Act Together

STEP 4: Problem-solve, trouble shoot, advise and mediate conflicts.

In spite of the best planning, forethought, and intentions, things do not always proceed smoothly. Difficulties may occur for many reasons which may be within or beyond a program or community’s control. As important as it is to assist communities at appropriate times to cope with these difficulties, it is even more important to know when to stay away and let communities solve problems on their own. In other words, each difficulty that communities encounter is an opportunity to challenge themselves, learn something new, build skills and capacity, and create new solutions.

In general, it is best to let communities identify and deal with their problems on their own. There are some times, however, when you may want or need to intervene, such as when the problem:

• Directly affects your organization, team, or individual team members.
• Concerns mismanagement or misappropriation of program resources.
• Is major and is not identified by the community, possibly because the problem originates from outside of the community, such as a donor withdrawing funding for the project, a major upcoming change in public health policy that will have important repercussions on implementation.
• Concerns major differences of participants’ opinion on strategy that could benefit from outside mediation and/or additional information or experience.
• Concerns important ethical issues that your organization or team cannot or will not support and that ultimately could jeopardize the overall program (e.g., coercion or violence to force compliance).

How you intervene in these cases will depend on the role(s) that you want to play in relation to the community, your organizational responsibilities, and your overall approach to the program.

Good monitoring systems and regular communication will help alert participants to existing or potential problems. When community groups identify problems through their own monitoring efforts or when others bring them to their attention, they make a decision, consciously or unconsciously, to deal with them or not. Some problems may be beyond the participants’ control, and the best they will be able to do is determine how they need to react or adjust their plans accordingly. Other problems may be more directly under their control or influence, and they will need to decide what they want to do. To help communities find their own solutions, you may want to try techniques such as the Margolis Wheel described in the tools section. For additional problem-solving techniques and approaches, you may want to explore the literature on brainstorming, lateral thinking, mind-mapping, breakthrough thinking, and other related resources about techniques used by learning organizations.

Dealing With Conflict
Trouble shooting for common community mobilization program problems