The Centre for Civic Engagement for 11 months has been running an initiative focused on  Building a Concerted Movement of Youths and Women for Democracy and Development, whose aim was to nurture women’s and youths’ activism and advocacy capacities as well as help in building sustainable and visible organisations/platforms of youth and women who focus on inclusive democracy. We started with 16 participants from various backgrounds working in the areas of democracy, women and youth empowerment, development and technology, and women’s rights. The program was split into the following components: the incubation of youth/women-led platforms and organisations; improving the advocacy capacities of participants through online and face-to-face training on civic engagement and developing an advocacy strategy together with communities through the three (3) step policy advocacy lab process, which also was a platform to help foster more inclusive community dialogue on what which is a key component to advancing more inclusive democracy and development in Zimbabwe.

The workshop held on the 10^th of December 2024 was part of the process of completing the final two steps of the policy advocacy lab and to also formally closing out the project and handing out certificates of completion to participants.

1. Identify a problem: Lack of Access to Education in Zimbabwe
2. Develop a timeline of the history and scale of the problem: View the timeline
3. Gathering and clustering concerns
4. Identifying existing policy measures
5. Identifying stakeholders

Advocacy Strategy

The session focused on developing an advocacy strategy by framing possible actions to engage the local community, local government and central government. The group walked through 9 steps to create their own advocacy strategy. The full presentation can be found below.

1.  Developing Advocacy Goals
2. Developing Advocacy Objectives
3. Identifying Your Audiences
4. Building Advocacy Partnerships
5. Messages and Media
6. Taking Action
7. Identifying Resources and Gaps
8. Evaluating Your Advocacy
9. Taking Your First Steps

Transcript

All right guys, good afternoon and welcome. I will not take too much of your time but I have a proposal for all of you so you indicate through the chat if my proposal works. I want us to consider a final face-to-face meeting where we finalise the lab and then celebrate people who’ve been in this process, give certificates, the best, what is it, the most consistent participants, the most disruptive participant certificates, you know, I mean for since we started the journey and again so grateful that you’ve been with us on this journey.

So indicate availability in the chat for that. The team will organise a date, it will probably be a December date, it will be our closeout meeting because I think November is crazy. So I think we went through two parallel or two related processes, organisations, how to make organisations stronger, fundraising, now we’re looking at the subject matter but organisations have to be deep and so this is about advocacy.

So I believe you’ve already done the first stage which is about naming the problem. So I hope that you have gone through the naming process properly but just to say, yeah, you can keep it here, don’t move beyond it, just to say the naming of the problem, what I saw the team at Sevio shared with me their sort of their collection of what you did. Yeah, I think it’s a good, it’s a great start in terms of the names you give to problems but just to remind you that the names you give to problems have to be very, very accessible.

You know, it has to be a name that a community can use. At times we get so caught up in technical things and we miss out on saying that. If we’re going to say we’re working with communities, we need to make sure that the language is as easily understood as possible.

So the name of the problem that you give will either bring people to work with you or sort of make a distance because people will be struggling, what are we discussing now, sounds so technical, et cetera. So please don’t forget to keep on, writing in the chart your availability in December or end of November around a face-to-face meeting here in Harare so that we finalise this. So after naming the problem, you’re going to gather in concerns, why is this a problem, how does it affect you, et cetera.

Then all those are now put into different what we may call clusters. So we now create a framework of action. We look at the different areas because when people talk, they don’t realise that they’re actually talking maybe about the same things.

So we try to put these things in a theme to say, look, we’re getting this that is emerging, we’re getting this that is emerging, and how does it look like in terms of resolving problems? I believe you have come up with a problem called education. There’s a problem with our education in Zimbabwe.

You have seen education inequalities. I don’t know, it could be the inequalities to do with access or inequalities to do with the quality. But I just thought for the purposes of this discussion, I’ll name the problem as access to education.

Access to education. You may add to say access to affordable and quality education because I think those are terms that many people understand. So once you’ve done that, now we are at stage number 2A, which is creating a framework.

Matron, is it possible to get out and come back with the framework? What’s your next slide like? The next slide. Okay. So all right.

So I’ve explained this. Oh, you’re rushing. You’re rushing.

You’re rushing. Can you go back to the slide that was before that? Okay. Stay there.

Okay. At this stage, as I said, when you’re framing options and actions, you’ve already got the name of the problem and you’ve already discussed on the one hand what you think are the causes of the problem. What are the problems behind the problem? So you have said maybe it’s the cost, maybe it’s the distance to do with education or it’s the quality to do with the teachers or distances to do with the schools, et cetera.

And also you can talk about maybe the the relevance of the curriculum, all those big issues that you would have picked up. And they will be all over. You know, they are in different… At times they’re in your head, but we ask you to say, no, look, if you’re working with communities, put that on a board, make sure that the community can see what they’ve been saying.

As you’re facilitating these discussions around gathering the concerns of the community, you are doing it in such a way that everything that a member of the community says, you are writing down because the community member needs to see that what they think is important. At times we think, ah, what does this woman say? It’s not important. Then we don’t put it up there.

That becomes a problem because you are, instead of validating their participation, you’re making them look like they’re not valuable. So you need to make sure that everyone is in the room, they understand. So I’ll keep on saying, number one, use language that is accessible.

Number two, as you speak to the community, whatever they’re saying, make sure you are capturing it one way or the other on the board. You can capture keywords or you can capture the whole statement. Then you begin to ask certain questions, how does this problem affect you? Because we’re trying to understand how they’re implicated in the problem.

Then when you have all those things, you come back with that clustering and understanding of how this community is affected by the problem of maybe limited access to education. But because you’re an advocacy group, you now want to carry out advocacy. You’re going to try to cross-check this issue that you’re getting from community X with what is going on in the country.

So we then recommend that you carry out broader research. You begin to research to say, to what extent is this a problem in other communities? And if it is a problem, how big is it in other communities? So this is when we’re discussing the origins of the problem and its nature in different communities. We try to understand to say, is community X, let’s say Mutare or Mutorashanga, are they different from across Zimbabwe? So when you come to a place where you say, okay, from the data that we have, it looks like this is a common problem.

Because the moment it’s a common problem spanning different communities, then that’s when it qualifies to be discussed at a policy level, at the national level. But if it’s just unique to a community in Ward 17 of Mutare, maybe all it needs is local authority intervention. It does not need you to worry about making sure that you take it to the government, you come up with an advocacy campaign that is nationwide.

But you just understand that this problem is affecting this community. So there are local problems. It could be the problem to do with the quality of water.

It could be a problem to do with increased crime in that area. It could be a problem to do with having no electricity within that area. So when you think of all those things, you begin to say, okay, so now that we have seen this, and we have understood based on the data we have, that there are many other communities challenged by this issue around education inequalities.

So then that requires us to come up with a national advocacy programme. But then you need to go further. You have to create these alternative ways of resolving the problem through framing of solutions.

So a framing of solutions is to look at what kind of actions can be taken to resolve this problem. So as you are dealing with that, you begin to ask the community to say, okay, what do you think should be done to fix this problem? So as they are giving you answers, you are again clustering them around. It could be to say, oh, we need increased government expenditure.

And it may not come out that way. Well, that’s a very technical way. It may come this way.

So you’re looking at it and you’re saying, okay, you’re putting it there. There’s a need for more teachers. There’s a need for more schools.

Then somebody else may say, ah, maybe this also actually is not relevant. So you understand it. Ah, here we’re now talking of curriculum.

So you already have your what? Your three clusters. The one is on the curriculum. The other one is on the quality of teachers.

The other availability of teachers. The other one is on the number of schools within that community. Yeah.

So you’ve understood by reading wider in the origins of the problem. You now know how schools are spread in Zimbabwe. You know the ratio between schools, the number of pupils and the distance, the average distance that people walk to get to a school.

So you begin to say, okay, these are issues to do with access. So you solve that by just making sure that you have that. Then you begin to say, so when you’re saying, then people say, ah, you know, if they increase allocations towards the minister of education, et cetera.

But you keep on asking questions to say, but how can you also contribute? So as you’re looking at solutions, there are certain solutions that you look at and maybe cluster in a different colour and begin to say, these are solutions that the community is willing to take responsibility over and do. So those are not your advocacy actions. Those are your community actions.

So you leave those and say, these do not require advocacy. So for instance, it could be that, let’s say one of the problems you may have had is to say, these kids spend a lot of time drinking. They don’t go to school.

Then you ask, so what needs to be done? Then they can tell you, ah, the police need to do this. Then you keep on asking, but as a community, what is it that they can do? Then they begin to say, you know what, we can also make sure that our kids go to school. We can walk our kids to school.

We can do this. Then you can begin to put those under action that the community can do. Then there are certain things that you feel like, oh, police can play a role to say, can police make sure that all the liquor selling points in the community are not open during school hours? Yeah.

So that’s now an advocacy action directed at the police. So you’re beginning to say, okay, who is implicated here when you’re looking at stakeholders? The Minister of Home Affairs, where the police are housed, is implicated. Then you can also begin to say local businesses are implicated.

They need to be part of this discussion because they are the ones who are opening their beer halls or whatever to coincide with school opening hours. So you already put those aside. Then you begin to say, so what are the actions that we need to direct to the Minister of Education? Then you see this one around, oh, we need to see an increase in the number of teachers.

Then you begin to say, okay, so how do we create a campaign around the increase in the number of teachers? You’re just framing options. These are options. Then you begin to say, this is an action that should be taken by the Ministry of Government, so the Minister of Higher Education at a national level.

So you’re beginning to try to understand how the ministry deploys teachers to different communities. Then you may begin, further research may show you that the challenge is actually not the shortage of teachers. The challenge is that maybe there are not adequate incentives for teachers to come and work in rural schools or low-income schools, et cetera. Then you put that up.

Then you begin to weigh three or four actions. But the actions that you have seen, the options that you have seen, for now for advocacy, what we recommend is you can do all of them. I don’t know, Edda, if you can go in and out of the other clustering that we had, the one that I said, this is correct.

I just want to show them something. Okay, let me bring it up. Okay, thanks.

Alpha. Two seconds. Here we go.

Share screen. Okay, so this is the one, right? Okay, thanks. So this is coming from the work that you did.

So this is about the causes of education inequality in Zimbabwe. You have identified one, two, three, four, five, six clusters. So this is just a cluster that the team has put together.

So they found one big cluster that we call an underfunded public education system. So there’s an issue around funding. So some of the comments you made, there’s underfunding of education.

The education sector is significantly underfunded, receiving only 14% of the total budget expenditure in 2023, which is below the recommended 20% threshold. Then you’ve gone to uneven resource allocation distribution between rural and urban schools. I think here, I’ll come back to this, but there are similarities with the first one.

Social and cultural inequalities. Now you’re going deeper and you’re looking and saying the causes of education inequality is social and cultural inequalities. Child marriage rates remain high, driven by poverty.

Then you go to political and economic constraints, weak policy implementation, poverty, then corruption, corruption, corruption, corruption, weak, poor infrastructure development and human capital, the digital divide, etc. With more time, if we had time and to develop this, we could actually come up with three columns. We collapse this further because the first two columns for me speak about resources, public resources.

Then within the public resource issue, there’s also the issue of how those resources are allocated unevenly between rural and urban. Then there’s the issue around what you may call governance. So you have this political and economic constraint and corruption being a big issue around governance.

Then social and cultural inequalities. If you want to deal with education, you need to go to another ministry. So if you want to deal with education, you keep them for now, because you’re looking at them and saying, so how are they really sort of driving education inequalities? Because remember, you’re thinking about advocacy, because this is where we may begin to say, a social and cultural inequality is meant to be dealt with by the Minister of Education, or we’re trying to then maybe educate communities to do things differently, etc.

So you keep it there, you can just give it another colour to say, you’re not yet certain about what to do with this sort of thought. Then you look at weak and or poor infrastructure development and human capital. Exactly.

You’re looking at that to say there’s a divide, etc, etc. Expensive data tariffs, etc. Then you realise to say, I’m just showing how you work with your framing, you’ve been framing this, you’re not creating a framework eventually have to choose one action that you think will move the needle.

Yeah. So it’s important to come up with a framework a framing that works for you. So when you look at column, the first column and the last column, they stuff there, please don’t move, they stuff the way we talk about the underfunded public education system.

And when you come to the infrastructure, those are the manifestations of the underfunding. Yeah. Because if you have said is underfunded, we understand when then the next set of problems you have to do with infrastructure, because you said there’s no money, so they can not be so infrastructure has to be affected as well.

So you begin to say, okay, is weak or poor infrastructure, a primary problem, or a symptom, or a result of the problem? Because what you have said in cluster one is, is a root problem to say, there’s no way education can thrive when it’s underfunded. So you begin to say, maybe we should combine this and call weak or poor infrastructure, part of this underfunded public education, that’s the manifestation. So first of all, in the underfunded public education system, you have spoken to the budget norms, the African norm is that education should receive 20%.

But this time, it’s only receiving 14%. Then we begin to say, but that may not mean anything, because 14% may be enough. But then you begin to tell us about that, the country’s poor information and communication technology infrastructure, then we do okay.

So because of underfunding, communities are not schools in other communities are not getting infrastructure development, especially as we talk about the move towards digital technology, whatever, whatever. So you move that, but within the weak or poor infrastructure development and human capital, there are also issues to do with data, data tariffs, etc. Then you give that another colour code to say, okay, maybe this is not something that can be directly responded to by the Minister of Education, because the Minister of Education, Minister of Education, from what we understand, is not responsible for data tariffs.

There’s another ministry that is responsible for data tariffs. But you put it there to say, it could be something that we can pursue. But for now, we want to focus on how we can influence the Minister of Education.

Yeah, then you put all that. So look, if you look at other things that you have raised, you have raised issues to do with poor infrastructure, poor teacher training, all of them related to an underfunded public education system, because you can have a good education system if you’re funding it well, there won’t be poor teacher training, there won’t be poor infrastructure, that’s an assumption. But that’s the sort of the brainstorming you keep on doing by yourself and with others until you come up with saying, guys, so the real problem here that we want to fix because we think that if we fix this problem, we’ll fix the majority of the problems in education.

So for me, when I look at your framework, I’ll go with the first column, the underfunded public education system, to say there’s limited funding. That’s the problem. Now there’s limited funding towards inclusive education in Zimbabwe, then the problem statement could be that for the past five years, the government has been allocating less than 20% towards education, while it’s the sector has to deal with, then you give us the numbers, schools need so many teachers, but we’re only training so many, and others live through migration, infrastructure is collapsing.

Because of this, we need to be moving towards a new curriculum, you’re now adding flesh to your problem statement, and now it begins to make sense. So around the framework, that’s the sort of your advocacy framing to say, if we move, if we see improved funding towards education, from the 14% towards 20%, we can begin to see this. Yeah.

So that’s now your policy ask the government, you’re beginning to say, this is what we’re going to ask of the government. But you don’t stay there, because if you just say, oh, we’re here to demand that you improve funding towards education, it is okay, but it’s not enough. Then you begin to say improved funding towards public education will contribute towards, then you explain to us those other boxes you have this issue around infrastructure, this issue around you have around poor teacher training, this issue around you have around poor planning.

So once you begin to say, we believe that improved funding will lead to this. But then the most important thing when you do that, is you raise this feather when we discuss advocacy. But what you have done is you have put the Minister of Education into your corner, they are not going to oppose that policy ask remember, they’re not the ones responsible for allocating money from the budget.

That means your advocacy is now going to the Minister of Finance. Yeah, that’s where the money comes from. Because like right now, we’re in, we’re in the midst of budget consultations.

So now as an education-concerned grouping of advocacy organisations, you have a policy brief that you have written. And that is saying, oh, yes, we want to see improvements in access to education. But we believe that for us to see that improvement, we expect the government to increase allocation.

Because if they increase the allocation, that money should then go to these three or four priority areas. That’s your framework done based on the concerns. So when you come back to say, communities may say, oh, but the man was a man in the funding.

Then you begin to explain to them to say, there was no way we’re going to discuss weak or poor infrastructure in the absence of funding. There was no way we were going to discuss this uneven resource allocation or distribution between rural and urban schools in the absence of adequate funding. Also, I believe that there was no way we were going to discuss issues to do with poor teacher training if the resources were not there.

So you begin to say, we have done this, but we’re now beginning to say once this is available, and the second level of advocacy is now directed at the Minister of Higher Education, where we want to now talk about improved teacher training, improved infrastructure, improved allocation between rural and urban schools. So that’s your second level of advocacy. So first, you do this advocacy around making sure that the government is consistently allocating at least 20% or above towards education.

I hope this has made sense because I want to end here and just ask you to look at this. But I will redo this when we meet face to face, just to clarify so that you can come up with a more actionable framework from where you are going to understand. Because what you are now doing is to envisage your advocacy campaign over one year or two years, but saying, we start here, we deal with this problem when we’re here, we pivot towards now focussing on these issues.

But understanding again, that advocacy is not an overnight issue, because when we’re now doing with stage three, I believe, we’re now dealing with actually creating effective advocacy strategies, where we’re looking at all that. But you cannot create an advocacy strategy when you have not effectively done stage one, where you are naming the problem, and you are discussing its different manifestations, its symptoms and its causes. And you’re understanding if this problem is actually deserving of national attention as a policy problem, or just unique to that community.

And when you have not separated solutions between that which the community can do, and that which governments have to do. Once you have done that, then you move on to the next stage to say, of the framing of the actions we have proposed four or five broad clusters of actions that we have proposed, what is the one that is most likely to move the needle towards the desired result? Because I can assure you, you cannot carry out advocacy on the number of things that you have raised, because you just sound like, these people don’t know what they’re doing. But you look at what we may call the hook, the one that connects with all the other issues you have raised, that’s your hook.

Then when you’ve done that, you’re good to go in terms of developing your advocacy campaign, which we can cover in the face-to-face meeting. If the face-to-face meeting is not possible, we can have another Zoom meeting like this one, where we clarify all this. But for now, I think I’ve just sort of helped you to frame, so you can spend time between now and the next meeting, whether face to face or online, to clarify your actions, to say what is the best possible move forward, then you work around that.

Are there any questions? No questions from this end, Doc. Thanks for that. It’s putting things more in perspective.

Sure. Thanks, Julie. Eddah, back to you.

All right. Thank you. Thank you so much for that, Tenae.

And thanks to everyone who joined. So, you know, I see a comment from Tinashe, who’s just saying, I agree with Doc, a lot of movements, a lot of movements are centred around addressing the symptoms of the problem, which is why some issues linger on, linger on. So addressing the limited funding for education will be the best strategy to tackle the issue.

Yeah, and she also said none at the moment, I think you’ve unpacked it well. So we need to focus on the hook. And underfunding of the education sector is really the main issue.

So, yeah, thank you so much for that. I think it’s helped to bring, you know, helped the group just know they’re now way too narrow, focus the energies. But, you know, all the information and insights that they’ve developed so far, you know, I think provide a strong grounding background for them to continue with this process and this stage of naming, of framing possible actions.

That they can address. So, you know, we’ll be sharing the recording, plus we’ll also do a transcript as well, just to make it easier for people to follow in case they can’t listen to the recording again. And as Doc has highlighted that, you know, we’ll be just sending out a quick email to everybody just to check on your availability for the face-to-face meeting.

Either the end of November or the beginning of December. So we’ll just ask you in terms of options around those dates, what your availability looks like for us to then have a face-to-face meeting. To bring this process to a close, but, you know, to then help finalise and bring out a tangible output from this process that we’re undertaking that, you know, as a group or even individually in your organisations, you can look to run with in terms of, you know, advocacy work in 2025 and beyond.

So if there are no further questions or comments, thank you so much for your time. We’ve gone slightly over the 30 minutes that we had allocated, but thank you for allowing us for just the extra 13 minutes that we’ve had. If there are any questions, please feel free to reach out to Matron or me.

You know, if they want specific also for Dr. Mirza, just share it with us and we’ll make sure that we get his insights or inputs concerning any questions. So thank you guys. And I think we’ll call it a day here.

And yeah, we’ll be chatting online and, you know, we look forward to meeting and engaging with you soon. Let’s finish. Let’s finish strong colleagues.

I know these things have been protracted. It’s like that learning, et cetera, but let’s finish strong. We’ll celebrate or create a little Christmas party.

Let’s all come and meet in Harare. I’m sure Edda and Maitre can organise this. And yeah, we need to finish strong what we’ve started.

And so very, very, very humbled by just your consistent colleagues. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.

All right. Thank you so much, everyone. Take care and enjoy the rest of your day.

Thank you. Goodbye. All right.

Bye.

Here is the survey link: https://forms.gle/fkw2ziBWxBKXizTp8

Happy mapping!

Outcome

Stakeholders Identified

Policy Measures

View timeline

Here is a link to the draft Timeline for you to have an understanding of what our final product at this stage would look like.

https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/embed/index.html?source=18um8sOoVx04Bu6dxxdwrkjHuSJc7Z41ZxQvkp1xBZXI&font=Default&lang=en&initial_zoom=2&height

Transcript

Today we’ll be speaking to Ruby Quanson Davis. Ruby is a scholar-practitioner with nearly 20 years of global experience in public policy research and advocacy, deliberative conversations, community engagement, and institutional development.

Ruby specializes in strengthening the capacity for conflict prevention and peace processes in places experiencing political polarization, religious differences, or ethnic, racial, and gender divides. She’s worked extensively within Africa and the South Pacific, in Israel and the United States, using innovative ways of reflecting, learning, documenting, and sharing knowledge. She is the Senior Advisor for Learning and Impact at Peace Direct, an international charity in London.

As we embark on this process of gathering and clustering concerns within our communities, we’ve asked Ruby to share some key insights on how we can go about this. Welcome, Ruby, and thank you so much for your time today. Thank you.

Ruby, to get us started, let’s talk about gathering concerns. What does it mean, and what are some of the key steps or things that someone doing this needs to consider? So when we talk about gathering concerns, I think we need to take a moment to say, why are we doing this? Why do we gather concerns? What concerns? Whose concerns? And I think for those of us working in communities and wanting to influence policy and to change the situation around us, we gather concerns because we want to have a feel of what the community is thinking and what the community wants. None of us practitioners should think we can sit in our offices, or researchers for that matter, or sit in our homes and just decide what we think the community wants.

So the notion of gathering concerns is stopping intentionally paying attention to what the community is saying. Gathering concerns is asking the community members and the people we work with what concerns you, what bothers you about this problem, about a particular problem. And so that is what we need to keep in mind.

And what are some of the key things we should consider when we decide to do this kind of concern gathering? I think one is, who is part of the process? And that is so important. We are all talking about inclusive governance, inclusive nation-building, people who have been excluded, and so on. So we need to say, who should be part of it? The reason you ask who should be part of this is also that the process of concern gathering towards public policy influence means that people have to take a role in solving the problem.

Now if you want me to solve the problem in our community, you better include me in defining the problem. You don’t go and decide on what to do and then expect me to come and fix the problem. So one thing you want to do is to be sure you know who is coming to the room, or who is gathering under the tree, or at the marketplace, or wherever it is that we are meeting.

And by this I mean diversity. A diverse group of people who live in the community. The conversation should reflect those affected by the problem.

The second thing that we perhaps need to think about when we talk about concern gathering is to be willing to document exactly what the community is saying. I think, you know, as practitioners and researchers, sometimes we are quick to interpret what the community is saying and sometimes we misrepresent it. So one thing that we need to bear in mind once people have come into the room or gathered under the tree or by the riverside or wherever we are is to document or to record what people are saying.

I think when you hold these two things, who comes and recording, the practice or habit that then remains in the middle is listening. To listen to what they have to say. Because you bring the people and you want to document what they are doing.

But how do you do that? You first need to listen. And at this point, you are listening to hear them. You are not listening to judge.

That’s not your place. You want people to be able to express what the community is saying. Thanks so much for that, Ruby.

And you talked about, you know, people coming or the person gathering concerns, you know, being a listener. Someone, you know, you don’t pass judgment. There’s no right or wrong answer.

So what are you, how would you describe then the role of the person gathering the concerns as our participants go out? You know, are they a facilitator? Are they a moderator? What exactly, you know, what kind of role must they be playing to ensure that they gather this multiplicity of concerns from diverse community members and people don’t feel as though they can’t truly express what they feel about a problem, about this problem that we are discussing? Right. I like the fact that you mentioned a role.

Because you can play a role which may not be your everyday role. And so you can be a member of the community yourself doing this work. And then you choose to play the role of the person who helps the community to gather the concerns.

You could also be an outsider. Most of us are outsiders in the communities that we go into. And so we go there and play a role that enables the community to gather their concerns.

And you mentioned, you know, is that a facilitator? Is that a moderator? I mean, we don’t want to get hung up on what the name is. However, what we want to point out is that you are there to keep a conversation going, to document the outcome, and to let people feel heard so they can make decisions around the problem. So I think when you keep that in mind, you know that you are not there as a chairperson.

You’re not there as the boss. You’re not there as the leader. Although it may sound as if you’re leading the process.

You know, I say this because sometimes our practices in our countries make it such that as soon as somebody’s standing in front of us, we defer to the person. It’s a leader. And if the person happens to be a little older, then that is even stronger, right? And we want to appreciate all our cultural values in this space.

But we also want to remember that the goal of the gathering is to get communities to speak up. So I often like to talk about the moderator because you’re not just there to keep something going, but also the moderator, as it were, moderates what is going on. You are not the centre of the conversation.

You are present and you keep the conversation going, but you are not the centre of it. So when we train moderators and when we send people out in the communities, we want them to know how not to be the centre and yet keep the conversation. The goal is to get people to talk, and to pose questions that will get them to talk.

So I think that is important as a role, regardless of whether you are from the community or not. And I need to say that, you know, sometimes, not even sometimes, you are a member of your country. You are a citizen of your country.

You know the issues. Do you have thoughts on the issues? So chances are that when people are speaking, you sometimes want to be able to share your view as well.

You know, I would advise people to suspend their views a little bit to allow the room to kind of warm-up because if you are too quick to put your view in and that view is contrary to perhaps what the majority in the room think or even somebody thinks, you know, chances are that the person will be quiet and that wouldn’t be a successful conversation. And so I would say allow the conversation to come up. And one way in which you bring your view is to pose a question.

So kind of say, how about this side of it? What about those who say this? Again, remove yourself from the centre because you are not the one driving this. And I think that role needs to be moderated. Great.

And as our participants take on this moderated kind of role, what are some of the key skills that are needed for this process and key skills as a moderators that they should have as they work with and engage communities in this process? Thanks. You know, I think there are some skills that we talk about in developmental work and community engagement that people know about, you know, showing leadership skills and all of that. And, you know, people know that.

I’m not going to highlight that too much. But one of the skills that I want to bring up, which we talk about every time, is listening, listening skills. And, you know, we all think we listen until somebody is saying something we don’t like, and then we begin to zoom out.

As people go into the community, I want them to be mindful of the fact that someone might say something they don’t like, but you are the facilitator, and you are the researcher, and you’re the moderator. You’ve got to listen. And by this, I’m not saying that you encourage bad ideas or dangerous ideas to be expressed.

Your role as a facilitator or moderator means you’ve got to protect people in this space. But you can’t do that till you’re listening very carefully. And don’t listen to react.

If I don’t even listen to respond, because with concerns gathering, you just want to hear what the people are saying. I want to put another quality to listening. I like to say, listen actively.

Now, that’s different from just sitting down, you know. We come from African cultures where we gesture, we have facial expressions, you know. And in other cultures, they are gestures you don’t make.

In certain cultures, if you’re too still, you are not engaging. So when I talk about active listening, there are those cultural connotations. But active listening is also listening to see and hear the person in front of you.

And as I said before, suspending judgment. You know, when you work in a volatile area or like a place of conflict and so on, and you have factions coming to talk, sometimes you feel like you have to correct people, you have to get to an agreement, so you rush the process. With concerns gathering, the goal is to get as much as we can from the community so that we can understand the nature of the problem we want to solve.

So listening actively, I would put at the top of this. And as I said before, recording what the community says. Sometimes I say record the voice of the community.

I don’t mean recording on an electronic gadget. Of course, you can do that with permission, the permission of the community. But even just writing on the blackboard or on flip charts or whichever way that the community uses, I would apply, you know, whatever would apply in those communities, I think we should.

But that’s the top skill I would kind of highlight with concerns gathering. Great. And you’ve talked about, you know, you’re trying to get diverse opinions, insights around the problem, you know, the public issue that needs to be resolved.

But we know that some people might not be in the room. How can the concerns of those not present in the room or the community that you’re engaging with still be captured in the process that you undertake with those who are in the room? Great question. So let me go back to something I said before, which is the reason we’re doing concerns gathering, the purpose of the gathering.

We’re doing this so that we can have a sense and understanding of the problem to solve the problem. Now, if you want to solve the problem, you need people to solve the problem. I mean, I know there’s AI and everything, but we still do need people in our communities.

So some of those problems might be sorted out by the states or state agencies. But most problems are solved by community members as well. So here is the thing.

If you think about the problem and the need to solve it, you’ve got to think about who needs to be in the room. Now, you have said well that you can’t have everybody in the room, but everybody can be represented as much as possible. So to the person who goes to have this conversation in their community, I would encourage you, after your first round of questions, you know, what concerns you, what bothers you about this problem, please take a moment to say who is not in the room and allow the community members or the participants to think for a moment.

You know, sometimes even have a pause, one or two minutes, and then give people little prompts. For instance, I would say, think about your mother. What would she say about this problem? Think about your sister.

Think about marginalized groups. Think about somebody incapable of walking into this room. Think about somebody with a disability.

How would they see this problem? Now, let’s make this a little practical. Let’s say we’re talking about unemployment. Unemployment for a 55-year-old man is quite different from unemployment to a 25-year-old woman.

Unemployment for somebody in a rural area might be different from somebody in an urban area, or unemployment will look different for different people at different times in their lives. So when we say who is not in the room, we are pushing the community to think widely. But also remember that what I said at the beginning, we would have to do this collaboratively.

So it is a good time to get the participants to think about who else they might be able to work with. And sometimes it’s not somebody who is immediately affected by the problem, but somebody who can facilitate the solution. It could be a business leader.

And so in the end, you’re like, we need to bring the private sector in. Well, how would they see this problem? We need to gather their concerns about the problem as well. So that’s what I would say about those prompts so that the community can think beyond their small bubble.

Great. So now we’ve gathered concerns, and possibly a lot of concerns. How does the clustering process now begin? Without it being overwhelming, but also ensuring that, as you’ve highlighted, you don’t lose the insights shared by the community.

They don’t feel as though, okay, you’ve now… In trying to maybe cluster or box or segment where these concerns lie, that it’s fallen off the table, it’s fallen off the plate, and it’s no longer… They don’t see themselves then, their concern any longer in this process. So how do we… Just a few key things as you begin clustering. One is that it’s not overwhelming for our participants who are undergoing this process, but they still ensure that they carry the community and its voice in what the output is produced.

Right. Once again, let’s kind of break it down and say, what is clustering? Because it seems like a big English word sometimes. What does that mean in our thinking and our languages? And I would encourage those going to the field to even find the local word or the vernacular word for it.

But to break it down even in English, the whole idea of clustering is things coming together, right? So you just painted a picture of us having, say, a full board or room of concerns. So let’s say we have unemployment, and somebody says, what concerns me about unemployment is that it causes crime. And somebody says it causes young people to do bad things or it causes depression.

So you’ve got so many things on the wall. The notion of clustering is grouping the emerging ideas from the host of concerns that you have gathered. Emerging ideas, what are the ideas here? And you can imagine that when you look at those concerns, it will look like a lot.

But the way that we begin to go through it is to take one of those concerns that they have mentioned and ask yourself, what is the real issue here? What is the real issue here? So again, let’s be a little practical. Let’s say we’re talking about unemployment, and somebody has mentioned security and somebody’s talking about youth and women and all that. And then you look at the security issue and you say, what about unemployment? What about security bothers you? Why is security the issue that bothers you when you talk about unemployment? And then maybe as you go into that, you might realize that the person is saying, well, because people don’t have jobs, sometimes they would take to some kind of ways to survive that may not always be positive.

It could be stealing. It could be whatever. And then you look at that issue and then realize that somebody else is saying, well, because they don’t have employment.

Well, the reason they don’t have employment is because they didn’t have an education. So we’re drawing a linkage between education, unemployment and insecurity. You’re beginning to see the cluster.

And then you say, what are these sets of concerns saying? They are probably all talking about a lack of education that gives access to employment. You start and it seems as if they’re saying different things. But when you cluster, you see the idea that runs through it.

So I want to stress what cluster isn’t, and what it is not. Clustering is not that moment when you throw things off. When you throw things off, you’ve thrown somebody’s idea off the table.

And actually, you’ve thrown somebody out of the community. Clustering is not just reducing the list of concerns. Clustering is seeing how the ideas come together, and what the linkages are because it is those linkages that will let you know what the real issue is.

When we all talk around the table, we mention different things. But if we take a moment to say, what is at the base of this issue you mentioned, you will see the linkages. So maybe on an issue of unemployment, after you have clustered, you will find that one cluster has to do with maybe poor education or lack of access to education.

But another cluster may be around security. And another cluster may be around failed government institutions or something. Soon, you would have three, four, five manageable clusters.

What do you do with this? This is when you are beginning to have a basis for conversation. And a lot of people worry about having dialogues or conversations that go in all directions. It’s because they don’t cluster.

Because everybody mentions, and we hope we can have a conversation with everybody’s hundred concerns. No. Clustering allows us to organize, and structure the conversation.

And people begin to see themselves in the cluster. And they also begin to say, oh, well, I didn’t realize that my concern is linked to hers. Now, you see what is happening? It’s not just the concerns coming together.

People’s minds are connecting. People are already beginning to collaborate. Do you remember what I said at the beginning? The goal is to collaborate, to influence policy and solve problems.

So that, I think, is the beautiful thing about clustering. Don’t throw things out. Great.

And I think on that powerful and impactful note, Ruby, thank you. Thank you so much for your time today and the insights that you’ve provided and shared with our group, I think will help them as they embark on this process. And we look forward to probably sharing with you just what the outcome has been and how participants have gone on with the process.

Thanks again, Ruby. And we’ll look forward to engaging with you on another topic related to our policy advocacy lab going forward. Thank you.

You’re all welcome and all the best. Thank you.

Based on the poll, we will be looking at Educational Inequalities in Zimbabwe as a problem in the Lab. Now our next step is to hear the concerns of those around us(our community) with regards to this problem. We will be sharing a survey that you and your community will help complete as we try to understand how this problem is affecting ordinary citizens. Please share this link within your reach.

Since this process is about understanding and learning the tools used for a PAL, you can limit your community engagement to 10 people in your local area(however ideally as you use this process you will make sure to be as extensive as possible). You can engage them physically or share the link with them. It would be good to outwork this process with a community/group that you regularly engage with as there are some follow-up processes after this stage.

Here is the link to the survey: https://forms.gle/FYCLzWnSNxGn9D7q7

Theme of the Policy Advocacy Lab

Educational Inequalities in Zimbabwe

Outcome

How do educational inequalities affect the individual and the community around you?

Clustered into 4 groups:

1. Livelihoods and Social Security
2. Economy and Missed Opportunities
3. Lack of Quality Education
4. Societal Misconceptions

You can view the actual responses in the document above.

What do you think are the causes of educational inequality in Zimbabwe?

Clustered into 6 groups:

1. Underfunded public Education system
2. Uneven resource allocation/ distribution between rural and urban schools
3. Social and Cultural Inequalities
4. Political and Economic Constraints
5. Corruption
6. Weak/Poor Infrastructure Development and Human capital

You can view the actual responses in the second document above.

https://forms.gle/MkJTaDt7NhWCaeFx8

Survey Form Questions

1. What is the problem you/your community is facing?
2. How are you affected by the problem?
3. How is your community affected by the problem?
4. What do you think is the cause of that problem?
5. What can be done about the problem?

Outcome