Strengthening Civil Societies, Low Cost Aerial Pictures, Act

Welcome to our first newsletter in 2008.

MethodFinder has been very active within the last months by gathering additional material for this platform of methods and experiences in development. We are very happy to announce our premium knowledge contributors on the home page our web site, namely:

• Concepts & More, our partner company working on concepts for innovative development approaches and methodologies,
• GTZ, the German Agency for Technical Cooperation, which is one of our most active information contributor,
• SKAT, the Swiss Resource Centre and Consultancies for Development, which is actively supporting MethodFinder.

All of our information contributors as shown under the following link:
http://www.methodfinder.net/index.php?page=partners

New methods and application examples:

1. New Application Example: Empowering Women as Community Mobilisers (CM), a Volunteer Approach in Timor Leste

Civil society participation in development is increasingly being recognized as being an essential component for promoting good governance - improving responsiveness of national policies and programmes to citizens’ needs and ensuring transparency and accountability in policy making and implementation processes. Genuine participation of citizens however, goes beyond dialogue with or contracting a few non-governmental organizations. It must engage all citizens (women and men, in their various capacities, socio-economic status, affiliations and locations) beyond elections to active participation in making decisions that affect their lives. Engaging people requires efforts and mechanisms that can empower all, but most especially the disadvantaged members of society, to participate effectively in development processes.

The concept of community mobilisation and development emerged from the recognition that a genuine participatory approach to development is essential for success and sustainability. Ideally, the process involves all members of the community, however, it may also require some members of the community to take the lead in the process and to act as innovators since the entire community gains or loses through the action of any member of the community. Community mobilisation and development often makes use of the inherent optimism of human beings by providing a mechanism through which positive futures can be achieved. This optimism can only be tapped by moving away from the traditional “problem solving and prevention” towards “potential development and enhancement”, there is a need to think-positive. Problem solving has often only resulted in social development being undertaken by communities (i.e. repair or construction of social facilities including health facilities, education facilities, etc.). Potential development focuses more on economic development, in other words what potential exists locally and what are the reasons or factors hindering the community from tapping, making use or actually developing these potentials. To sustain community development over time economic development is essential.

The FSP project’s objective is to develop the capacity and capability within a community so that they generate and sustain good nutrition, health and hygiene behaviour. To do this, the project assists the community to identify and select two to three women per sub-village who are innovative, creative and possess good social skills needed for effective mobilisation. The mobilisers are then provided with extensive training on Basic Knowledge in Nutrition and Health, Hygiene and Sanitation, Home Gardening and Community Participation. Upon completion of the training they are expected to act as the key persons within the community to introduce and exchange new ideas and to strengthen women’s involvement in community decision-making. The women are expected to provide the community with basic knowledge and skills to live a healthier in their local community and to act as role model for others to follow. The project seeks to achieve these objectives by:

• Establishing a permanent training system in the district for women mobilisers, which includes regular support through meetings, coaching, peer-to-peer support, etc.
• Developing a pool of trainers with the capacity to provide training (i.e. training of trainers).
• Establishing a district-wide network of trained community mobilisers. Their exemplary approach forms the basis for disseminating knowledge to other community members.
• Encouraging greater mutual awareness and sensitivity to problems that community members face. This will enable the mobilisers to be able to address and help in resolving community problems in a friendly and less confrontational manner.
• Improving the food security of the people living in the targeted and neighbouring districts, thus improving the peoples health and general livelihoods.
• Improving health, hygiene and sanitation practices in the community.
• The women community mobilisers are already introducing new ideas and approaches to the community, many of which have led to improvements in the livelihoods of the community. By linking the women mobilisers to a network of external advisors a continuous information and advisory service will be accessible for the women. This is important in ensuring that new ideas are regularly introduced to the communities.

Link:
http://www.methodfinder.net/index.php?page=methods&methodID=75&cat=example2

PDF download:
http://www.methodfinder.net/index.php?page=methoddetail&methodID=75&cat=download

2. New Application Example: Strengthening Village Councils by Transparently Organizing Communal Infrastructure Works in Timor Leste

An important focus of the GTZ-FSP in Timor Leste has been on capacity building at the local level. Rural communities were to be empowered to take development into their own hands. However, given the difficulties experienced by previous projects, and in the early stages of the FSP, in promoting participatory development it was decided to increase the emphasis on first building the leadership role and capacity of the official village councils and the village chiefs. The village councils had been introduced by the Government in early 2005 as a strategy to enhance local governance. The councils are intended to be representatives of the community as a whole. In addition, it was expected that councils would gradually take over a part of the responsibilities that had previously belonged solely to the village chief. However, while the councils do exist on paper their capacity and level of activity in discharging their new functions has been quite variable and generally weak. This methodology was chosen because it was concluded that strengthening the organizational and social capabilities of communities would be paramount if the effort to rehabilitate infrastructure was to achieve at least a minimum level of sustainability. The project also decided to work through the newly introduced village councils because we believed that their active engagement with the FSP activities would provide them with experience and expertise in managing community affairs. Furthermore, the daily demands in organizing the works would provide an opportunity for the councils to overcome their passivity and grow into their public role.

Following an initial identification of stakeholders to be included in the management of the rehabilitation project, a comprehensive technical and organizational assessment identified the social, technical and economic feasibility of the project. Professional technicians were then able to propose alternative solutions to the identified problems and provided ongoing capacity building guidance to village councils and working groups.

Link:
http://www.methodfinder.net/index.php?page=methods&methodID=77&cat=example1

PDF download:
http://www.methodfinder.net/index.php?page=methoddetail&methodID=77&cat=download

3. New Method: Low Cost Amateur Aerial Pictures with Balloon and Digital Camera

This method introduces and assesses the highly efficient amateur aerial balloon photo technique which makes aerial photos affordable at a price of 0.10 – 0.35 US cents per hectare. The idea is to provide an inexpensive but quality efficient solution for recent aerial color photos on a high pixel resolution as orthophotos, which are either not available or not accessible in many developing countries.

Other high resolution images from advanced satellite scanners like Quickbird, Ikonos or others are unaffordable to many low budget projects as well as to sub-ordinate planning institutions. As a consequence, topographical and high-resolution spatial data is more or less unavailable in those planning offices. Because of this, planning if often based on out of date topographic and thematic maps, while the situation in the real world has considerably changed. Especially on lower planning levels (e.g. provincial, distict, municipality or community planning) this method is an approach to generate a snapshot of the real situation on a low budget basis.

This modern technique is based on a simple plastic balloon (r=3m), inflated with hydrogen gas, chemically produced on the site and adapted to the conditions in developing countries especially for flat areas with rapid land use changes. Additionally, a digital camera is required, and some modifications have to be possibly made in order to remote control the camera, which, attached can reach a height of up to 1000 m above the ground.

The rectified, merged and geo-referenced aerial balloon-photos with a surface resolution per pixel of 20m to 0.4m, depending on altitude of the platform and camera capacity, can be enlarged up to a scale of 1:800 without any loss in optical and spatial quality. Methodologically the approach uses typical image processing, enhancement and geo-referencing techniques like haze elimination, merging and mosaic procedures, mostly provided by ERDAS IMAGINE software. The aerial photo collection follows standard aerial photo measures like flight line preparation, synchronization of camera and GPS clocks as well as ground truth samples.

Further outcomes of this technique are up to date detailed land use maps as well as other planning sources for real estate validation and environmental protection strategies i.e. buffer zoning concepts. Besides, they are expected to be useful for other “small area” projects like village based land use planning, technical implementations or (eco-) tourism projects at specific locations and retakes of the same photos within a high-level time resolution of one or two years.

Link:
http://www.methodfinder.net/index.php?page=methods&methodID=81

Example 1:
http://www.methodfinder.net/index.php?page=methods&methodID=81&cat=example1

Example 2:
http://www.methodfinder.net/index.php?page=methods&methodID=81&cat=example2

PDF download:
http://www.methodfinder.net/index.php?page=methoddetail&methodID=81&cat=download

4. New Method: Activity Mapping

Targeting of project funds often starts with the question: Where does a new project have the most impact?

n a world with a multitude of state, donor and non-governmental organizations implementing projects, the picture is often unclear, where and how much activities are carried in a location or the entire country.

Activity mapping is a quick and feasible way to identify gaps in the coverage of services by inventorying all stakeholders’ activities and locating them geographically. The mapping exercise gives all organizations a clearer picture of where work is being done, and where demands for services or support are still remaining.

Depending on the given situation and resources, a grid can be developed, which collects information on predefined series of activities, their implementing agencies, their target groups, their outreach coverage and their time frame. The definition of fields of activity and the planning level that is referred to determines the precision and resolution of the results. Additional parameters can quantify the intensity of the activities.

Results of the analysis can be used to target activities based on the questions:

• Which areas are mostly underdeveloped or least supported by development projects’ or government services?
• Which (project) staff has to be (re-) allocated into another area to provide better services to the people?
• How is the coverage of services in respect to the number of beneficiaries, family income, indicators reflecting the seriousness of a problem, etc.

If data can be assigned to administrative units, GIS or mapping tools (e.g. a simple web mapper) can visualize the survey results in maps. An important outcome for this exercise is, that a complex project landscape can be easily grasped through maps produced according to specified activities in the predefined grid. This can lead to a fruitful discussion among stakeholders thus promoting further cooperation and coordination. Once stakeholders cooperate, resources can be used more efficiently. This method helps stakeholders to align to an overall objective, while not duplicating each others efforts.

Link:
http://www.methodfinder.net/index.php?page=methods&methodID=82

Example:
http://www.methodfinder.net/index.php?page=methods&methodID=82&cat=example1

PDF download:
http://www.methodfinder.net/index.php?page=methoddetail&methodID=82&cat=download

We keep you posted on additional methods which are currently under development.