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The active involvement of communities affected by a development project is
vital to ensure that the project meets their needs and achieves real impact.
Equal Access makes community participation an integral and essential part of
its methodology.
Outreach Team
Listening & Discussion Groups
Training
Interactive Feedback Loop
Outreach Team
The outreach team is made up of non-government organizations (NGOs),
community-based organizations and active UN partners who work directly with
communities. The organizations that we work with have a well-established
presence in local communities, experience in issues of local/regional concern
and a track record of providing real services. At community sites, the Outreach
team establishes "listening & discussion groups" around the broadcasts and
ensures that the programs meet real local needs.
Listening & Discussion Groups
The listening and discussion groups are an important part of Equal Access'
implementation methodology. The participating community organizations often
have preexisting discussion groups as
part of their various initiatives. In
cases where a community organization is not active in an area, new listening
groups may be formed to become part of the project. Equal Access provides
satellite receivers to these discussion groups and works in alignment with
existing development efforts. A 'caretaker' from each group is selected to
operate the satellite receiver, convene sessions around the audio broadcasts,
and facilitate participation of women and young people. The discussion sessions
cover issues raised in the audio programs and are often attended by trained
facilitators from community organizations. These listening and discussion
groups build local participation, supplement the audio broadcasts with
personalized communication, help communities identify development challenges
and seek their potential solutions, and provide much-needed forums for
discussions, questions and dialogue.
Training
The communication skills of local facilitators and group caretakers are pivotal
in determining the effectiveness of the programming and encouraging community
participation. This is especially important when the programs address sensitive
issues like HIV/AIDS prevention, violence against women, and girl trafficking.
As such, Equal Access places great emphasis on providing training at two
levels: First, facilitators from participating organizations are trained to
convene discussion groups and solicit questions & comments from group members.
Then, these trained facilitators train listening and discussion group
caretakers on facilitating discussions on topics covered in the programs. This
approach builds local capacity, helps transfer important skills and builds
coalitions to strengthen community participation.
Interactive Feedback Loop
Our audio programs need to be responsive to the concerns and needs of the
communities being served. As such, it is important that there is knowledge
sharing between the outreach and content teams. The Interactive Feedback Loop
has been designed by the Assessment Team
for this very purpose. Community
participants in the listening and discussion groups provide feedback on what's
working and what isn't and on the relevance of program themes. This feedback is
communicated to the Content team which then makes modifications to the program
content to ensure its relevance and responsiveness. The content team often
gathers community feedback directly by traveling to project sites, recording
the voices of local participants and incorporating them into programs. In this
way, participants have a direct voice in critical issues concerning their own
development.
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Outreach
