Overcoming Pseudo-participation in mobilising the general people in Health and development activities

[Ye Win]

Dear Friends,

Now I am now working with new target groups and new approach (social mobilization or developing village based comittees). So I had learned many experiences from them and I'd tried to apply for these experience to PLHA (Peole Living with HIV/AIDS) self help groups like income generation, group forming, their ownvalues. 1 of my difficulty is pseudo-participation in related groups. So I'd tried to reduce this pseudo participation among these groups by promoting knowledge and awareness among members. And another way, I had tried these SHGs to define their own values. Last ways, I'd restructured the SHGs for re-selection. If you had any solution for that issues, let me know and comment on my experience..

Have a nice day

Ye Win

[Gaston]

Dear Ye Win, great to hear from you again. One way as well is to facilitate the dream-exercise and start from an individual level. How would your dream SHG look like according to you? Have them all reflect and draw the outcome. Then in sub groups have them share and come to a joint group dream that covers all aspects of individual dreams. In this way, they might get more ownership on their participation in the group and drive to make a difference.

Secondly, it would be interesting to explore with each individual why they are part of the group. In specific, what need of them is served by (pseudo) participating in this group? Perhaps some don't really join activities, but their sense of belonging is still there and very important for them. This can differ per member.

Finally, changing roles within the SHG (rotating responsiblities) could help. Also next time, stand in a circle and have everybody introduce the person to the right and share what his/ her strengths are. The results can be amazing in terms of team building and creating a space to share challenges and problems. As an Indonesian facilitator mentioned recently: "Appreciation is a great medicine to deal with difficult situations"!

[Laurence Gilliot]

Hi Ye Win,

The champion in involving its members is definitely RDCCompétence, the facilitation team in DR-Congo. I spend two months with them in Feb-Mar of this year. What I learned from them?

- members pay membership fee as a way to increase their ownership of the team. They ask for 5$/month which is a lot of money in DRC but they expect each member to pay two or three times per year (so about 10-15$) Because of this membership fee, the members feel that they need to get something out of it, it is like an investment. So, they will actively participate and want to have a say in team decisions.

- The secretariat or core team involves its members as often as possible in their activities. They have regular meetings, send out the report of the meeting if people couldn't come, they often call their members to see how they are doing and to show they are there for them.

- Doing things together besides work: Besides the meetings and activities, the team in DRC tried to also do other things together to maintain a friendship bond between members.They often see each other during the weekend and go for a drink together, etc.

In the Constellation, we recently decided to ask the coaches to reconfirm their commitment as a coach every year. This creates the possibility for those who are not so active to step out and to maintain a pool of active coaches.

I hope this helps.

Laurence

[Ye Win]

Thanks you friends for your comments. As per Lamorary's comment, introducing themselves is a alternate way for ocercoming this issue. Here, I want to explain briefly about "pseudo participation". 1 of my SHG had many members at 2009 but many of them had not participated in SHG activities actively (they are not working SHG members). As the not working members had increased, the SHG had no success activities. In our context, we just say these members as pseudo -participation members.

have a nice day
Ye Win

[Jean-Louis Lamboray]

Ye Win,

very challenging issue!

During the Chiang Mai knowledge fair, we requested people to introduce themselves as humans. We specifically asked not to mention their organisation. In this way, we avoided labels and the generalisattions that come with those labels.
Is this relevant to your question? Am I on track?

Cheers

JL

[Laurence Gilliot]

Dear Ye Win,

Could you explain what you mean by pseudo-participation because I'm not familiar with this term?
Perhaps you can give one example?

Thank you,

Laurence