Micro-planning process
(A field guideline)
Micro-planning is a participatory process where concerned context community and different stakeholders ( or service providers) come together to
- Identify the gaps (mainly non-availability or difficulty in availing resources) in development process and analyse it through identifying available resources ( social, natural, physical & financial), gaps in availing ( procedure) resources and would plan-out time and resource bound different stakeholder-specific strategy based on the analysis of resources and possibilities of new resources.
STEP-1
Context selection
For micro-planning it is vital to know where we would be facilitating the process of micro-planning i.e. the context of micro-planning-tribal, rural, coastal, desert and slum. Identification of context is the preliminary step of micro-planning.
Micro-planning could be with any context and for any size of are, but preferably smaller the context area (in terms of population and geography) giver better the micro-planning.
STEP-2
Setting up of Purpose and objectives of the micro-planning
Before moving to the field it is quite important to have clear cut purpose and objective of the micro-planning. Mere just going for the micro-planning without any purpose or objectives would result in few maps and information nothing else.
To set the purpose of the micro-planning it is important to know the basic information of the context and one must raise query on why micro-planning?
To set the objectives of micro-planning one must raise the queries on what and how to achieve through micro-planning?
STEP-3
Formation of team
Once the purpose and objectives of the micro-planning has been set it is important to form a team for the process of facilitation for the micro-planning. It is important to know that “its not we people from NGOs would be doing the micro-planning, it is important that community along with other key stakeholders ( PRI, NABARD, KVK, Agricultural department, NGOs etc) would do the micro planning, but the major role is of the community and other stakeholders could play the role of facilitators or input providers in developing a better and sustainable micro-planning.
For the NGOs to form the team for the facilitation of the micro-planning process following are important:
- It is better to have a social worker (probably expert in micro-planning), a gender expert, a NRM expert and a health expert in the micro-planning team, but more important is the team must be able to understand the local language and must be able to communicate with the community and the other stake holders. Also it is important to understand that the experts are there to sharpen the micro-planning and for the facilitation, not to include their ideas or their agenda in the micro-planning.
- Team must be clear on various tools and techniques to be used in the micro-planning facilitation
- Team must have clarity on the context, its situation, community and about other stakeholders.
STEP-4
Prior preparation before moving to the field
Planning of micro-planning in terms of use of tools and techniques must be discussed and clear amongst the team members. It would be good to have a team leader for facilitation of the micro-planning at the field level.
Before moving to the field it would be better to have a prior communication with the community, volunteers and indeed with the other stakeholders.
Resources in terms of chart paper, sketch pens, poweder colours, markers, stickies , cello tape and other related required resources must be purchased and packed for the field exercise.
STEP-5
In the field process
After entering the field it would be suggested to have a common meeting with the community and must be purpose and objectives of the micro-planning have to be shared with the community.
Different exercises/tools could be followed in the field to facilitate the micro-planning process as:
Participatory Techniques adopted to facilitate the MICRO-Planning process
- Transect walk-It helped in getting familiarity with the village people and understanding of development issues present there in general way. It also helped in triangulating the information received.
- Pair wise ranking- With this tool information regarding the prioritization of diseases and the causes of diseases get identified.
- Social Mapping-This tool could be used to get basic information related with health for each and every household of Mavashiya village.
- Seasonal Mapping- This tool provided information about the different diseases according to the different seasons .{here we divided the seasons according to the well known things as festivals or crop season. We can divided 12 months in six parts as-Naya Saal ( New Year-from Dec to Jan), Holi (Festival of colour-in March), Kaam Ka Mahina (Season of migration-Apr to June), Rakshabandhan (Festival of brother and sister-August), Makke Ka Season ( Season of Maize harvesting-Sept to October), and Deepawali (Festival of Light-November)} and what all are the preventive and curative measures people as well as the group members adopt according to the season.
- Causal Analysis : We have conducted this with the community to identify the key problems of the concerned area and the key reasons behind all those problems.
- Focus Group Discussion (FGD) - This tool could be used for gathering information on various issues like awareness of people about the different issues as agriculture production, health facilities, health and hygiene practice practiced by the village people, prevalent diseases, awareness about the different government programme, sanitation.
- Time Line/village history – Through this tool we could know about the changes (especially related with developmental prospect) happened over time regarding the change in overall development of the village happened in the past.
STEP-6
Triangulating information to develop micro-planning
Once the data/information would be collected from the field through the various exercises, along with the community and other stakeholders, planning exercise could be done where focus would be on triangulating the available resources, need of resources and gap between the needs and available resources. For example when our team has facilitated the micro-planning process at Ajmer
In triangulating the information important is considering the feasibility of planning, planning should not be like that which would not be feasible in terms of resources, time and human resource.
STEP-7
After the micro-planning
Once the micro-planning has finished, the planning must be shared by the community to the community and other stake holders, people from NGOs could facilitate the process of presentation of micro-planning.
After presentation planning could be re-worked based on the feedback from the community and the other stakeholders and then same planning written document would be presented by the community members/CBO members to the gram sabaha for the inclusion of planning, planning document would also be shared with the other stake holders for their support (especially with NABARD, KVK, local bank, agriculture department and if possible with the BDO and district collector). It is also important to note that, it not only sharing of plan is vital, important is inclusion of plan in the annual plan of different stakeholders viz Panchayat, NABARD, KVK etc.
By: Vinod Pandey
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