What happens when you support communities unconditionally to act as they see fit to tackle malnutrition? You get initiatives that seem, on the face of it, a long way from typical malnutrition interventions, whether that’s making soap, refurbishing a health centre or starting a poultry farm. Stephanie Buell of Action Contre la Faim on the “Boolo Xeex Xibon” project in Senegal – and how it actually put the community at the centre of the fight against malnutrition.
Even when aid actors emphasise community engagement, there isn’t often real space for a community to truly say “this is what we want” and trust that the project will respond. Even rarer is communities being given the resources to put something into action themselves.
I am going to tell you about a project that does both these things. I should say straight away that I am the Country Director of Action Contre la Faim (ACF) in Senegal, which is behind this project, but I hope the account below and the evidence we have collected will demonstrate the value of our approach. Indeed, the fact that this was an action research project is what allowed us to really document that process of what it takes to be truly community-led.
As our project participant Darou Diakhour said: “The big difference between this project and others resides in the fact that it belongs to us. It is ours, and we must invest our efforts to make sure it succeeds.”
The project is “Boolo Xeex Xibon” – which means “Together to Combat Malnutrition” in Wolof – and has been running since April 2022 in four different villages in Louga in the North of Senegal. Louga as a region has a global acute malnutrition rate of 28.4%, which is well above the national average. Chronic malnutrition is 21.9% – also above average. Additionally, due to its location in the Sahelian north of the country, Louga is very prone to the effects of climate change and significant food insecurity. Rural communities also suffer from a lack of access to key services, including healthcare.
Communities decide and drive the whole project
The goal is to prevent child malnutrition by strengthening community resilience to multi-faceted shocks. But how that actually happens is left entirely up to each of the four villages/communities.
As the community is in the driver’s seat throughout the entire project cycle, the role of ACF is only to facilitate the process and support communities towards autonomy and resilience.
Within the different levels of community engagement, the BXX project aspires to reach the fifth: that is, to actually empower or “defer to” the people we are seeking to support. Practically speaking, this was the facilitation of regular discussions (weekly over three years in our four target villages) which meant first identifying the main risk factors for malnutrition, and then proposing activities that would address these risks, as well as a way to monitor the desired success of each activity.
These activities included things like setting up a small-scale poultry farm, purchasing cattle, rehabilitating the local health centre, opening a local shop, and making bleach and soap. Each village received its funding – unconditionally – to put these chosen activities in place.
‘In one of the community discussion sessions I attended, I found myself tempted to steer the conversation more towards malnutrition prevention. But that was not the point of the session, so I continued to listen…’
What about monitoring and refining the projects? Our approach dispensed with the need for logical frameworks, or logframes, and workplans. Instead, throughout this process, the discussion sessions continued, to see whether the activities were having the impact desired by the community (based on earlier discussions of how we would monitor success), what was learned, and what more could be done. The project adapts to evolving needs as communities gain better understanding of local causes of malnutrition and progressively develop strategies to address them.
Communities choose to prioritise root causes
At this point, you might be wondering to yourself what this project actually has to do with malnutrition, as many of the activities chosen by each of the four communities ensured access to an income or trade.
We felt that this approach, of letting the community decide what best suits them, is what it would take in order to sustainably address the multiple causes of malnutrition in a given community. The decision was to address root causes instead of traditional, direct malnutrition interventions.
And indeed we know from years of expertise and data – namely from the Link NCA studies – that malnutrition prevention must be multi-sectoral. In this case, the fact that the communities mostly chose to prioritise an income as their most urgent need showed us that this was the most important root cause of malnutrition in these contexts. The project then provided the resources and space to address this.
Four key insights
Ok so what did we actually learn?
- Building trust with the ACF community mobiliser who co-facilitated the discussions and project was key: they knew they could count on his presence, support, and ability to listen and this increased the trust in the project as a whole.
- It’s important to adjust to the community’s rhythm and do things in their own time, in step with local routines in order to agree on a common, local understanding of the problem – in this case the causes of child malnutrition.
- Putting financial resources in the hands of community members is important – firstly because it allows them to actually own the project activities but also because it builds trust and accountability.
- This type of community-led project can also reinforce social cohesion and potentially help them face future shocks through better community governance and mutual resilience.
This approach can feel daunting. As aid workers, we are so used to being in the driver’s seat that giving up control may feel uncomfortable. I know I felt this myself at times in this project: in one of the community discussion sessions I attended, I found myself tempted to steer the conversation more towards malnutrition prevention. But that was not the point of the session, so I continued to listen.
That listening meant that, over a few more discussion sessions, the community themselves (with our community mobiliser helping to guide when needed) came up with the main risks they wanted to try and address: namely, lack of income, poor quality of roads, loss of soil fertility due to climate change, and how all the youth were migrating to Dakar for jobs. These are actually linked to malnutrition prevention in a myriad of ways but the act of listening meant we got a much richer and deeper analysis and therefore larger array of solutions.
So, going back to the analogy of the driver: this is about staying in the car, and having the community do the driving. But more than that, it’s about practising humility: that maybe we didn’t know the road as well as we thought we did, and trusting our driver to get us there in the end.
The feedback from our participants does suggest they felt the difference. As one project participant in Nguer Nguer village said: “Many projects come, ask us questions on our needs, and then disappear. With ACF, we saw something concrete: trainings, follow-up, technical support. This project is different.”
Stephanie Buell is Country Director of Action Contre la Faim (ACF) in Senegal.
Thank you Stephanie. This is an example of shifting power to communities in real life situations, and focusing on the change co-defined by communities and produced by them. I have recently been engaged with Fidelitas Scientific Execution Facility in Uganda, and the approach too is very interesting as it looks at the target project participants/community members as the implementers and not the NGOs/CBOs/INGOs or even government.
WHY? They Implement the change, and that is what matters. Many institutions are still grappling with the old way of thinking, that they are the boss and community has to follow instructions. In-part, these NGOs too, are tied by donor requirements and nature of financial accountability. But the way to go especially in the dwindling funding is allowing communities to drive!
Thank you for your comments and also pointing me towards Fidelitas in Uganda! Definitely agree that we need to recalibrate our understanding of how change happens and ensure decisions come from the actual change-makers.
This is SALT
Share-Appreciate-Listen/Learn-Transfer
All aspects of SALT were demonstrated in this community empowerment project. The practice might not have been intentional but was achieved by allowing the community to lead, trusting and support their ideas.
The community recognized that they owned the ideas and the outcomes, making its success sustainable.
I am glad that the NGO members were able to recognize their role and allow the community to lead.
Hi Amanda, thanks for your comment and linking this to SALT. In some ways, the outcome around community ownership became just as important as the original idea/objective around malnutrition prevention. It wasn’t just a means to an end, but an end itself and something I hope we can replicate elsewhere.
This is the way to go. Many projects are run through collusion of mediocrity where there community operates in fear of losing out on the donation of donors, so they don’t own the project and they have to be politically correct even in speech and word during monitoring. End result is less impact, dependency and unsustainable results.lots of funds are drained into poor strategy.
100% agree with your point around communities operating out of fear of losing out on a project/funding. And I think not enough aid workers/NGOs take this into account: we are bringing resources into a context of scarcity and we are often the ones with all the power so it’s hard to say no, or “this is not what we want”.
Some time ago, before I was a Country Director, this is something I gave a fair amount of thought to, and if you are interested you can see a piece I wrote here at the time: https://securelivelihoods.org/publication/participation-and-engagement-a-discussion-about-power/.
Of course the reality of shifting power is far more complicated in practice!
The impactful and inspiring nature of this initiative underscores the power of community ownership in achieving project goals and desired outcomes. My experience with ACF provided valuable insights into effective community-based approaches within the humanitarian sector.
Very interesting as a way of succeeding a project in senegal specially in Louga where I worked 4 years.Population wants really be involved where decisions are taking in order to give their opinions.I can say they are very committed to work and make a project succeed.I really know their mindset.
Thanks for the comment Nalla and glad to hear that this is also something you noticed in Louga! Definitely agree that when you create space and provide resources for the community to lead, you get a richer more impactful project.
Dear Stephanie, I wholeheartedly endorse your approach of true empowerment of beneficiaries — the only humane and sustainable way to really help. It takes deep humility, patience, perseverance, and belief in humanity on the part of the donor to listen, learn, and just provide positive support. May the conditions continue to allow this to flourish! May the results convince others to emulate! May this method spread throughout in a virtuous cycle! Sending my good wishes to you!
Thank you for sharing. The approach is quite relevant to the fast-evolving challenges and threats to livelihoods in low-income settings. Sometimes (most times), communities understand their context better, they know what is required and what will work in their systems, and the missing catalysts are often facilitation and resources.
The insights could also inform discussions on the role and structure of multistakeholder partnerships in landscape initiatives.
This is really interesting. What has happened to the malnutrition rate as a result?
Has there been any comparison between how effective this approach vs a more traditional approach has been at combatting malnutrition. Both in short and long term?