Record Item Year: 2014; updated 2022

Community-Based Facilitators (CBFs) should be given Part I of this assessment to fill out at the beginning of their training. This assessment should form the basis for their training and for ongoing support. Part II of the assessment should be conducted as an interview with the CBF, to assess the CBF’s understanding of the gender and social dynamics regarding land and resources in the community.

One of the most important pieces of the Starting With Women methodology is the use of Community-Based Facilitators (CBFs) to work with the women, groups, and communities. It is important that these CBFs be selected carefully.

The Communications Officer is an integral part of the project team and will help facilitate interactions with the community.

Before beginning the interviews, it is necessary to explain to the individuals why we would like to conduct the interviews, and what they’ll be used for. It should always be made clear that taking part in being interviewed is completely voluntary, and that individuals can change their mind about being interviewed at any time during the process.

When recording in the field, explain all the time, to everyone in the community, what you are doing. This is very important in helping to make sure that the project is not seen as something suspicious, secretive, or threatening. Just explaining what is happening and what you are doing with your camera or audio recorder can go a long way to easing any possible tensions that may arise about it, or any suspicions that it is hostile to the interests of men in the community.

Once the project has concluded, engaging the community in a guided discussion will enable you to track and measure any progress or improvements that have been made as a result of the interventions.

As part of a Monitoring and Evaluation plan, ideal implementation of the Starting With Women approach will include conducting an end of project survey with both project participants and a control group. All project participants should be interviewed, and a robust sampling method should be used to ensure validity of the control group. Below is a sample survey, although questions should be tailored to the particular project context.

As part of a robust Monitoring and Evaluation plan, group participants may be asked to keep journals where feasible. Journals may be kept by participants, but will more likely be notes on short interviews the facilitator will hold with selected participants. These should be kept in a separate notebook just for journals.

Groups should be taught to take their own minutes in group notebooks, where possible. However, facilitators should also be taking minutes in their own notebooks to ensure an accurate record is kept. After the meeting, facilitators should fill out the Emerging Issues table to keep their supervisors apprised of any issues and for ease of follow up.

Education and engagement are key components of any intervention. One method for educating the community is through radio messages. Here is a sample of a radio announcement created for the project in Uganda.