Appreciative Inquiry on grassroots level of Burkina Faso
Introduction and what preceeds
These are impressions of two months Appreciative Inquiry in development work on grassroots level in Burkina Faso with an NGO which exists for 99% of volunteers.
Maybe this is the first experience with illiterate villagers living far beyond the one Dollar border in French Africa.
I know about the GEM-Initiative in several projects and countries in Africa and Asia and about the wonderful Myrada Project in India.
I am pretty sure that the level of cadre and the available means are unique in this experience.
The objective of these impressions is sharing experience with other AI-people. I hope I am mistaken and there are more experiences with grassrootwork in development countries in French.
I am a Dutch women which has the favour of working together last year and this year some months with an inspiring little NGO in Burkina Faso and its inspiring Burkinabé people.
ACEA means “Associations Communautés en Action” (Ass. for communities in action) which exists since 2001 and works with communities in – at the moment – three regions in Burkina Faso. The people who carry ACEA are volunteers. Six of them work on national and regional level, three of these with another NGO, three have jobs as nurse, secretary and police officer. In the three regions there are several volunteers who work as animator in their village(s). The budget is about 35.000 $ a year, acquired via private funds.
In 2002 we learn for the first time of AI. The ACEA people who work on NGO-level become enthusiastic for this approach: “AI can contribute tremendously to the work in the villages.”
“This is what Africa needs.” they say, “A negative self-image is deeply rooted in our culture. It is the example of the heliotropic principle: if years and years, generation after generation we and others have thought of ourselves as dependant and needing help from outside, that has become true.” The same AI can be the “solution”: believing in ourselves will automatically bring about a deep change”.
The two people who speak English and two people from The Netherlands participate in September 2003 in the AI-workshop in Lincoln, guided by Mette Jacobsgaard with her extensive experience in AI in development countries and Bernard Mohr.
Our enthusiasm grows and we decide to implement Appreciative Inquiry in Burkina Faso, starting with one village in each region.
From end January to mid-February this year we develop concepts and framework and do preparing work. Our experiences in February and March are:
1. A preparation meeting in each village with 15 people (5 women, 5 men and five youth).
2. An AI-Leadership training of 3 days for 16 people (national and regional level)
3. Training of the recently appointed program officer of ACEA (the only paid person). She carries most of the rest of the trainings and speaks the two local languages which are used in the three regions. We train her by involving her from the first preparations and hence just working together while coaching her (in French)
4. Two train the trainers trainings of one day in French (the 2 or 3 people in the region who followed the Leadership training and the program officer of ACEA)
5. Two trainings of subgroup-leaders of 3, resp. 4 days in local language
6. Two trainings with villagers in local language
Below I mainly write about our experiences at village level. I apologize for not always writing correct English.
AI on village level
The challenge is to apply AI in villages with 90% or more illiterate inhabitants; villages with some existing groups (like an agricultural association for men and some women organizations), but no skilled cadre.
For mobilizing people ACEA uses already a successful approach for integral rural development and poverty reducing.
Our assumption is that with Appreciative Inquiry this approach will produce even more and deeper reaching results (at the level of attitude, being).
We mainly aim at people of the village coming in contact with their existing past and present individual and collective values, qualities and potentialities. Getting aware of them, appreciating them and taking them as the basis for the future.
We “experiment” with a three-day workshop in three villages in regions where ACEA works. At the moment I leave Burkina Faso the third village is in preparation; my impressions are of the first two villages. Each village has around 1.000 to 3.000 inhabitants.
One of our choices is to work in the Discovery Phase in groups from 5 tot 9 people and not in pairs. We see no possibility that big groups of illiterate people interview each other in pairs for story telling and extracting life giving forces from those stories. We train (mostly illiterate) subgroup leaders to interview groups in their own language in the Discovery Phase and in guiding subgroup discussions in the other Phases.
With good interviewing villagers are good story tellers. Good interviewing means here a lot of activating and asking more specific questions. Although they have an oral culture, the villagers tend to answer to questions shortly. It’s totally new for them to talk about themselves, let alone in positive terms. And women hesitate even more than men. In big parts of Burkina women’s voice does not count, they don’t speak when men are there. Also youth (and again girls more then boys) is silent when elder people speak. The division of labor is another, related cultural habit: men are accustomed to discuss village matters.
You can imagine we are proud that in the end of the workshop men, women and youth contribute frankly, also in the plenary group. The villagers make the comparison with old times, when the whole village was gathered under a tree to talk together.
In concreto for the Delivery Phase, examples of values and strengths which are discovered in the villages are: understanding and listening, working and taking decisions together, good communication and organization, responsibility, trust, transparency, leadership, willingness, perseverance, intelligence, ability to work hard, courage, mastery.
After the first workshop we adapt the visualization in the Dream Phase: we build in some steps in time: visualize first 20 years from now, than coming back in steps to ten, three and one year. That is necessary, because the villagers tend to give lists of wishes on a very concrete level (schools, medical units etc) when it comes up to formulating a vision, while in their dreams there are rich values and situations related to community development ànd capacity building. In the conversation of formulating a vision statement it is important to stress also the general categories and the short term possibilities, which can be started directly and do not cost money. Putting the right questions which does not steer too much takes some ingenious leadership and patience from the workshop facilitator.
In he Design and Destiny Phase the distinction between short, mid or long term possibilities is again important. When rightly introduced already in the Dream Phase people come up with a lot of actions which can be started directly and do not cost money.
In the end of the workshops lots of concrete plans are made and directly put in action. To give an idea, I mention some:
Health
- health of the body (washing hands, clothing children and other concrete things)
- training preventive health by a nurse (no costs, voluntary)
- have midwives trained
- construct a simple pharmacy
- on long term an official health unit in co-operation with government and ONG’s
Food autosufficiency
- create common land for cash-crop. Men do the digging work, while women bring them water when they are thirsty while they are working
- grain mill to relieve the hard work of women
Knowledge
- litteracy. Start with a so-called “hangar” (construction of stakes and mats), later on an official building that can also be used in the wet season. Villagers pay for materials and teacher
- a school with more than 3 classes (there is a school via Unesco who stops when children went 3 years to school)
Besides concrete action planning people formulate what AI is for them in an exercise of telling experiences to villagers who not attend the workshop.
Not all, but pretty much people are able to formulate the essence of Appreciative Inquiry:
(some literal quotation, translated for me in French)
- we discovered that they as village have important values and potentialities and that we can do a lot with them in using it for the future of the village
- the dream we did is a guide for the future
- to remember the past à confronting the future.
The words the villagers use are concrete, they “live the theory and principles of AI” more than using the abstract words we use as intellectual people.
A farmer formulates it as follows: “If a farmer remembers the harvest of last year, that encourages him for the next wet season” (wet season = the season that all the hard work has to be done; 2003 was a very good harvest-year).
By the results you see that the Continuity principle is the core of the workshop. We do not use words like “Power of Image”, “Social Constructionism”. That’s too abstract for this first round.
Even formulated results like above is already reaching a high target with people with no experience at all.
I even wonder if some preparatory work could lead to more results concerning appropriating the contents of AI. In one of the two workshops we did not succeed in the first day (later when having repeated it went better) in letting the people formulate the essence of the Discovery Phase. Rather than things like “we learned that we have a lot of values and competencies, a lot to be proud of” the villagers formulate as most important that they have worked together, men and women, that they have eaten together and that they learned not to withhold but to talk frankly. And they underline it was the first time ever.
It looks like the group-building results overcome even the AI-results. Preparatory work can probably catch this effect. Also repeating the approach in the follow-up work can have the same function.
Although I do wrong at the outcomes of the trainings, I cannot stand to mention that it is a good example of the Placebo-effect: only giving attention to people, coming from the capital Ouagadougou to the very dry parts of north Burkina Faso, constructing hangars for plenary and subgroup work, eating together with the villagers has on itself positive effects.
The ACEA team reralizes that a good follow-up for the AI-trainings is essential. The success of this new approach in illiterate villages is highly dependant of the follow-up. As we read in the Myrada-project and as is the case in all community building work.
Sub-group leaders training in local language
In four days we train the subgroup-leaders. The number of available potential good subgroup-leaders is alongside organizational reasons (financial resources to rent big tents, supply food cooked by village women et al.) the most important reason to work in this experimental phase with groups of about 50 and not more (3 women subgroups, 3 men subgroups and 3 youth subgroups in one and 9 mixed groups in the other training).
We do not take the criterion “literate” for participation, because only some people (on one hand to count) are literated in their own language. The preparation group of villagers invites in one village 8 and in the other 14 leaders who are able to do the work (representative, leadership qualities, able to listen and to memorize very well). In the situation of 8 villagers we also have 8 already trained animators with expertience and literated from a neighboring bigger village.
We have a double objective with the subgroup-leaders training:
- own and inner Appreciative inquiry approach (first 2,5 day)
- being able to lead sub-groups in a bigger workshop (last 1,5 day)
To take enough time to repeat is crucial: participants can not make notes as we are used to. They memorize and memorize until they know the questions of the Discovery and other phases by heart. Some women find a nice way: they have the questions noted by a literate participant and let her little children who go to school help them at night.
The second thing to give priority to is to exercise in real life situations the role of sub-group leader, and exercise over and over again.
Teaching the art of questioning is the most important and also the most difficult. We can hardly work with standardized questions, because the interviewer/ subgroup leader has to anticipate what is coming. If I doubt if it is possible to work with illiterate subgroup leaders, my hesitation is on this point. It is possible, but four days training is short. Before each part of the training it is necessary to plan enough time for refreshing and exercise again the main points.
In the end
I feel highly privileged to be so closely connected with people who are so eager to learn and work hard to get for themselves a better living. I would like to show you a long photo-show of the many, many proud, strong people, convinced that they are worthwhile and are going to better their heart breaking circumstances.
In villages where 1.200 € (the cost of a 3-day training of 50 persons including 4 days subgroup training and including meals for everybody, constructing temporarily “hangars” or hiring a big tent) means a lasting and transformational change.
Questions Discovery Phase Villages