Social Mobilisation: A key to Sustainable participatory development

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.