In 1998 Pact's Women's Empowerment Project (WEP) in Nepal (now known as WORTH) adopted an Empowerment Mobilization Strategy which builds directly on Appreciative Planning and Action (APA), an approach that has been developed and used successfully in Nepal over the past decade in a variety of rural development activities. APA emerged through a process of development, testing, and adaptation of participatory techniques in Nepal which sought means of enhancing the capacity of PRA-based approaches to promote mobilization and empowerment among rural people. Drawing on work that began in collaboration with Robert Chambers in Botswana in the 1970s, and building on concepts from several schools of organizational development theory, an effort was made to develop an approach that helps rural people and development practitioners reverse negative self-images commonly held by organizations and villagers.
The APA approach that evolved within the Pact/WORTH initiative has shown remarkable power in capturing and celebrating the pride and self-reliance of women and their groups and helping empower them to make the extraordinary achievements for which WORTH has become known. These PRA-based techniques, building in particular on Appreciative Inquiry, with input from Asset Based Assessment, Open Space, and Future Search models, were first used in WEP to reverse negative attitudes and mobilize the support of 240 local NGOs which then implemented WEP. The approach was subsequently used to introduce WEP to the 6,000 groups and 125,000 women targeted for literacy, savings, micro-enterprise, village banking, and legal rights and advocacy interventions. APA has shown positive results in replacing the fatalism and resignation of women with pride in their achievements, self-confidence in their ability to set attainable goals, and success in achieving them.
"If you look for problems, you find more problems; if you look for successes, you find more success. If you believe in your dreams you can accomplish miracles." Our motto thus became to "seek the root cause of success," rather than the “root cause of problems.”
This model combined participatory principles from established PRA practice with those adapted from Appreciative Inquiry, a relatively new organizational development and team-building approach that seeks the root cause of success rather than focusing on problems, problem-solving, and analysis of the causes and solutions to problems. Known as Appreciative Planning and Action (APA), the process had been developed initially by The Mountain Institute for engaging communities in participatory conservation and development in Nepal's Makalu-Barun area.
Tested and refined there, in Sikkim, and in Tibet, APA had recently been introduced into CARE/Nepal programs, where it was proving more empowering that the normal "Problem-Cycle," which has been, and remains the backbone of most organization's interventions today.
The participating NGOs not only endorsed the APA method, but asked to be trained further in the technique. Empowerment Mobilization, using the APA approach, starts with questions that give women an opportunity to share, celebrate, and analyze their achievements, define empowerment for themselves, dream of what might be even better, and make plans that build on the lessons of success. They have the chance to feel the power that comes from making personal commitments for the roles they will take in that plan, and that comes from actually taking the first small action step immediately, before departing from the meeting. The process in brief:
Empowerment Mobilization:
The Appreciative Planning and Action Model
One goal: Seeking the root cause of success (not the root cause of failure)
Two laws:
What you seek is what you find (The questions you ask determine the answers you get)
Where you believe you are going is where you will end up
Three Principles:
If you look for problems, you find more problems
If you look for successes, you find more successes
If you have faith in your dreams you can achieve miracles
The Four 'Ds:
Discovery -- Asking positive questions, seeking what works, what empowers, what gives life to the community or group, asking when we, as women, have felt particularly excited, energized, empowered
Dream -- Visioning of what could be, where we want to go, what we want for our daughters
Design -- Making an action plan based on what we can do for ourselves -- Making personal commitments
Delivery -- Start taking action, now!
For an instance:
Women Building Success on Success Some results of the initial application of the APA approach within the Women's Empowerment Project during its first six months included:
Application of the APA approach in selected villages to familiarize Pact/ECTA staff with the process, allow them to practice using it before project implementation, and to assess its impact over the short term. From the first of these interactions one group of 8-10 women who told the team in October 1998 that they had been talking about building latrines for their families for several years, pledged to break stones from the rock ledges outside the village within the coming month. Another group from among the very poor fishing community, pledged to start a savings club on their own, to help them generate funds for improved equipment.
Results: A follow-up visit revealed that the group of 8-10 women had, without outside intervention, grown to 22 and that collectively they had broken out and collected several tons of stones for their latrine project. The fishing group, to date, had raised Rs.1050 for their savings fund.
Orientation for over 200 local NGOs which have major responsibility for field implementation and support of the 6,500 women's groups; this task was initially deemed extremely difficult because the NGOs would not be receiving the levels of support to which they had become accustomed under heavily subsidized models.
Results: Initial hostility and suspicion virtually disappeared with the application of the APA approach and local NGOs joined the initiative with enthusiasm rather than doubt.
NGOs to enroll 125,000 women in the program. Despite skepticism among many local and international NGOs about such ambitious targets and reluctance or inability of women to pay the small fees involved, the program was faced with an unanticipated dilemma.
Results: All initial targets substantially exceeded. By late 1998 400 NGOs and over 300,000 women had sought to join the program.
Seek contributions of at least Rs. 15 for registration and Rs. 7 for each of the 4 books and self-instructional courses involved in Pact's Empowerment Literacy and Women in Business programs. The fees, to be set by the women's groups, must be paid up front but are deposited as non-refundable contributions to their group savings funds. Results: Women in all groups starting the program had not only come forward with the required fees, but a number of groups have decided collectively to increase the fees beyond the recommended minimums in order to add to their savings funds. At least one group has decided to charge its members fees in excess of the recommended maximum of Rs. 30 per book in order to build up its savings fund more quickly.
The APA process has proved important in many of these developments and, in particular, has been adapted for the development of Sustainability for Local Fundraising workshop model that has been developed and tested in Nepal.