Strength-based evaluation to understand changes from gender & equity lens & stimulate further changes

[Divya Sarma]

Samraksha is a development organization which has been working with communities for more than two decades now. Samraksha started its work in the field of HIV and reproductive sexual health, and has always been committed to working with the communities in order to prevent the spread of HIV and reduce its impact on the affected people. In order to do this, we have always used strengths based approach and worked with different communities – communities of identity like those of women in sex work, as well as geographical communities like villages.

We at Samraksha are very excited with a study we recently completed for Samuha, where we used the self assessment framework to measure the impact of an organization’s engagement with the village  communities of Raichur and Koppal for 25 years. Samuha is a development organization which has been working on different sectors of development for more than three decades now. The goal of Samuha is to bring about a change in the quality of life of people, and to achieve this, Samuha works across different groups in the community- men, women, young people, and on different issues – microfinance, women’s empowerment, disability rights, health, watershed development etc.

 This study intended to study the impact of Samuha’s work as a whole rather than just programmes and interventions.  Therefore, both intended and unintended outcomes needed to be captured, and it also had to capture the impact of the interventions as well as the organizations culture, values and ways of working.

The self assessment framework is a way for communities to create a dream for themselves and also assess how far they have come on the path of achieving the dream. It is a strengths based approach which seeks to understand  community’s aspirations and also helps them recognize their acheivements and potential. 

We have used the self assessment framework in the past, both for participatory assessment, as well as an intervention tool in itself, primarily to promote community engagement with the issue (in our case, it was mostly HIV/AIDS) For an earlier example of our use of this framework as a participatory evaluation methodology, see here. 

 In the current study, we used self-assessment methodologies to understand the impact of Samuha’s intervention on five major domains, women’s empowerment, economic development, development of people with disabilities, improvements in health and hygiene and reduced caste discrimination.

What was interesting about this study was that we twinned the self-assessment process with another participatory evaluation method, the Most Significant Change. Indeed, even the self-assessment framework we developed was based on the themes of change which emerged from the narratives of significant change stories. 

Self-assessment proved to be very apt for this study, because it gave a community perspective on the different changes which the individuals had reported. In most instances it corroborated the individual narratives.

What was interesting about this process, specially for gender based evaluation, was that it was able to capture the change through the lived experience of people, as well as through the changing community norms on what was desirable and acceptable. In the domain of changing gender relations, the MSC and self assessment was able to capture change at multiple levels : changes within the women as individuals, most importantly their growing aspirations as well as their self-worth, their increased capacity to solve problems; changes in the status of women within families with increased say for women in decision making;  changes in the way communities regarded women,  appreciation for women’s contributions to the family and community, sharing of power beteween men and women in families and communities, an increasing public role for women and an acceptance from the men of this public role, as well as a changing social norm where violence or harassment of women was frowned upon.

 The self assessment process was able to help the community reflect on how these changes in power relations occurred gradually and how different processes of Samuha, like the formation of self help groups, the facilitation of collectivization of women for problem solving and the training and exposure of women contributed to these changes. As such these changes were achieved not through coercion, but through consensus, where communities started acknowledging and appreciating the women, and gradually women grew in status.

Not just gender, other contentious issues like caste based discrimination could also be openly discussed through this process and communities could publicly state in what ways caste based discrimination had reduced in the villages, and also acknowledge the ways in which it persisted. Since deliberations were happening in a mixed group, there was frequent challenging, and while changes were valued, people also had the opportunity to publicly point out persisting discrimination.

Strengths based approaches have the potential to capture changing dynamics in the community with regard to equity towards marginalized groups. Since these approaches begin with the premise that change is possible and indeed has been achieved, it helps uncover changes at different levels – changes not just in terms of behaviors and norms, but also changes in attitudes, which has led to them. It gives a perspective on the process of change, which can help in our understanding of what drives change.

A complete study report can be seen here. For a collection of stories of significant change, please see here.