Learning-workshop 2 BehaviourChange

imGoats project: Learning and reflection workshop

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What did we learn about behavior change through the use of Outcome Mapping?

Reflections about changes achieved in Mozambique and India

(Scroll below to see presentation about the sheets and Q&A)

Mozambique:

File:Progress markers _ Moz_July 2012.xls Producers 720x540px Post production actors: 720x540px Input and service providers: 720x540px Enabling agencies: 720x540px

• Q: Is there anything that surprises you in the results you gathered? How satisfied are you with your progress?
• A: Implementation started in March 2011 but first IP meeting in May 2011 - this is progress after a year. We are happy with the progress. The big surprise is about goat keepers - I never expected that they would enjoy IP meetings and that they would take action on e.g. communal grazing areas, market access etc. Since IP meetings they are coming to our project. Also, about goat commercialisation, project intervention has helped this issue too.
• Q: About goat breeds, some homework could be done to see which goats are tolerant to these conditions and perhaps you could find breeds for demonstration?
• A: Things are happening in this regard but not through the project. We want to have South African goats and we are now establishing the linkage between IP secretariat and the South-African goat keeper to agree on a price etc. We said they should provide improved shelter and for the animals. We are just facilitating this but not playing a more active role. We are thinking to have a special info sheet to the farmers with these other goats.
• Q: On post production, there is low progress with utilizing shared info and engagement: did you identify interventions focused on joint action between producers and/or enabling agencies / post-production actors or is it all mainly production-focused.
• A: We are focusing on the market ow. It's the only joint activity so far, aside from IP meetings. There's also communal grazing area work which involves other actors etc. but we don't see many many things happening yet. Our practice is also to mention movement by indicating there is 'low' progress (if we mention low it means there is progress).
• Q: What was your experience of carrying out this global analysis?
• A: Sometimes we don't really agree on where we are so it would be valuable to do this with the team. Working with low/middle/high is the first time we use but it'd be good to use a more quantified way of assessing where we are, collectively agreed.

India:

Production actors: 720x540px Post production actors: 720x540px Input service providers: 720x540px Enabling agencies: 720x540px We are in the initial phase so we still have some questions (it's too early to say anything). Producers are attending meetings, progressively taking more decisions in IP meetings and at internal meetings (among goat herders). Little happening on the front of addressing value chain issues. The first IP meeting was in August 2011.

• Q: What surprised you here, compared with other projects?
• A: Community members were expected health-related issues. Traders came to the first and second meetings and asked us 'what can you offer to us, until then we won't come'. This is what I expected.
• Q: How did you feel about doing this global analysis?
• A: This is what we should be focusing on the next 3 months.
• Q: For next year, do you expect the same cycle to happen with traders interested toward the end of the year?
• A: Possibly, but there might be other regular traders interested in joining.//> There are certain moments where some actors are interested in joining IPs or not because their issues are addressed then or not.
• Q: What about enabling agencies?
• A: We have not been able to collect and analyse that information - we cannot achieve these indicators.
• Comments:

There should be more information (a new progress marker?) related to the capacity of demanding related services. Perhaps we could develop better drinking water facilities and information about when goats ?? - to be done with district level authorities. In Moz, Oxfam is now also interested in engaging with ILRI to learn from the IM Goats project on IP work and various other work areas. We are with them at district level. We should have a training program to help build the capacity of people that would like to use some of our work.

Reflections about progress markers (by Hailemichael Taye)

(Reflections by Ann: after the teams have put their work in on the markers, it seems quite robust).

See presentation: What the data collected to date tell us? This analysis is based on data from Mozambique.

• The progress marker on 'producers are forming groups': the women participation is not uniform;
• ISPs (paravets and retailers) are meeting with other VC actors: There is one retailer in every meeting - can we really say that ISPs are meeting with other VC actors?
• Post production actors: PM on PPA meeting with other VC actors: Moz indicated high level of achievement but although there were lots of buyers in the first meeting, there were none in the 2nd, some in the 3rd and 4th, no slaughterer and only 1 collector at 3rd level meeting.
• Enabling agencies: no high level of achievement mentioned for enabling agencies engaged in dialogue etc.
• There is some missing data in the reports;

What should we do in data analysis?

• Know who are our partners, determine what we need to know, who should do the data analysis and at what level of detail and what frequency.
• E.g. for BPs we want to know about behaviour change; development workers and researchers should do detailed data analysis etc.For dev partners we are interested in effectiveness, sustainability, impact, behavior change etc. detailed data required.
• For donors we need only summarized data, for R&D partners we want some detail on approaches, frameworks and concepts that worked.

Comments and questions to Haile:

• We need to look at the diversity that we see, not just consider averages - what are important 'outliers' that we need to pay attention to (e.g. women participation which might be much lower) and also consider what are underlying reasons for that.
• Q: Would it be possible to integrate more data about diversity among communities? In India, we analysed data at different levels and we can thus include that kind of diversity depending on the level of our analysis. In Mozambique, we should be able to see that information at household level (e.g. about animal treatment). Perhaps we can aggregate that at community level.

Reflections about the process of change (through OM)

• I'm wondering how CARE and BAIF are involved in the process of change in their own organization --> it wasn't included in the analysis, partly because of the structure of Outcome Mapping. There is a part about organizational practices which includes an assessment of that sort of issues too. We thought it would be best to not include this issue.
• There is some set of parameters about what change you expect/like/love, so it's a very good approach to do some deeper analysis.
• Can you say more about different levels and opportunities to reflect? --> We work in a social ?? We can include the different opinions from the beginning of the project.
• Wrt to boundary partners, when applying OM, we have broader views even though we are still in the growing stage. We don't find many partners relevant now but sooner or later we will find that they have a role so we'll be able to assess what role our partners should play.
• Can you say more about how other partners could ?? --> There is an issue of dynamics e.g. a difficulty in finding a buyer so we need to bring someone else etc. a piece of research that will transform our work etc. We have to be opportunistic about the partners we bring in. We have to keep changing.
• An important / unexpected change in IMGoats in Moz is about communal grazing areas: when we introduced this technology we expected that people would move to communal grazing areas but one community moved from there and we had some unexpected changes: the boreholes. 4 women together made a borehole and built a fence around the grazing area. The latter is new in Moz and it was introduced by IP participants themselves. All communities wanted to work on this and one of them has developed another borehole for their area.
• One change triggers another change.
• How is your experience about other communities wanting to be part of the project - is there any tension in the community? --> In India, we are not excluding other community members. E.g. when conducting some activities we also include non community members. We bring other community members to dialogue. Moz: There can be possible conflicts between people but CARE has quite some experience about this. Everybody can participate if they want to. There might be several reasons why people don't participate (e.g. long distance to participate)... Group members might not want other community members to participate. What we do is we try to have several groups in a community. Specifically for women it's difficult to have them participate so we create spaces for them to participate.
• There were some areas for cattle and goats and the responsibility was related to the fact that they are owned by the same people.
• One important change we felt in India: government activity was a routine activity. Then IM Goats questioned whether we were effective or not. When we took a sample and looked at our activities, we started changing some of our routine activities. The benefit is to look at our work in a systematic approach. It's better to do a simple test...
• Who is bearing the costs? It's costly to change the approach etc. Because there's no resistance before (without resistance), it is quite safe. Who's looking at the costs, what are the costs for the farmers? --> We are concerned about the costs. We take samples and let others see what we have done with those sampled HHs and we'd later like goat keepers to pay for these services once they are convinced.
• Collection and processing of the sample ??
• We have observed some change in Jharkhand: De-worming, vaccinations and castrations. These are entry point acctivities. This year we started all services on cost basis. Some of these services were not available for farmers, they realized this and now more farmers are coming for these services. WIth that service charge we are providing a few bucks to our FGs and investing in a sustainability fund;
• When looking at progress markers, I remember that the India team wasn't surprised about changes. Now we have heard a number of examples about surprises. What I'm taking is that change happens in unexpected ways and in ways that we can anticipate. It's dual.
• We have changed in unexpected ways in 2 reasons: as we've developed the project and improved it.

[Methodology used for the session: In a first phase, participants split themselves in India and Mozambique groups and looked at the set of boundary partners and progress markers they have and collectively assessed whether they had low, medium or high impact on each progress marker - they then put these sheets on the walls and were able to freely question each other's work in a marketplace. In a second phase, they reviewed the set of progress markers (PM) and indicated on post it notes whether the PM was relevant, needed to be changed or what other PMs should be included. Finally, in a third phase, we had a fishbowl discussion about what using the Outcome Mapping approach taught us about change//].