Seven Steps for Achieving Effective, Community-Led, Demand-Driven Development

How does the ADF's model for achieving effective, community-led, demand-driven participatory development work? The following narrative details the seven steps that the Bady pilot project created to ensure direct community ownership of rural development from start to finish.

The ADF Approach to Participatory Development in Guinea

1. Community Survey

ADF's Guinea team began its work on behalf of the PACV by meeting with local community leaders in the three CRDs where the Foundation agreed to serve as both a donor and field operator. The team met with local village leaders to explain the overall goals of the PACV; determine what other development activities were ongoing in the area; describe the role of the CRD as a decentralized, local development agency; and conduct an initial assessment of local needs and opportunities. These meetings also introduced the concept of local “community development agents” – trained Guinean discussion facilitators who spoke the languages of the region and possessed experience in implementing participatory development methods. It was explained that community development agents would help local villages organize their discussions of development priorities.

2. Community Mobilization

Following the community survey, the ADF team organized general assemblies in participating villages where all segments of the community were invited to be present. (In some cases, ADF organized smaller villages and hamlets together as a single assembly so that outlying residents would have an equal opportunity to participate in the decision-making process.) These village-level meetings described the PACV program to all community members and presented a plan for facilitating broad discussion of development needs through the formation of separate discussion groups based on age, gender, and other social categories. The assemblies debated how to organize their groups fairly and then assigned residents to each group. Each village created at least three separate groups for men, women, and youth, while some villages created additional groupings for the elderly or for different occupational groups.

3. Needs Analysis

Once the various discussion groups were formed, the community development agents conducted focus group exercises with each of the designated groups. Because most adults in rural Guinea are not literate, the community development agents introduced communication tools that do not require formal reading comprehension – visual aids, charts and mapping exercises - to ensure broad and active participation. The focus groups gave women, children, and other individuals who are normally excluded from community decision-making a direct say on critical issues, and each group voted on its development priorities and elected a delegation to present those priorities at a general village meeting.

 

Click here to view a diagram that details the decentralized decision-making process that drives Guinea's Village Support Program.

4. Community Action Plan Development

At the village meeting, group representatives presented the issues that their meetings had identified and debated their merits. These meetings often produced coalitions of interest that tested established pathways of authority and produced unexpected results. For example, women and youth frequently voted together on development issues, pressuring adult men and established village leaders to amend their own list of priorities. The community forums ultimately facilitated consensus, however, by providing an opportunity for open debate and careful negotiation.

After approving its community development priorities, each village sent a delegation – typically consisting of two men and two women – to a sub-district assembly of several village delegations. The sub-district assembly discussed local development needs at a broader level and debated which development priorities were most pressing across the sub-district’s villages. The sub-district meeting then elected a cross-section of delegates to represent its development needs at a general assembly of the entire Rural Development Community (CRD).

Delegates to the CRD assembly subsequently put together a detailed four-year community action plan for the district as a whole and presented it to the PACV program for approval and funding authorization.

5. Training and Capacity Building

Once the CRD-level assembly approved its community development action plan, ADF’s Guinea field staff began working with local community leadership teams to train them in financial management, help them design workable plans for managing construction, and help them negotiate protocols for project implementation. These protocols included clear rules for community oversight of local leadership teams and rules for the recruitment of local labor and materials. The capacity-building activities helped produce the local knowledge and skills required for community-led development while ensuring continued investment of local communities in the process.

6. Implementation, Monitoring, and Remediation

Project implementation – the actual brick-and-mortar construction of schools, health clinics, and community wells – provided the ultimate test of ADF’s participatory development methods in Guinea. By investing in strategies that engage communities as authors and owners of the development process, ADF helped guarantee local investment in outcomes. And by equipping village development teams with financial training and management skills, ADF provided local communities with the tools they needed to solicit and hire building contractors, draw up construction schedules, process purchase orders, procure voluntary labor, and secure local collection of sand, stone and other materials. (Each community contributed 15 percent of the estimated cost of construction through donations of labor and materials valued at 10 percent of total costs plus a five percent donation in cash.) The end result was the timely completion of projects without significant conflicts or delays in payment. Village representatives utilized newly acquired financial skills and their training in contract negotiation to resolve disputes with contractors and prevent misallocation. Regular community meetings ensured accountability and transparency throughout the building process.

7. Evaluation and Follow Up

ADF has helped ensure the sustainability of local development initiatives by working with villages to evaluate ongoing needs and create maintenance committees, health committees, and school parents’ associations that govern the upkeep and administration of new community resources. Today, seven years after the start of the Bady project, health committees and parents’ committees organize the periodic repair and cleaning of facilities. They play an active role in selecting which medicines to stock at the local clinic and the number of students to be enrolled in each grade. They work with teachers and health agents to support adult literacy classes and midwife training sessions. ADF’s commitment to capacity building through participatory development has thus produced a measurable, long-term impact in rural communities across Guinea.