Community Mapping and Sustainable Development in Rural Zambia

1
Community Mapping and Sustainable Development in
Rural Zambia
Timeline
Team
Phase I
Phase III
Phase IV
Phase II
Faculty Allen Armstrong (MIT) Dr. Clair Piere
(Harvard) Amy Smith (MIT) Students Alfinio
Flores (Harvard) Xanat Flores (MIT) Alex Herrera
(Harvard) Chris Langhammer (UMDNJ) Sam Miti
(UNZA) Nadja Oertelt (MIT) Sham Tembo
(UNZA) Evans Tulisha (UNZA) Jessica Vechakul
(MIT)

• Introduction
• Introduction to other team members
• Meetings with in-country contacts/advisors
• Training
• Language classes
• Conversations regarding interview technique
• Isolate and eliminate personal bias
• Solution Neutrality
• Manage expectations

• Synthesize Data
• Evaluate data collected through phase II
• Build conceptual community map
• Evaluate Capabilities
• Decide what problems can be addressed now, what
  can be addressed later, and what is beyond our
  reach
• Form Action Plan / Stock for Return
• Develop solutions we feel we can execute
• Manage logistics of solutions

• Implementation
• Execute action planned in phase III
• Feedback
• Hear community opinions of our presence
• Follow up
• Establish means by which work can be continued
  contact with our team maintained
• Continuity
• Single most important activity is to follow up in
  future

• Mapping
• Interview community (try to sample groups,
  individuals, and all levels of social strata)
• Develop understanding of
• Basic community structure
• Problems community faces
• Resources available locally
• Use interview technique developed in Phase I

Introduction
Interconnectivity
Community Initiatives
Community
Sustainable Development A major problem facing
development efforts today is sustainability.
Large amounts of resources are poured into making
improvements to underdeveloped countries by
philanthropic, political, or religious
organizations. Such organizations must
eventually withdraw their presence, however, and
frequently the improvements they leave behind
fall into disuse and the quality of life returns
to its starting point. This happens because the
improvements do not have an appropriate support
structure, either within the community or in
terms of the resources it takes to maintain the
improvement. Community mapping is a means of
working with the community to better development
workers understanding of problems the community
find important, and what resources are available
locally to address these problems. By
identifying what the community finds important,
and what they are capable of doing to help
themselves, development workers are better able
to make decisions about how they can assist the
community. By working with the community, and
involving the community in every step of the
process from inception to execution, it assures
that resources are being applied to a problem
that the community really does find important.
It also gives the community a sense of ownership,
and improves the capacity of the community to
make similar improvements in the future without
dependence on outside donors.
It is difficult to dissect a community to the
point where you can analyze parts of it
individually because all aspects of a community
are interconnected. The chart below indicates
some of the ties between the major concerns we
were able to identify.
Library Project Problem School books are free
for grades 1-7, but too expensive/rare for many
in grades 7-9. Non-school books are
non-existent.
Solution Establish student run library. We
provided initial books for library, worked with
students to decide logistics of library
management. Community ownership achieved through
students formulating and following through on
management plan.
Water Education Problem Poor understanding of
water sanitation techniques and consequences of
contamination lead to constant infection by
water-borne diseases. Solution Teach a core
group of community members to be water educators.
Not only teach them a improved understanding of
water sanitation, provide them with training
enabling them to teach others in community.
Community Mapping Approaching any community from
the outside it is easy to cast judgment before
you fully understand the context in which society
operates. Community mapping is meant to improve
your understanding of a community by trying to
see the world from their point of view.
Identifying the problems they find important, and
what they are willing/able to do in search of a
solution are important aspects of this process.
Community Extension Education Problem No
standardized education for farmers on how to
manage crops, results in poor yield and continued
financial stagnation.
It is artificial to assign such a clearly
delineated hierarchy to a complex and dynamic
society. The figure is meant to show only the
basic anatomy of the political, health care, and
educational infrastructure.
Solution Organize a group of interested farmers
into a group capable of disseminating farming
information. We provided an initial loan of
seeds, and information on farming practices.
They developed plan to disseminate seeds, pay
back loan, distribute knowledge to rest of
community.
Multidisciplinary Approach In order to better
understand a problem properly it is necessary to
understand the community and context in which it
exists. Communities are by their nature complex
entities. To address the many aspects of a
community, a team encompassing multiple
disciplines was assembled with the idea that it
would be better able to comprehensively
understand the community than any one discipline
individually. The team consisted of primarily
engineers and medical personal, as most issues
raised in development work are related to these
two fields.