Study Session 11 Mobilisation of Urban Communities

Introduction

This study session is about community mobilisation in the context of urban WASH. You may be involved in an urban WASH activity in your locality and this session emphasises the skills needed to mobilise an urban community and promote community participation.

Learning Outcomes for Study Session 11

When you have studied this session, you should be able to:

11.1 Define and use correctly each of the key words printed in bold. (SAQ 11.1)

11.2 Explain the benefits of mobilising communities. (SAQ 11.2)

11.3 Describe the strategies and methods required for community mobilisation to be effective. (SAQs 11.3 and 11.4)

11.4 Identify the community groups that need to be involved in addressing urban WASH initiatives. (SAQ 11.4)

11.5Give examples of the challenges for community mobilisation. (SAQ 11.5)

11.1 What is community mobilisation?

In Study Session 6 you learned that a community is a group of people connected to each other by geographic location or common concern or interest. An urban community refers to the inhabitants of a town or sub-town with families who share facilities and are connected to each other by their location. You also learned about community engagement, the process of working with people in a community to address issues affecting their well-being.

Community mobilisation has much in common with community engagement in that it is about participation of community members. However, ‘mobilisation’ places the emphasis on actions. ‘Mobilising’ means getting things moving. Community mobilisation also has much in common with social mobilisation but has a more specific focus on communities. Social mobilisation was defined in Study Session 9 as a process enabling people to organise themselves to act collectively to achieve desired goals (WHO, 2006).

Community mobilisation can be defined as the process in which members of a community act together to achieve desired community goals. The process involves the community identifying their own needs and priorities, devising solutions and taking action to make changes happen.

Mobilisation empowers the community and enhances their ability to act together. The process involves facilitators whose role is to ensure that the community take the lead in the process. If essential WASH services are to be made available to every household in Ethiopia, communities should be mobilised and technically supported to identify their own WASH issues. Sustained mobilisation takes place when communities remain active and empowered after a particular community mobilisation programme ends (Mercy Corps, 2013).

Community mobilisation is a capacity building process, through which individuals, families, groups and organisations plan, implement and evaluate activities on a participatory and sustained basis to achieve an agreed goal. This might be a goal they have set themselves or a goal set by others. Figures 11.1 shows community members in discussion during such a process.

Figure 11.1 Community mobilisation meeting.

Effective community mobilisation requires consensus among key stakeholders, including community organisations and leaders. It should aim to involve all the community including religious groups, opinion leaders, schools, and marginalised groups.

The objectives of community mobilisation (adapted from WHO, 2006) are to:

• alert the community to their needs and rights
• encourage the community to be proactive, rather than passive
• develop awareness of the importance of sustainability of WASH facilities
• build the capacity of the community to take on decision making and self-management roles
• identify all the needs of the community and explore the resources available in the locality
• strengthen community participation.

In Study Session 9, you learned about ways of influencing behaviour. The urban setting has its own challenges and opportunities for community mobilisation and behaviour change. For example, understanding the roles and relationships among business, government and civil society stakeholders in a community is important for any mobilisation effort but could be even more complex in big urban communities because there are so many more stakeholder groups than in a rural setting.

11.2 Benefits of community mobilisation

Communities have an extensive wealth of local knowledge and wisdom. WASH practitioners should make use of this wider community experience and insight when implementing specific WASH initiatives, together with their own knowledge and understanding of procedures. Working together can help to identify what works for the community and what does not, and why.

Analysis of urban WASH problems and addressing critical gaps can only be achieved by building on the community’s knowledge and beliefs through a continuous dialogue and not by dictating to them what they should do. Participatory engagement is crucial.

Through community involvement, ordinary urban residents and professionals study WASH problems, pool their knowledge and experience and develop ways of solving their WASH problems. Community mobilisation helps leverage the resources available for specific WASH interventions, promotes self-help and self-reliance and improves trust and partnership between WASH practitioners and the community. As an urban WASH practitioner your role is to help the community organise themselves and contribute to the success of urban WASH interventions.

Community mobilisation can bring the following benefits (adapted from Mercy Corps, n.d., Florida DoH, n.d.). For example, it:

• allows people to make their own decisions about things that affect them
• expands inclusion of often marginalised groups, such as women, youth, people with disabilities, the elderly, and religious or ethnic minorities
• makes use of local resources, both human and material
• ensures local ownership of the issues and enables communities to create local solutions to local problems, which improves sustainability.

There can also be other longer-term benefits. For example, communities can reduce their dependence on outside aid because they develop the ability to identify and solve their own problems. They can also be better prepared for responding to disasters and emergencies because they have experience in quickly identifying their needs and priorities, and have established relationships with decision makers.

Now read Case Study 11.1 and answer the questions that follow.

Note that well managed communal latrines are quite rare. Where they have been successful, such as in the Piazza area of Addis Ababa, their relative success can be attributed largely to the management system adopted through engaging youth groups or women’s groups based on an income generation approach. An understanding of the local context and ability of the user community to pay for the services have contributed to the sustainability of its operation.

11.3 Strategies for community mobilisation

Much research has been done on good practice in community mobilisation and the evidence for effective strategies tends to come from these studies and experiences. They show that community mobilisation can change attitudes, norms, practices and individual behaviours (Pact Tanzania, 2006). Figure 11.2 shows a community mobilisation process in which a demonstration of effective handwashing practice is taking place.

Figure 11.2 Community demonstration of critical moments of handwashing.

Community mobilisation is not a task for one person working on their own. It needs a team of people each with different roles who work collaboratively with the community. The team needs to include technical support staff and people with skills in project management as well as the key facilitators who have the main role of liaising with the community.

Developing a strategy for community mobilisation to address a particular problem requires:

• knowing your community and understanding the local situation
• identifying the purpose for mobilising the community – this requires understanding of the community’s goals
• assessing the issues and identifying possible projects – this needs skills to assess the problems and align them to the purpose of the community mobilisation
• obtaining wide community support – it is essential to build good relationships with individuals and groups within the community; it is very important that the facilitator has excellent communication skills
• prioritising projects and developing implementation plans
• pooling of available resources, including labour
• gathering and reflecting on feedback from the community
• refining and improving activities, based on the findings and feedback from the community.

The key steps of knowing your community and prioritising projects are described in more detail in the following sections.

11.3.1 Knowing your community

To mobilise your local community effectively, you need know about its social organisation, economy, problems and politics. This information can be obtained from many sources, both formal and informal, and might include (Pact Tanzania, 2006):

• political and administrative structure
• demographic features and population characteristics (e.g. number of people in different age groups, gender balance)
• economic activities (e.g. employment, market days)
• social stratification and economic status of households
• organisations, their functions and activities
• leadership pattern and its influence
• languages and cultural traditions
• health, sanitation and nutrition levels
• education levels.

Through stakeholder mapping (as described Study Session 4) you will begin to understand the nature of your community as a social system. Think about how the different elements of the community such as the children, women, youth and local organisations are connected to each other. You will soon realise that a community is not merely a collection of individuals but a system that involves a lot of intricate links and relationships between those individuals. People enter and leave the community, by birth, death and migration, so it is constantly changing and yet it continues to exist.

Getting to know your community is not something that can be achieved quickly. You will need time to develop relationships with the community members. For successful community mobilisation you need to know what will motivate people to become involved and this requires understanding of their interests and concerns.

Stakeholder mapping will also help to identify the key stakeholders in WASH and especially those who are the existing leaders within the community. Working with existing leaders is much more likely to be successful because other community members will be influenced by them and follow their lead (Mercy Corps, 2013).

11.3.2 Prioritisation of projects

Part of the process when trying to mobilise a community is to work with them to identify and prioritise possible projects, as shown in Figure 11.3. There are several approaches for project prioritisation.

Figure 11.3 Prioritisation meeting at Kori, Afar.

Some Ethiopian towns already have Water and Sanitation Master Plans that have been prepared through a consultative process with the local population. If such a plan exists, this is a good place to start because this will have identified the most important water and sanitation problems for the town. If not, your WASH project prioritisation procedure might follow these steps:

• Organise a meeting with community representatives and try to build consensus on priorities. This is most likely to be feasible in smaller urban communities.
• Facilitate the formation of community action groups (CAGs). These are small groups tasked with managing individual projects and should involve those best placed to help with project implementation.
• Ensure discussions include the pros and cons of various options, based on criteria that have been agreed by the community.
• If community members realise that more information is needed to make a decision, the CAG can agree on how to collect the required information and arrange another meeting for further reviewing priorities before project selection.
• Keep the larger community informed about the schedule, process and actions taken by the CAG, using appropriate communication channels such as community notice boards or local radio announcements.
• Organise a community vote or some alternative way to obtain acknowledged agreement, so that you ensure the project is acceptable to the community.

11.4 Involving local groups

As noted above, community mobilisation means involving all members of a community if possible but there are some groups that can have particularly significant roles.

11.4.1 Role of schools

You learned in Study Session 6 about the importance of engaging school children in WASH initiatives. In school, children gain knowledge that can influence and stimulate their attitude and practice, help them to develop their life skills and play an important role in influencing their families and the wider community. However, the existing water supply and sanitation conditions of many of the schools in urban and peri-urban parts of Ethiopia are alarmingly inadequate and unsafe. Most of the school latrines are filthy, and their poor condition is contributing to a high level of disease, creating a poor learning environment. The lack of adequate facilities is a particular problem for girls’ education, as you read in Case Study 10.2 on menstrual hygiene. It is important for the community to be involved in planning WASH facilities, especially in schools (Figure 11.4).

Figure 11.4 Community involvement in planning school WASH facilities.

School children who are loved and trusted by their families and communities may be effective agents of change in their localities, particularly in the use and management of water supply and sanitation facilities, if they are guided appropriately in school. School teachers and school WASH clubs can therefore play a crucial role in promoting better hygiene practices among school children and better management of WASH facilities. This has a great impact not only in influencing the delivery of quality education, but also as a strategy for spreading the WASH technologies and the changes required by the community, and hence contributing towards a positive social change in their localities.

As a WASH practitioner you are expected to understand the advantages of working closely with school WASH clubs and bringing about a change in hygiene behaviour focused on school children, who are the future of the country.

Effective sanitation and hygiene education in a school should include:

1. A healthy physical environment:
   • Keep the school compound and classrooms clean and free of waste of all types.
   • Latrines that are appropriately designed for children (boys and girls).
   • Convenient handwashing facilities.
   • Safe drinking water.
2. Active and organised children:
   • Careful use of facilities by all children and also by teachers.
   • Consistent and organised cleaning and maintenance of latrines and also of handwashing and drinking water facilities with active participation of the students.
   • Roles for older children to help supervise and monitor younger children when using facilities and maintaining school cleanliness.
3. Trained and committed school personnel:
   • Appropriately trained head teacher and other key teachers.
   • Relevant child-centred learning environment.
   • Organised plans for children to help with use, monitoring and maintenance of facilities and learn good personal hygiene, e.g. through school WASH clubs.
4. Links to home and community:
   • Ensure that key health and hygiene information and behaviours flow back to the home.
   • Organise WASH outreach activities in the community and carry out extension activities such as dramas, poetry recitals and demonstrations (see Figure 11.5).
   • Encourage families and the community to provide finance and other support for maintenance and repair of school facilities.

Figure 11.5 A school WASH club drama, being performed to family and friends.

11.4.2 Role of other key groups

Religious leaders, youth and women’s groups can play an important role in mobilising local communities and promoting urban WASH initiatives. These groups may use community mobilisation channels such as public meetings, social gatherings, festivals, cultural shows, exhibitions, visits, posters, pamphlets and notice boards. As a result they can make a huge contribution towards the improvement of community awareness and participation. They can therefore help to improve awareness of the WASH sector and of local sanitation and environmental health issues and appropriate WASH technologies.

The training and capacity building of target groups and community workers can enhance the community engagement opportunities, which will have an impact on service delivery and development of local partnerships. Therefore, as strategic social targets, women’s and youth groups should be encouraged to get mobilised and organised, to play their role in supporting and facilitating the implementation of urban WASH facilities. As you learned in Study Session 6, raising awareness of social groups and community workers is essential for engaging all of the community and initiating change in society.

11.5 Challenges of community mobilisation

There are many potential benefits from community mobilisation but it also presents several challenges. It is a complex, long-term process that requires considerable resources. For the long-term benefits to be realised, the process needs trained and effective leaders, organisers and facilitators with the necessary skills and it needs continuing support over a period of time. For these reasons it can be expensive. There are also challenges linked to the nature of urban communities. In particular there will be challenges associated with extreme poverty, informal settlements and slum areas, migration, governance issues and also disaster and emergency conditions. There may be huge variation in culture and habits, as well as in attitudes and awareness and language issues. You need to be able to adopt systematic community mobilisation strategies that are appropriate to the reality on the ground.

Urban WASH interventions always need to consider community interest. You should be especially alert to any factors likely to subvert collaborative efforts. Specific goals and objectives should be established that attempt to tackle the prioritised problem. They should be based on a general strategy of community mobilisation, consensus and cooperation, for the service delivery and long-term benefit of the community as a whole.

Now look again at Case Study 11.1 and answer the following questions:

The sustainability of water, sanitation and hygiene improvements has continued to challenge the Ethiopian government and those involved in development projects. Due to their social, cultural, economic and educational diversities, urban communities are more complex than rural communities. The sustainability of urban WASH can be more challenging in urban communities and this is partly because of the difficulties involved in mobilising urban communities.

Where the internal sustainability of urban WASH projects had been successful and challenges in mobilising local communities overcome, these successes have generally been attributed to:

• high quality leadership in the community
• good social cohesion and gender equality
• good management capability, skills and education
• sense of community ownership and legal ownership, which brings commitment from the community and willingness to pay for capital costs
• existence of an effective management system for financing operation and maintenance, including collecting and managing funds for recurrent costs – this encourages the community to raise money for major rehabilitation or replacement
• appropriate service level and technology of water supply systems, latrines and related WASH facilities
• introducing appropriate WASH facility management systems, appropriate to the local income levels, knowledge and culture.

Summary of Study Session 11

In Study Session 11, you have learned that:

1. Community mobilisation is a process to encourage members of a community to act together to achieve desired community goals.
2. The greatest benefits of community mobilisation are to build community capacity and to help the community identify and address its own needs. Other benefits are that all community groups are included and it encourages use of local resources. All these factors lead to improved sustainability.
3. Developing a strategy for community mobilisation requires several steps. Knowing your community and understanding their needs and situation is essential.
4. Working with community action groups can be helpful for prioritising and implementing specific projects.
5. School children and WASH clubs and other community groups such as religious groups, youth associations and women’s groups all play an important role.
6. Community mobilisation can be a challenging process because it requires time and can be costly. It requires good leadership and organisation as well as people with skills in facilitation and project management.

Self-Assessment Questions (SAQs) for Study Session 11

Now that you have completed this study session, you can assess how well you have achieved its Learning Outcomes by answering these questions.