Plan Together

STEPS
  1. Decide the objectives of the planning process
  2. Determine who will be involved in planning and their roles and responsibilities
  3. Design the planning process
  4. Conduct/facilitate the planning process to create a community action plan

STEP 2: Determine who will be involved in the planning and their roles and responsibilities.

Who will participate and how they will participate are critical questions. Equally important is who asks and answers these questions. Often, when groups answer the question— “Who should be involved in planning?”— the list grows until the response ends up being everyone. While involving everyone in the planning process may be desirable from a participation perspective, the core group and others involved in determining who should be invited need to consider the advantages and disadvantages of managing a large group versus a smaller, more defined group. In some situations, not inviting everyone in the community might offend those who were not invited, while in other settings it is not expected that everyone would be invited and no offense is taken. This is clearly a potentially sensitive subject that can affect future implementation of the program. It is as important to ask who is not invited and why as it is to ask who is invited.

PHILIPPINES: The Usual Suspects

In 1998-1999, a Save the Children program team initiated work with Filipino community leaders in rural and urban communities using an appreciative approach ("Appreciative Community Mobilization" (ACM)) to mobilize around family health including child survival and family planning.

The ACM program team noticed that community planning and decision-making was limited to a small circle of community leaders who did not involve other community members in the process. As a result, community projects were benefiting families that were more politically connected and generally better off. Adapting an appreciative inquiry methodology developed by the GEM Initiative of Case Western Reserve University, Save the Children worked with community leaders to apply the "4-D" cycle (Discovery, Dream, Design and Deliver).

The community leaders went through the initial discovery and dream phases as a group. Then the program team asked the leaders whether they thought that others in the community had the same dreams as they had, whether it was important to know this and how they could find out. The leaders believed that it was important to know because they realized that many of the families that were experiencing family health problems were also the families that normally did not participate in community activities such as general community meetings. The leaders decided that they should repeat the discovery and dream phases in the "sitios" (neighborhoods) of the community to learn what these families' priorities were. Through this process, the leaders also identified priority families ("the families that we should take care of first"). When they had completed the process in every sitio, the leaders met again to consolidate results and consider how to set priorities for the entire community. They then went to the sitio level again to work on the "design" and "deliver" phases.

In addition to broadening participation in setting priorities, the community leaders learned how to facilitate a more participatory planning process, how to listen and respond to community families (especially "priority" families) and how to plan more systematically while building on community strengths and resources.

Here are some questions to help the core group and others decide who should be invited to participate in the planning.

  • Is the person/group directly affected by the CM health issue?
  • Is the person a local leader (formal or informal) or key opinion leader?
  • Is the person very interested in the CM health issue?
  • Does the person/group make or influence decisions or have access to information or services for those who are directly affected by the CM health issue?
  • Does the person/group possess special skills, knowledge, or abilities that could help the planning group make more informed decisions or implement the action plan when it is completed?
  • If the person/group was not invited, would s/he/they try to obstruct implementation of the action plan or create other problems?
  • Would potential strategies to address the CM health issue require this person or group’s assistance or approval?

If the answer to any of the above questions is “yes,” the person or group should be considered for the invitation list. You may want to add criteria to this list of questions. You may decide that it is worthwhile to invite the whole community. There are no hard rules to follow, but you should make a conscious effort to consider who is participating and why, so that you can better structure the process and will help participants understand their respective roles and responsibilities.

Roles and Responsibilities