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How to develop a community monitoring programme

Site: OpenLearn Create
Course: 5 Community Monitoring
Book: How to develop a community monitoring programme
Printed by: Guest user
Date: Wednesday, 19 February 2025, 5:14 PM

1. Steps for developing a community monitoring programme

You will have already gained an understanding of community engagement (Unit 1), participatory engagement techniques (Unit 2) and environmental monitoring techniques (Unit 4). These are all important in developing a successful community monitoring programme.

Illustration of a community being worried about fish numbers, planning and evaluating a survey

1 & 2. Community members identify a problem with fish numbers decreasing
    3. Community meeting is held to discuss what to do
      4. Community decide whether they need external help or not
        5. Community decides what monitoring technique to use
          6. Community decide what type of outputs they need

          Illustration of a community being worried about fish numbers, planning and evaluating a survey


          7. Community meeting to agree the monitoring plan

          8. Community team collect the samples

          9. Community discusses how the monitoring has gone and how to improve ongoing monitoring


          2. Plan

          1. Community consultation - Hold a meeting, with as many representatives from your community as possible, to discuss and identify the environmental challenge the community would like to understand i.e. develop a community consensus on what should be monitored (see Unit 4). Examples include water pollution, flooding or loss of fish species.

          2. Community engagement - Undertake further community engagement through workshops, interviews, focus groups etc. (see Unit 1) to gain perspectives on the environmental challenge and to see who would like to be involved in being part of the community project team and/or being involved in the monitoring and data analysis and reporting.

          Photo of community members of all ages and genders sat around tables holding a meeting

          3. Community project team - Set up a community project team with individuals from the community with the required interest and skills. The role of this team will be to develop and oversee the monitoring programme. If interested community members do not have the required skills to undertake the role then training of those individuals could take place. It is important that the project team has representatives from across the community so that the whole community feels involved. The project team should then work together to develop the monitoring programme, following the steps below and described in detail in Unit 4.

          4. External support - Review whether your community requires the input from an external expert during the design of the monitoring programme? When this occurs, the community and scientists, from outside the community, work together to deliver the monitoring. For example, a community might want to know what the quality of the water in a river is. They might ask a scientist from a local university about what to measure, how to collect any water samples and how they would be analysed so they can understand how to measure water quality and they might work with the scientist and students to carry out the monitoring.

          5. Which techniques? - Identify the most appropriate technique or techniques to collect the data - this will also be dependent on your available time, resources and budget to undertake the survey. This is covered in more detail in Unit 4. 

          6. Who will collect the data? - Determine the monitoring team. It is important to consider who will actually be doing the monitoring i.e. collecting the data. This is an opportunity to involve the wider community but you should consider the following:

          • Is using wider community members to collect the environmental data the best approach? It is important to consider whether the community members have the appropriate skills and experience to conduct the data collection. If interested community members do not have the required skills to undertake the monitoring then training of those individuals could take place. 
          • It is important that the monitoring/data collection team has representatives from across the community so that the whole community feels involved in the monitoring.
          7. When and where to collect the data? – Plan exactly when and where the community monitoring team will collect the data.

          8. Monitoring plan - After determining how you are going to collect the data, who is going to collect the data, when you are going to collect the data and where you going to collect the data you will have your provisional monitoring plan.

          9. Community agreement - Once the monitoring programme plan has been developed, carry out final consultation with the wider community to make sure they are happy with the plan before commencing the data collection.


          3. Act and Observe

          Act

          Photo of community members collecting a water sample from a river

          10. Monitoring data collection - Start collecting the data to the agreed plan.

          Observe

          11. Observation - During the monitoring observe how it is going and ask the monitoring team how they are getting on. This can be carried out by other members of the community or the monitoring team themselves.

          12. Community communication - Ensure that the community project team feedback regularly to the community monitoring team collecting the data and share progress with the wider community throughout the monitoring programme.


          Now, after having finished this book, make sure to go back to the main page and complete activity 2.