Plan Together

STEP 4: Conduct/facilitate the planning process to create a community action plan.

Now that you have completed your preparations for the planning session, it is time to conduct the meeting. As with any group session, it is important to arrive early, set up the rooms or space appropriately, and initiate the process.

• There isn’t enough time to complete all planned tasks. The facilitator needs to prioritize which tasks are most important and/or cut some time from some tasks. Think about the purpose and objectives of the planning process and let them guide decision-making.

• Participants are completing all the tasks but are coming up with strategies that are not likely to have any impact on health status. To what extent should the facilitator step in here? Is it better to let participants learn from their experience that the strategy is not likely to have an impact? Is it possible that the strategies may have a positive impact on health but you don’t see it because of your own assumptions? Do participants have limited or different knowledge of how to address the health problem? Is it the process design that is at fault? Are there other agendas that are making their way into the planning process? Your team will need to carefully analyze what is happening here. Ask participants how they think the strategy will affect health to better understand the thinking behind the strategy.

  

• The participants have developed strategies that will impact favorably upon health outcomes but are not within the health sector (e.g,. road improvements to facilitate emergency transport), and your organization only has resources and technical expertise to assist with health projects. As a facilitator in this process, your organization does not need to, nor should it, financially or materially support every community strategy. You can help participants think about how they can link with other organizations and resources internal or external to their community. Acquiring the knowledge and skills to access and manage valuable resources and relationships is a major achievement of many community groups that go on to apply these skills to further improvements in other aspects of community life.

• The participants are stuck. Should facilitators share experience from other places? This will depend on your approach and philosophy. Generally, it is acceptable and may be desirable for the facilitator to share information if she or he believes that it will help the group. For example, she or he may share another community’s approach to help the group get out of a rut or to spark the creativity needed to think of new strategies. The intent should not be to manipulate the group into deciding on a predetermined strategy.

• Participants cannot agree on a strategy. If after presenting all the reasons for each competing strategy participants can still not agree, there are several things the facilitator can do. Participants can agree to disagree and decide to try both strategies (if this is feasible) to see which one works best. They can try to combine the strategies if possible. They can seek a new strategy that all agree to by determining what they are trying to accomplish and exploring new approaches to it. They can decide to collect more information on each proposed strategy before making a decision. Or they might decide to postpone any decisions until a future date when they may have thought of other options. What other ways can you think of to deal with this situation?

Discuss with your team and core group ahead of time what you will do if these problems arise during the planning session. And try to think of others. If you experience difficulties conducting the session, it may help to review your assumptions about the participants, the planning process and how the community views health. Try to identify what is not working and then go through the five "why" exercise to identify your assumptions. Test them. Most of the time, problems stem from how we have conceived of and developed the planning process.