Capacity Building through Faith Based Facilitation (FBF) – Africa Zone

Background

The underlying aim of the project, “Capacity Building and Development Through Faith Based Facilitation” is for communities within Africa to be able to work together to identify their own concerns and issues, to recognise their own strengths, identify where they need help and find their own solutions.

The project has also aimed for TSA personnel at all levels to be competent in using FBF in all situations, both within the church and in community.

Purpose/objective

This Evaluation is intended to assess the relevance, performance and success of the project, as well as the appropriateness of strategy and approach, the process of implementation, and quality and efficiency of management structure.

It will look at signs of impact of project activities in the implementing communities and sustainability of results, including the contribution to capacity development within the Salvation Army across Africa.

The evaluation will identify and document lessons learned and make recommendations that the organization might use to improve the design and implementation of other related projects and programmes as it will give a further opportunity for learning and improvement.

Methodology

This evaluation design used a mixed methods approach, and consisted of the following main data collection activities:

1. A desk analysis of existing documentation.
2. Structured Interviews (by telephone/skype) with territorial leadership, and with FBF Coordinators.
3. Online survey, targeted at ‘good’ facilitators.
4. Case Studies of FBF usage.
5. Field Visits to 4 territories.
6. Participation in FBF Conference.

Key findings

Project design:

• FBF is aligned with current international development trends, and supports the vision and mission of The Salvation Army. However, there is a mismatch between the FBF approach and the organisational commanding culture of leadership, which prohibits the effective rollout of FBF as a “way of working”.
• The FBF approach is particularly suited to being used by the local Corps.

Implementation strategy:

• The project did not have a clear, measureable implementation plan that set out how the project goals were to be achieved.
• Movement of Officers has a slight or negative effect on the implementation of FBF.

Institutional development:

• Senior leaders are seen to be supporting FBF. However, FBF cannot be said to be owned as a ‘way of working’ across territories in Africa as: Leaders are not actively involved in modelling FBF; Community Engagement and FBF are not incorporated in all Territorial Strategic Plans; and there are very few success stories of FBF usage within the Army.
• There is a booklet describing FBF (the BDR booklet), but no training manual for FBF; the BDR booklet has been translated into several major languages, but very few local languages; the only FBF resources available on the TSA website are online versions of the BDR booklet.

Capacity building (training):

• The quality and duration of the FBF training that people have received varies considerably; and some training will not have been of an appropriate standard to ensure that trainees would be able to implement what they had learned. Only 7 territories have accurate records of people trained, and more than 50% of territorial leaders interviewed have NOT received FBF training.
• Good facilitators demonstrate understanding of FBF and claim to feel confident using FBF tools within communities and TSA settings. Most FBF coordinators have received training in more than one occasion and experience some level of support from their territorial leadership.
• Anecdotal evidence suggests that retreats and conferences have been used to share FBF knowledge and experience, and that exchange visits to other community sites are particularly helpful.

Community engagement:

• There is some case study evidence of communities coming together to identify their own concerns and issues. These (case study) communities have been empowered to recognise their own strengths, identify where they need help and find their own solutions. However, absence of available evidence suggests that TSA, through its Corps, is interacting with very few communities across Africa using the FBF approach.
• Communities represented in these case studies are being impacted in one or more of the following ways: Material improvement in their daily circumstances; Social / emotional benefits of a more intangible nature; Personal spiritual transformation for some. These case studies provide insights into ‘pockets of excellence’
• Anecdotal evidence suggests that Corps may be strengthened when using FBF both within the Corps, and when the Corps uses FBF to engage with its community.

Project management (practical & financial):

• Allowing the use of sub-grants to fund community initiatives was contrary to the FBF approach and their presence sent a ‘mixed message’ to Salvationists and to communities.
• Projects Departments may not get to hear about ‘non-projects’ i.e. those initiatives started as a result of an FBF process, which are successfully mobilising local resources, and not requiring external donor funds. This is because the responsibility and management capacity of the Projects Departments currently lies with externally funded projects/income streams.
• The self-assessment rubric has been completed by all territories and provides a useful comparative analysis across territories.

In conclusion, the FBF project has not reached its expected goals, and so the resources (financial and human) cannot be said to have been used effectively. Where FBF has been used successfully within the Army, the benefits are very encouraging. However, there are insufficient numbers of these success stories resulting from the amount spent, spread geographically, over a 5-year period.

Recommendations:

1. Major work is needed to affect culture change within the Army because a participative, consultative way of working cannot successfully co-exist with a hierarchical, authoritarian way of working.
2. There is a need to reaffirm the role of the Corps as the missional agent of the Army in reaching communities with its transforming and holistic message.
3. As such, all Officers need to be adequately trained to understand and know how to use the approach to effectively reach communities. Senior leadership need to be given a half-day ‘executive summary’ of the FBF approach;
4. A ‘way of working’ is not a project and so implementation has to be driven by the command-structure through the day-to-day work of the Army:
   a. The behaviours and tools of the FBF approach need to be modelled from top leadership down;
   b. Corps Officers are responsible for mobilising their Corps to engage with the community in participatory, facilitative ways (i.e. using FBF).
   c. Accountability for progress at Corps level needs to be regularly reported through the existing command-structure. In essence, the Corps Officer reports to his superior officer on the Corps’ progress in Saving Souls, Serving Suffering Humanity and Growing the Saints.
   d. Ongoing monitoring of progress and support should be given to the Corps.

Comments from the organisation, if any

FBF is further forward as a way of working for TSA. Now, more than ever before, we have corps officers who are taking time to build relationships with communities around them, not just give charity, and where this has worked well it has given us very encouraging results.

The key learning has been that some of the terminology and approach was confusing from the start, and not fully addressed, so we need to be clear and consistent in our approach to ensure it is embedded.

We shouldn't have been so ambitious to try to reach FBF as a way of working across TSA, but instead be focused in areas that others could learn from in the future. We've learnt that leadership have to be on board, and that we need to make sure we give correct support to build capacity - not just initial training and some refresher courses.

Lastly, we've learnt about communication - the need to tell the positive stories, the need to have accessible resources, and the need to have more ways people can learn from each other.