most remote and deprived World Neighbors (WN) is an international districts where WN has been working for the grassroots development organisation working last 10 years. The evaluation process was in Asia, Africa and Latin America to help undertaken with an association ‘TORIM- marginalised communities address their needs. MANI’, which encompasses 14 villages in the World Neighbours (WN) in West Africa works Liptougou Department. It shows how in Mali, Togo, Ghana and Burkina Faso. Key monitoring, evaluation and participatory areas of work are in accordance with programming can be integrated into the overall community expressed needs, however program intervention strategy of the Liptougou WN priorities include: sustainable agriculture, Programme. The self-evaluation coincided environmental regeneration, and community with the end of the 1994 - 1997 three year health. WN aims to strengthen the capacities programme. This article describes briefly our of marginalised communities so that they can annual evaluation process and the more recent pursue more autonomous sustainable tri-annual evaluation process which coincides development. To achieve this, key capacities with the end of each three year programme. have been identified by villagers and the WN staff as prerequisites for a sustainable self- The annual self-evaluation process in promotion process. These are: the capacity to Liptougou plan, monitor and evaluate, mobilise financial and material resources locally, and negotiate with technical and financial partners. Liptougou is a dry zone that often experiences food deficits. The WN programme therefore After several years of working to strengthen started by distributing improved seed adapted these capacities, WN saw growth in to the low local rainfall. But before using these autonomous initiatives and a progressive seeds on a large scale, farmers tested them on phasing out of WN in community efforts. small plots of land to see how they would From an externally-initiated programme, the perform when compared with local varieties. programme had become a collaboratively Village organisations set up experimentation managed effort, including joint planning and and dissemination committees, which received budgeting, and self-evaluation. In the technical training to conduct the trials transition, roles and responsibilities have efficiently. From this small beginning, other shifted from WN to local people and local committees have developed to include a range organisations. The self evaluation, which is the of development initiatives, including maternal focus of this article, was motivated by and child health, literacy, etc.. concerns as to whether programmes and activities are implemented in ways that At the end of each year, the villagers who are improve the livelihoods of the target part of the different committees, hold local and population. inter-village meetings to assess the extent to which plans have been implemented and make a programme for the following year. At the ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1 Source: PLA Notes (1998), Issue 31, pp.44–49, IIED London PLA Notes CD-ROM 1988–2001 _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ village level, each Activity Committee activity. The higher the score, the more the presents its results, more or less as follows: plans have been carried out. Then they discuss the overall findings using several questions: · summary of annual objectives pursued; · degree of satisfaction with objectives; · Why have they attributed that value? · summary of planned activities; · Is it satisfactory? · degree to which activities were · If not, why not? implemented; · What were the constraints and what could · difficulties and constraints encountered; be done to improve the score? and, · suggestions. The debate that is provoked by the questions is intense and demonstrates an extraordinary The summary of objectives and activities are capacity amongst the villagers for making a usually presented by the secretaries of the rational judgement of progress and elaborating different committees, who are all literate and the next year’s development programme. At have access to the related documentation. The the end of the matrix, the villagers identify assessment of the extent to which activities which activities were unsatisfactorily and objectives have been realised is based on implemented, or not implemented, and set indicators that have been identified and themselves new scores to aim for in the next formulated by the villagers. For example, year. This then leads to a plan of action to indicators related to the ‘strengthening of achieve better results. agricultural systems’ include ‘increase in number of families who have adopted new Another aspect of the evaluation takes place at technologies’, ‘increase in income’, and an inter-village session, organised in a rotation ‘reduction in number of households affected system by a host village. In addition to the by hunger’. committee members, each village sends two representatives, who present a summary of the Villagers use a simple matrix, and a scale of 1 results for their village derived from the matrix to 5, to indicate the extent to which activities described above. The villagers nominate their have been achieved (see Figure 1). They two representatives depending on their choose their own way to symbolise the score, dynamism and involvement in, and so that it is understood by all, irrespective of commitment to, programme activities. They their degree of literacy. For example, in the must, however, be literate. This process village of Bambilaré, villagers chose to use encourages wider participation of villagers in bricks of different sizes: the heaviest brick evaluating and planning village activities, represents 5 and the smallest, lightest brick thereby allowing the views of different social represents a score of 1. Before allocating a groups to be incorporated in the plans. score, villagers discuss each indicator for each Figure 1. Villagers’ matrix showing extent to which activities have been achieved Planned Indicators 1 2 3 4 5 Activities (related to each activity) A1 A1.1 A1.2 A1.3 A2 A2.1 A2.2 A2.3 A3 etc. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 2 Source: PLA Notes (1998), Issue 31, pp.44–49, IIED London PLA Notes CD-ROM 1988–2001 _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ · presence of a spirit of collective initiative Large-scale participatory evaluation of in the village; programme impact · agreement between families and social cohesion; In 1997 the annual evaluations were · access to innovations (agriculture, health, complemented by a participatory evaluation of literacy etc.); the tri-annual plan that aims to measure the · existence of a functioning local programme’s impact in improving the level of organisation; and, villagers’ well-being. This process involved · mobilisation and participation of different the villagers, village and inter-village social groups (women, men, worse-off, association leaders, technical WN staff, and better-off, etc.) in the implementation of external resource people. The process lasted village development activities. about two months and was organised as follows: B. Villages weak in self -promotion · Technical preparation - elaboration of · absence of mobilisation of human and terms of references, selection of village financial resources; samples, taking steps to ensure data · tendency to focus on individual interests reliability (1 week); and work; · Data collection and piloting (4 weeks); · lack of energy and community consensus · Analysis/Synthesis of data (2 weeks); and, caused by a mentality of continual · General process management (1 week). dependence; · little openness to innovations and Terms of reference (TORs) progress; and, · lack of community activities. The technical team discussed with the villagers what the main focus of the evaluation should Four villages were chosen, two that were be and the themes with which it should deal. strong in self-promotion and two that were This took place during a meeting of the village weak. For selecting these villages, the association leaders. These views were then representatives of TORIM-MANI ranked all used by WN staff to draft the TOR, which fourteen villages using the above criteria and were then presented back to the village leaders chose the two strongest and two weakest for amendments before final approval. The villages. TORSs included: objectives, sequence of different stages, expected results, and time Ensuring reliability of findings frame for implementation. The different needs of the various parties were taken into As the merits of any evaluation depend consideration, resulting in a common vision strongly on the reliability of the collected for the evaluation methodology. information, the team considered various ways to minimise sources of bias and ensure good Establishing the village sample quality data. First, the choice of data collectors in the villages was critical as they
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