Documentation Skills: Documentation Skills


About this workshop: About this workshop To help understand the meaning and the importance of documentation To share our skills and experiences in documentation To help identify our documentation needs, target audiences and appropriate medium, format, style as appropriate To enable to document our work Some tips on different methods of information collection such as Focus Group Discussion, Key Informant Interviews, Case Studies


What is it?: What is it? In general terms, it’s any communicable material (text, video, audio etc.) used to explain some attributes of an object, system or procedure It’s a tool to help individuals and development organisations learn from their own experiences It’s an accumulation of our rich experiences to widely share with It’s an organised, systematic process of note taking and recording that could later be used for policy advocacy, fund raising and monitoring and evaluation It’s a key to knowledge management It’s an effective source for providing relevant information and data that could be used for all purposes as appropriate


Why is this important?: Why is this important? To get our message across To promote and mobilise resources To monitor, evaluate and understand the impact To consciously make changes in our work To use it for advocacy purposes To influence policies and practices To add to institutional memory To capture events, learning and experiences To generate knowledge and be an authority


Elements of Documentation: Elements of Documentation Clarity on the subject and overall objective (what/why) Complete understanding of the programme information (aim, time period, location, resources, actors, process, end results) Familiarity with various tools and techniques for generating information (FGD, Key Informant Interviews, Case Studies, etc) Selection of appropriate medium (written, audio, video), format, style as per the context Good facilitation skills Precise, focused, simple and easy to understand and use Feeding back to the source Cross-checking, verifying and triangulating Acknowledging the source (plagiarism is punishable)


Common Skill Gaps: Common Skill Gaps Patience (rush/hurry to document) Sensitive to confidentiality Shortsightedness (unaware of its longer term use/multiple use/reproduction) Technical skill to produce as per the needs Creativity and innovation (resistance to change/newness) Quality/salability/reliability Proper understanding of culture, people, location, norms Grounded and human face Progressive learning (field notes, simple accounts, recording daily work, field report, progress report, professional report…) To generate knowledge and be an authority (sort of!)


Means of documentation: Means of documentation Photographs Videos and documentaries Note taking Case studies Reports Articles Journals


Focus group discussion (FGD): Focus group discussion (FGD) It is a group discussion of approximately 6-12 people guided by a facilitator Group members speak freely and spontaneously about a certain topic among themselves guided by a facilitator It is a qualitative method to get in depth information on a certain topic


How to conduct a FGD : How to conduct a FGD Determine purpose Situation analysis Selection of participants Physical arrangements Preparation of a discussion guide A nominated facilitator or moderator and also a recorder Normally within 60-90 minutes Not more than one or two topics


Key Informant Interview: Key Informant Interview It is obtaining information from a community resident who is in a position to know the community as a whole, or the particular portion you are interested in. That community resident can be a professional person who works with the group you want more information about, or a member of the target audience. Key informants can be young or old, or from a variety of socio-economic levels or ethnic groups. They are an important source of information in a research aimed at qualitative assessment. Key informants can be interviewed in an informal way, or you can use formal techniques, such as written questionnaires, telephone interviews, personal interviews etc


How to do?: How to do? Selecting right informant (knowledge and analysis) Building rapport Acknowledging the wisdom of the key informant Finding a place for a free and open discussion Exploring unclarities and sensitive information Cross-checking, triangulating and verifying Selecting people from various spectrums


Case Study : Case Study Method for Qualitative research. In-depth, longitudinal examination of a single instance or event. A systematic way of looking at events, collecting data, analyzing, information, and reporting the results.


Types of case studies: Types of case studies Illustrative case studies Exploratory case studies Critical instance case studies Program implementation case studies Program effects case studies Prospective case studies Cumulative case studies


Examples from Nepal: Examples from Nepal


Slide15: Advocacy through the HIV Post 'HIV Post‘, a pioneering effort to make PLWHA voices heard. Initially many people were not ready to accept the idea to train PLWHA as journalists. It was a difficult phase for AAN to convince the journalists and PLWHA themselves to accept the idea. Despite this AAN decided to run a journalist training programme for PLWHA, which was a pioneering effort in the country. C o n s c i o u s Media Forum, an AAN partner, took the responsibility to train PLWHA as j o u r n a l i s t s . Initially even PLWHA were not ready to be the part of this team. Finally, after constant effort, Nava Kiran Plus came forward to be a part of this new initiative. After six months, some news articles and feature articles initiated by the participants themselves started to appear in different newspapers. After the end of the training, these journalists came up with an idea to publish a newspaper entitled, "HIV Post". An issue of “The HIV Post”.


Slide16: Since then, HIV Post has been a popular newspaper covering HIV and AIDS issues in the country. This publication has been instrumental in making the government, UN agencies, donors, INGOs and NGOs realise the gaps in their programmes and policies. The Global Fund debate of HIV Post was a path breaking effort to catch the global interest in Nepal. World AIDS day was an inspiring day for HIV Post when 'The Kathmandu Post', one of the most popular English national dailies, published HIV Post in its supplement free of cost. This has further motivated the PLWHA journalist that they can write even in the mainstream English newspaper.


Slide17: Policy contributions toward protecting the rights of poor farmers Nepal needs to enact legislation on intellectual property and plant variety protection which conforms with the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement of the WTO. In view of this requirement, the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Supplies (MoICS), the focal ministry for WTO issues in Nepal, and the Multilateral Trade Integration and Human Development Project of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) have drafted a bill entitled Plant Variety Protection and Farmers' Rights, which is to be enacted by 2005. During the stakeholder consultation meeting organised by these organisations, AAN and its partner SAWTEE made critical contributions to the draft and convinced the drafters and other stakeholders to amend provisions that undermined the interests of the Nepalese farmers.


Slide18: AAN also prepared and submitted a report called 'Legal Regime on Nepal's Accession to WTO' to the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Supplies. The report was prepared in consultation with the legal community in order to identify pragmatic options for ratifying WTO membership in the absence of an elected parliament. The main ideas recommended in the report were adopted by the government in the ratification document it submitted to the WTO.


Radio programme: Radio programme The joint initiative by Punarjivan Kendra, ActionAid Nepal, Dharan Municipality, Itahari Municipality and Damak Municipality in the year 2001-2002 could produce some effective results in raising awareness among the larger population and organizing PLHA's informal group for enhancing rights based campaigns. As a result Dharan positive group was formed under the initiation of PJK and AAN. Dharan Positive Group has been growing organically and it has been registered in Social welfare Council in 2006 as an independent organization of HIV infected Drug users and affected women as well. Dharan Positive has 50 positive members. They have been conducting mass awareness programs by running radio program 'Naya Goreto' broadcasted through Saptakoshi FM every week. Naya Goreto is a weekly radio program advocating for the rights of PLHA and has broadcasted more than 100 episodes till now and PJK and DPS claims it to be the first initiative in South Asia.


Slide20: The best part of the program is that the radio anchors are themselves HIV positive who run the program on their own, narrating the positive lives of the people living with HIV sensitizing the communities at large. The program's impact was the increasing number of their listeners and hence the formation of listener's clubs of youths and students. In a village named as Bara near Dharan, the school going children listen the Naya Goreto every week. Inspired by the program, they formed a small listener's group. This group listens the program every week and transfers it to the village people by a microphone. Besides the radio program, PJK and DPS publish their bulletin through which, they share their voices and advocate for their rights.