Social Mobilisation: A
key to Sustainable participatory development
After the WWII, practice
of development has been changing based upon the development theories posed over
the period of time. European development model, Structural Adjustment Program
(SAP), Civil Society led Development interventions, Millennium Development
Goals(MDGs) and finally post 2015 development agenda are different approaches
and avenues towards development over the time. To travel onto these roads of
development many actors have been the key like State, market, Private Sector
and NGOs, Ethnic groups, Grass root organizations and individuals.
In Pakistan out of many
approaches towards achieving development goals one of them is Social
Mobilisation based on the principles of a great German thinker Friedrich
Wilhelm Raiffeisen of 19th century and focusing on the actors that are
Individuals and Households and their Grass Root Organizations.I have recently
been inducted to the National Rural Support Program as intern in Monitoring,
Evaluation and Research department and have privileged to observe Social Mobilisation(SM)
closely on field and get the concept by desk reviewing of different reports and
researches.
The basic concept dates
back to 19th century when famine hit the region and poverty paved way for
misery, Raiffeisen prescribed the remedy by setting up some principles for the
poor farmers that are Organization, Capital generation and Human Skills
Development. These principles were the basis for Aga Khan Rural Support Program
(AKRSP) in 1980's and the same goes for interventions in Andhra Pradesh in
India.
The NRSP is working on
the same Principles with a conceptual package advocated by, one of the pioneers
of rural support programmes in Pakistan, Shoaib Sultan Khan. That is the
Willingness of the people to get organised, Identification and presence of an
honest and competent activist and
finally existence of a support mechanism that is being provided by the NRSP.
Organization is achieved by 3 tier structure by organizing households into
Community Organization(CO) at settlement level, then these COs form a Village
Organization (VO) at village level then finally these VOs form a Local Support
Organization(LSO) at the Union Council level. All three tiers are managed by
office bearers selected by the respective CO / VO / LSO members and these
office bearers work on voluntary basis. These organizations identify, analyse
and prioritize issues and constraints faced by the community and find out indigenous
solution and prepare plans to not only overcome these issues but also carry out
development work in their areas. Members of these organizations also practice
savings for capital formations and are often aided by micro-finance by the NRSP.
The NRSP’s programme
package includes Social Mobilisation, Human Resource Development, Physical
Infrastructure and Technology Development, Social Sector Services and Micro-finance and Enterprise Development Programme. During my continuous efforts to
understand these fascinating concepts and practices, I got a chance to visit
field for the monitoring of a project in Islamabad and Rawalpindi districts.
Although I am very young to
this concept and still in the process of learning SM principles and practices,
and my views would be premature nonetheless I want to share my experience and observations.
- I
think Field staff and social organizers have to be emotionally intelligent
to make people learn what social mobilisation is all about. For example in
the field I observed that in some community organizations the activists and
CO members were only asking for different interventions that in their view
should be carried out by NRSP and the Social organizer was not able to respond
to their expectations. I think the with better training and experience
these type of situations can be handled in a much better way, by making
the community realize that the development work is a joint effort,
communities have to take some initiatives and work with other
organizations. Therefore I think SOs could be imparted with Emotional and
Situational Intelligence training to bring the fruits of SM to people in
a better way rather to make them skeptic of what is being done.
- There
are very basic quantitative requirements for monitoring of Social
Mobilisation. The tool that we used for monitoring, was designed in a way
that it captured same type of information from all Community Institutions,
irrespective of their maturity level. I suggest that all community
institutions should be first categorized in four types i.e., nascent or
newly formed, at least one year old but with limited interventions, and third
type is of more than two years age with significant intervention level,
there is also a fourth category of those COs which are dormant i.e., were
formed and worked for some time but then stopped working for any reason. And
then these different type of institutions would be treated and evaluated
by different monitoring or evaluation criteria interventions using both or
a mix of qualitative methods.
- Monitoring teams are often dependent on the
field staff whose work is being monitored that could cause the problem in
validation of data because it happened during my exposure that certain
detours, cancellations of meetings and some other incidents of same kind
were observed. That can easily be overcome by active, prompt and
responsive monitoring. Induction of Geographic Information System can also
help to a great extent to simplify and organizing the whole development
operations of the NRSP into real time. GIS in development sector has
numerous applications. Or there can be other methods or processes adopted
to enable the monitoring teams to work more independently.
- One
of the issues was the language. Although terminology is very simple but
that can confuse the local settlements as it happened almost on every 3rd
occasion that respondent was confused into the terms and someone had to
explain. For example illiterate members or women often got confused by the
terms CO, VO and LSO, although they were able to distinguish these terms
in their own language i.e., mohallay ki tanzeem (CO), gaaoon ki tanzeem (village
organization) etc. This issue can be addressed by letting the communities
to define terminology indigenously without compromising the driving
principle of social mobilisation so that they understand the working
package without getting confused. It is important to mention that this
issue comes up only when the staff is not sensitized or does not respect
the local circumstances.
- At
some stances, communities were looking for projects only and not thinking
of long term development through these community platforms. That is acceptable
due to the fact that some of these organizations are very young and are
not mature yet. But this issue need to be addressed at the initial stages
of social mobilization where SOs need to introduce the program for long
term development objectives and not for a short term gain of achieving
targets of a project. The SOs need to explain the basic principles of
social organization, why it is needed and how it works, otherwise this
could lead to organization, capital formation and human skill development
but no long term transformation.
These issues are very
basics and probably with the maturity of SM would fade away automatically. The
bridge that is being developed by the linking the lowest tier of Government
that is Union Council level to deep down at the household level by the NRSP
based upon the Raiffeisen principles. I think this could be the approach that
would turn over the development triggering in reverse as in past development
approaches have traveled from North to South.
