ANIMATION AND PROMOTION

Operational Strategy

• 1. Select the Area: Define a geographical unit - Panchayath, village, watershed or Family Unit?
• 2. Integration: In this process, the Animator immerses herself with the local community and build mutual respect, trust and cooperation
• 3. Social Investigations or Community Study: This is the process of systematically learning and analysing the various structures and forces in the community as well as the problems and issues that need immediate or long term solutions

• • Tools

  • Transect Walk
  • Semi-structured Interview
  • Social Mapping
  • Asset/Resource Mapping
  • Venn Diagram
  • Consolidation and interpretations
  • Daily Routine Analysis
  • Resource Inflow and Outflow
• 4. Issue Identification and Analysis: This is the process or defining, analysing and ranking community problems according to their importance, the urgency of solving them, the number of people affected and the probability of resolving them through community mobilization, maybe through some socio-economic projects supported by some external agency or mobilizing community’s own resources - human, material or economic. Identify and prioritize the problems - may be based on commonalities - common interventions by the people is possible
• 5. Core Group Formation: This means involving the more advanced local leaders who have been spotted during the integration process. They are then constituted as the core group. They may be informal or temporary leaders.
• 6. Ground Work and Community Meeting: Groundwork means to motivate people on a one-on-one basis or through informal group discussions towards collective action, sometimes with the aid of a core group.
• 7. Role Playing: This is a stimulation practice for the community members who are tasked to negotiate with persons or authority or even the adversary. It aims to prepare the leaders for the actual process of negotiation and anticipates possible outcomes to ensure victory for the community.
• 8. Mobilization or Action: This is the high point of the organizing process. Action may mean engaging in a dialogue or protest under issue based organizing, starting a livelihood project or a cooperative under project-based organizing.
• 9. Evaluation and/or Reflection: This is an activity conducted after every action or mobilization to extract lessons learned on how to improve future mobilizations, and constitutes a vital part in the training of the core group and the community.
• 10. Formalization of the Community-Based Organization: Formation of the people’s organization is best done after the community undergoes a mobilization or action phase and has gone through an evaluation or reflection process.
• 11. Phase Out/Withdrawal: Since Community Organization is an enabling process, there comes a time when the organizer (animator) becomes dispensable and the People’s Organizations take over. When the indicators for success set by the NGO have been significantly met, eg. high levels of socio-political awareness, sustained membership participation, a vibrant pool of trained community leaders, clear plans and goals set by the community etc., the organizing process may be turned over.
• 12. Expected Results:
  • People become subjects
  • Democratization process is taking place.
  • Animation has facilitated a paradigm shift in the development approach from charity to welfare to rights and empowerment.
  • Social issues are identified, raised and addressed by the community-based organizations at least at the micro-level.