Organize the Community for Action

Assessing and monitoring core group capacity

By now, it is clear that organizing and strengthening groups is an ongoing, dynamic process that you will need to address, not only during the Organize the Community for Action phase of the community mobilization process, but throughout the community action cycle. In phase one we discussed the importance of building community capacity and competency as one of the key outcomes of the community mobilization process. In this section, we will look at some measures of community capacity that you may want to monitor throughout the life of the program. If a group is newly established, the CM team will need to assess its potential capacity in light of the individual members’ skills, abilities, and experience. As the group matures, it will be important to assess interactions and synergies within the group.

Suggested indicators for assessing a group’s capacity for collective action include2:

• Increased access to resources.
• Increased collective bargaining power.
• Improved status, self-esteem, and cultural identity.
• The ability to reflect critically and solve problems.
• The ability to make choices.
• Recognition and response of people’s demand by officials.
• Self-discipline and the ability to work with others.

It is important for groups to be able to assess their own progress over time. In general, discussion is usually richer when members first assess the group’s capacity individually and then share their observations with the others in the group. It will be helpful for your program team or others outside of the core group to also observe the group’s progress and provide feedback to the members. Save the Children’s experience using self-assessment tools indicates that community groups (particularly relatively newly formed groups) may overrate or underrate their performance during the first year or two as they are learning to use the tools and are becoming more experienced with group work. As time goes on, they become more realistic in their assessments and can provide more specific examples to back up their ratings. Tools that provide detailed descriptions for each level of performance tend to be more helpful than scales that simply ask the group members to rank their performance on a numerical scale. An example, the “Community Assessment Scale,” is presented as Useful Tool III. Communities use this scale to rate their progress every year.

Now that you have selected and begun to develop your core group, you are ready to work with them to jointly explore the health issue and set priorities for action, the two tasks covered in the next phase.

An old group or a new group?
Strategies for identifying and recruiting core group members
The role of leaders and external facilitators in group development
Core group norms
Documenting core group and other meetings