Self Assessment

[Onesmus Kalama]

Friends

 

Allow me to share KANCOs self assessment to the HIVOs network. It did take us some time to assemble a team to share the story to the rest however on July 14th, an opportunity arose where KANCOs management team gathered for an official quarterly review meeting, and for sure there could never have been a better chance.

 

After the usual business, we introduced the self assessment approach to KANCOs management team. First was the process of defining KANCOs dream.  After some discussion, members agreed that our dream rested in supporting community action on HIV & AIDS and TB.

How then were we to realise our dream? the time to introduce the self assessment had come. a time for KANCO to exermine herself against a set of ten practices that in essence would indicate how close we are towards realising our goal.

The results of the self assessment are attached for reference. After the assessment, members selected three practices, also hilighted that KANCO would work towrads improving in the next six six months.

 

What is important however is what the members thought of the process. Three key key lessons we learned from the process.

    1).  KANCO team agreed that the self assessment process was an honest useful assessment of self exermination. We found that for once we exermined ourself as an organization and as a community and individual knowledge was of little significance in the overall picture of KANCO as a community.  That as a community we are operating below our individual self.

    2). That the self assessment instills Power, Autority and Control (PAC) to individual members as they feel empowered to act to improve on the overal organizational goal.

    3).  That real change can only come when there is collective responsibility embeded in ownership and responsibility.  That each individual organizational or cummunity member should be given an equal opportunity to feel part of the team and take responsibility for the overall outcome of the communities action.

    4).  Overall we felt that this a wonderful process that needs to be done quite often.

 

With regional offices, we agreed to repeat the process in our different regions whose coordinators were present during the innitial meeting. We hope to have the ACP spread among KANCOs network as we begin the slow but sure journey of supporting communities on HIV&AIDS and TB.

 

Warm regards,

 

Onesmus Mlewa  

[Gaston]

Excellent sharing Onesmus and great effort of the whole team. Especially the reflections show that you took the time for the exercise and how it added value to the organisation. The idea to repeat the assessment in the various regions is very interesting.

Did you discuss already possible actions that KANCO can take to improve on the 3 priority practices (managing resources, organizational behaviour, learning & transfer)?

[Onesmus Kalama]

Yes did identify possible actions to improve on the three practices.

Managing resources.
-we did realize that there is need to be able to cover for core costs without external support so as to move towards sustaining our operations. This calls for sustainable sources of funds. We realized that in a year we spend a lot of resources on conference facilities among other services. We are now thinking on how we can invest on key service areas so that we do not have to hire but source from within so as to cut on costs and even generate revenue to sustain our programing.

Organizational behavior
-To improve on organizational behavior we have decided to institutionalize weekly meetings where program staff will be sharing and learning on progress of projects as well as promoting dialogue among program staff. These meetings will be used to as reflection meetings on both program progress and related organizational dynamics. This will improve team learning and encourage group discussion.

Learning and transfer
- for every project we intend to set a budget for documentation of real life stories to compliment regular monitoring and evaluation data. we realize that numbers alone can not present a holistic picture hence documentation of real life stories will paint a human face to evaluation results and increase the potential for communities to appreciate our work and feel part of it.

[Geoff Parcell]

This looks a very useful application since we have so many partnerships. I am interested in your experience of how people reacted to the level one statements which contained 'not' or other negative words.

In my experience it its better to twist the phrases to say something positive but with the same meaning. And it is better to focus on 'we' rather than 'they' because 'they' implies we are assessing someone else. For example

"We do reporting but not systematically, due to lack of a system for M & E.
People have a low appreciation for the impact of the work, and low ownership. They are less keen to participate in the program."

becomes

"We are flexible in what, when and how we report. We have more urgent things to focus on. "

What do you think?

[Onesmus Kalama]

I agree with you Geoff. It's not only level one statements but at each level there are negative words that people did not feel comfortable with.

I exactly did as you suggest, trying to rephrase statements to the positive without having to change the meaning of the level.

It worked out alright and people were able to appreciate the whole process. I was most touched when they suggested to rephrase the wording in some levels to reflect what they needed to see themselves doing at such levels. An example is when they said level 3 of managing resources should read " We are able to acquire resources from both internal and external sources equally and are able to utilize them optimally". they suggested to remove the community dissatisfaction part as it is already captured under level 2. This to me was a really involvement process that ensured we were not discouraged by the negative statements but saw the positive side of each level.

[Gaston]

Wonderful discussion and learning for any future process to develop a self-assessment framework. Instantly useful in Indonesia, where we are applying it to Gender issues (and Gender Based Violence). Try to get each box stated positively!

[SAMUEL GITHIRE]

This is great and we would like the self assessment done to all the members of the network in order to harmonize the interventions and the best practices at the community level.Avoid conferences which have little impact and let the community own up the process themselves and do it at their own satisfaction.
SAMUEL
KLDTDU

[SAMUEL GITHIRE]

Kenya long distance truck drivers union have organized more than 20 salt visits and 15 self assessments to the truck drivers and the communities along the northern highway corridor after the AIDS Competence process was introduced to us.We came to realize that communities have strengths which they do not realize but after the salt visits they were able to know these strengths and how they could utilize them. An example of this was when we visited a place called kikopey in Nakuru.The community residing there had a problem of a place where they could meet and discuss their issues. There is a factory there where this community works and they have a hall which is used for meetings.When we inquired from the management of the factory who were present at the salt visit meeting, they informed us that nobody have ever requested for the facility and they are ready to offer it for free at any time.That was resources not explored and after the session the community was happy that the factory could assist them in many areas only that there was no communication.
SAMUEL