Documentation Skills

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Documentation Skills
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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

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What is it?

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

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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

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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)

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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!)

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Means of documentation

• Photographs
• Videos and documentaries
• Note taking
• Case studies
• Reports
• Articles
• Journals

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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Examples from Nepal
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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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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.

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• 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.