Introduction
Updated - Thursday 20 November 2003
Supporting Community Management
A manual for training in community management in the water and sanitation sector
1. Why a trainers' manual on community management?
It is common these days for projects in the water supply and sanitation sector to actively promote community management of water supply and sanitation services. Similarly there are many tools that have been developed to enable us to engage communities, share knowledge with community members and enable community members, with minimal support, to better analyse their own situation and plan the management and improvement of their water supply and sanitation services.
Unfortunately formal or traditional education and training does not offer an opportunity for trainers, community development workers and engineers to learn in a way that enables them to practice the use of such tools effectively. In the last decade appropriate training courses have increasingly adopted practical approaches to learning that encourage participants to engage community members as people with knowledge and with ideas that should be built on rather than changed.
This manual may be used to plan training aimed at helping participants, such as field staff, internalise key concepts related to community participation in the management of their own water supply and sanitation services.
2. Who is this manual for?
Trainers of field staff
This manual provides innovative approaches and tools to help to improve the training of field staff. Firstly it provides background information on a number of concepts that are related to community management. It also has chapters that help to plan training programmes and training sessions using the action learning or experiential learning approach. Lastly it describes a number of useful tools to help participants internalise key concepts and skills crucial to support community participation and management. If adapted, field staff can also use some of the tools when working in communities.
Project Managers
This manual provides background on key concepts and skills which all staff, but particularly colleagues who work with communities, need to be familiar with. They also need to internalise these concepts and the skills discussed in order to promote genuine community participation in, and management of, projects and services. It describes the type of training approach required to help colleagues internalise these concepts and skills and discusses a variety of tools. This manual can also be used to help encourage colleagues to adopt community sensitive approaches in their work through organising training, or utilising key tools in everyday briefings and management.
3. Structure of the manual
This manual is divided in two parts. Part I covers the theory of concepts and approaches and Part II has a large number of tools meant to help internalise and learn how to use the theory.
Part I: Concepts and approaches
Chapters 2-6: Throughout Part I there are references to the tools that will be found in Part II.
Chapter 2 Approaches to learning Introduces the reader to a variety of learning approaches and the implications these approaches have for trainers and trainees. Chapter 3 Useful concepts for field staff supporting community management Introduces a number of important concepts which facilitators will need to internalise if they are to promote and support active community participation and management of water supply and sanitation systems. Chapter 4 Discovery learning and community management Explains participatory development and its phases; the diagnosing phase, the experimenting phase and the sustaining phase. Chapter 5 Facilitation a challenge:Deals with the art of facilitation. Chapter 6 Preparing for training Explains the hierarchy of training strategy, training plan, training programme and training session. It also discusses the various steps to take for learning based training.
Part II Tools
The tools described in this section are for use when helping, for example, field staff to develop concepts related to participation, learning and community management and to improve their facilitation. The sequence of the tools follows the discovery learning approach
