Learning, evaluation, health communication, living practice, lessons learned

Worldview International Foundation (WIF) and International Family Health (IFH) worked together from 1998 to 2002 in implementing the Facilitation of Adolescent Communication And Training for Sexual health (FACTS) project to improve the sexual and reproductive health (SRH) of vulnerable young people in Nepal, Sri Lanka and The Gambia FACTS. The implementing partners were WIF's global network members Worldview Nepal (WVN), Worldview Sri Lanka (WSL) and Worldview The Gambia (WTG). The UK Community Fund, formerly known as the UK National Lottery Charities Board (NLCB), funded the project.

The project reached over 24,000 disadvantaged young women and men who were at particular risk of sexual ill health because of the socio-economic context in which they lived. The FACTS project process included:

FACTS drew extensively on participatory approaches and attempted to share the complementary lessons from interventions in the three countries where is implemented.

The Year 3 exchange workshop took place in The Gambia from 8-13 November in 2001. Exchange, provided £15,000 for the workshop and contributed to workshop design, planning and facilitation. Over 40 participants from WIF, WTG, WVN, WSL, WVN, IFH and Exchange, including youth facilitators from all 3-project countries and two youth participants from The Gambia, attended the workshop.

Prior to the workshop, each country conducted the participatory evaluation activity “Horse and Cart” with current and former roundtable participants in order to gather qualitative data on the project impact and identify strengths and weaknesses of the project. The youth facilitators presented the results from each country.

Participants analysed the lessons of FACTS and considered sustainability issues through various participatory activities such as the Significant Timeline activity, spider diagramming, large and small group discussions, and role-plays. In addition, FACTS Sri Lanka presented the results of a survey of ‘reported behaviour change’ conducted among 1,200 young people randomly selected from the project districts.

A site visit to Farafeeni included observation of Roundtables, a quiz show featuring participants from several villages, role-plays by participants, and discussions with participants, facilitators and community members.

Learning lessons from project work is something that is increasingly recognised as being key for improving the effectiveness of subsequent development work. However, it is rarely given either the time or resources that are needed to allow those engaged in the work to really reflect and analyse their own practice. Nor is enough attention paid to the effective sharing, documentation and dissemination of such ‘lessons learned’.

International Family Health (IFH) and Worldview International Foundation's (WIF) Facilitating Adolescent Communication and Training for Sexual Health (FACTS) project, aimed at improving the sexual and reproductive health (SRH) of vulnerable young people in Nepal, Sri Lanka and The Gambia, was conceived in a way that yearly ‘exchange’ workshops would facilitate the sharing and comparing of lessons learned from the way the project was implemented in the different country settings.

In the third year of the project, financial constraints saw the redirection of funds earmarked for the third ‘exchange’ workshop into operational activities. It was at this point that the Exchange programme, a networking and learning programme on health communication for development funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), was able to provide some funds to ensure that the third ‘exchange’ workshop took place.

One of the objectives of the Exchange programme is to strengthen learning initiatives that already exist in health communication, and as such, the FACTS project presented the opportunity to do just that, and continue the fruitful endeavour of linking the three ‘sister’ projects together to share their lessons across time and country context.

The main objective of the third and final FACTS exchange workshop was, in addition to sharing experiences, to reflect upon the project's achievements, impact and constraints. Exchange also brought an added emphasis on documenting lessons from the process of ‘exchange’ in itself.

During the workshop we heard the unfortunate news that the funding for continuation of FACTS was not to be renewed. In one way this highlights the difficulty of making the case for the importance of documenting and sharing lessons to inform future work, when people working at project level face the insecurity and uncertainty of short-term funding cycles, and the time pressures these bring.

However, we were also inspired by the resolve of many of the facilitators to continue their work whether they were funded or not, as part of their commitment to the health and future of their own communities. Our hope is that the documentation in this report of some of the key lessons from the FACTS project work, and the implications of these lessons for the sustainability of such work in the future, will help the facilitators continue their work. We also hope that some of the lessons prove useful for those working at the project level in non-governmental agencies, doing related work in the area of participatory health communication particularly with young people, and those who are involved in planning comparable projects in the future.