Feedback in Community Driven Programs

Fariha Raisa, Feedback Labs | March 30, 2023

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How would you address sexual health and reproductive rights focusing on girls and young women? How about a soccer based curriculum where female coaches go out to schools and provide themed tournaments to raise awareness for sex education?

This is just one example among the program offerings of Vijana Amani Pamoja (VAP) – Swahili for youth together in peace – that advocates sports for social and economic development. With a mission to integrate social and economic values through football, VAP aims to create a proactive health environment and build a society that is socially, economically, and healthily empowered. VAP’s programs ranges from community library providing STEM education to vocational training and sports advocacy.

For evaluation of the programs, VAP implements pre- and post-surveys for the collection of program data from the participants. The current challenge has been to develop its own online software or platform for monitoring and evaluation where these data can be captured and analyzed in real-time. They are also aiming to have an organizational research and development unit where all programs would be community driven and comprised of the participants’ views. VAP gave a LabStorm presentation to curate ideas for scaling up and reviewing existing programs, as well as establishing best practices for community driven organizing.

Stories of Change. Participants emphasized on the idea of looking out for the stories that had highlighted the impact of the program and then discuss what events led to these significant changes following the program. Furthermore, alog with a pre and post survey, a midline survey could be used to integrate program experience survey. Besides using a Net Promoter Scale (NPS) on a scale of 1-10, the response could be followed up with an open ended question of why the score was given.VAP was encouraged to bring the results back to the students, and present the reasons why people gave a particular score. Having a rapid discussion of what went well and what didn’t followed by a reiteration of what was heard could help plan the next program.
Promoting Community Engagement. Attendees reiterated the idea that people give feedback when they know that the feedback will be used to inform decisions. If people see that their feedback is getting used in one project, they are likely to give more feedback for the next one. Consequently, VAP was recommended to show examples of what they did with the feedback in another project to solicit feedback for a new program. Example of what VAP created using community feedback would be exemplifying for people to realize that VAP prioritizes listening to the community.
Feedback Tools. Attendees shared different survey tools that are used for collecting feedback. Examples included using images to design a fun survey for internal staff and co-creation for onboarding new projects. Attendees proposed the idea of using a survey that allows for voice input; even a limit of 30 second to record voice responses would allow for voice input that could then be deconstructed for anylyzing the emotion behind the response through cadence and tone.

The discussion came to an ended with the recommendation that staff and facilitators could be trained to ask follow-up probing questions to ensure feedback is detailed and not just high level. This would eliminate the room for guessing, and bring out the specific reasons why a program was effective or did not work. Asking for ideas as an opportunity to co-create and wrapping up the dialogue with the top three areas that VAP should prioritize would help the team internalize the programs that are most influential for the community.

Learn More About LabStorms

LabStorms are collaborative problem-solving sessions designed to help organizations tackle feedback-related challenges or share what’s working well in their practice.