The ability to define and measure humanitarian impact is essential to providing operational agencies with the tools to systematically evaluate the relative efficacy of various types of interventions. This guide aims to provide practitioners with a broad framework for carrying out project-level Participatory Impact Assessments (PIA) of livelihoods interventions in the humanitarian sector. The PIA approach consists of a flexible methodology that can be adapted to local conditions. It also acknowledges local people, or project clients, as experts by emphasising the involvement of project participants and community members from the outset. The proposed framework provides an eight stage approach, and presents examples of tools which may be adapted to different contexts.
Useful Resources
Whilst the peoples’ right to participate in making decisions that affect them, many governments and development agencies still apply top- down development paradigms. This toolkit's strength is the fact that it has been developed based on empirical project work undertaken in Kitale, a secondary town in Kenya. It is targeted at social workers, planners, development workers, community groups and development agencies operating at the micro-level through existing government structures, in this case the local authority. As a tool, it is intended to mobilise and create synergy with local residents, local development institutions and development agency workers; and demonstrate how locally available resources and experiences may be harnessed in order to improve access to basic infrastructure and services for improved urban livelihoods. The toolkit has been divided into three parts; the first part looks at the philosophical foundation, origin, development and strengths of participatory planning methodologies globally, regionally and locally; the second part looks at the processes that are mandatory in any given participatory planning exercise; while the third gives an empirical and step wise account of the Kitale projects implementation processes; key milestones, challenges faced, innovations and/or best practices, and lessons learnt.
PATAM is a social movement comprised of individuals and organisations dedicated to mobilizing communities, political leaders, and all sectors of society to ensure access to antiretroviral (ARV) treatment, as a fundamental part of comprehensive care for all people with HIV/AIDS in Africa. This movement was inaugurated on August 22nd 2002. The movement's co-founders are two of the world's leading AIDS activists, Zackie Achmat of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) in South Africa and Milly Katana, lobbying and advocacy officer of the Health Rights Action Group in Uganda and member of Board of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria. PATAM's December 2004 newsletter is now available from their website.
The RHO website (http://www.rho.org) is designed for reproductive health program managers and decision-makers working in developing countries and low-resource settings. RHO provides up-to-date summaries of research findings, program experience, and clinical guidelines related to key reproductive health topics.
Pathologies of Power uses harrowing stories of life--and death--in extreme situations to interrogate our understanding of human rights. Paul Farmer, a physician and anthropologist with twenty years of experience working in Haiti, Peru, and Russia, argues that promoting the social and economic rights of the world's poor is the most important human rights struggle of our times. With passionate eyewitness accounts from the prisons of Russia and the beleaguered villages of Haiti and Chiapas, this book links the lived experiences of individual victims to a broader analysis of structural violence. Farmer challenges conventional thinking within human rights circles and exposes the relationships between political and economic injustice, on one hand, and the suffering and illness of the powerless, on the other.
PDA4HEALTH, a new electronic forum setup by SATELLIFE, aims to share up-to-date information, knowledge, and experiences on the use of handheld computers for data collection and information dissemination in developing country health settings. Organisations and institutions engaged in field projects are encouraged to exchange the lessons they have learned, challenges faced, and successes achieved. Join for free by sending a message to the email address below.
The People's Health Movement Students' Coalition (PHMSC) is an international, broad-based students' movement representing students' voices within the wider People's Health Movement and beyond. Its primary goal is health for all, i.e. a socially conscious, grassroots approach to health and human rights. The mobilisation of students is crucial to overcoming social, educational, environmental and other injustices that undermine the indivisible health rights of people the world over. PHMSC invites all students and student organisations who believe in a healthier future for everyone (regardless of their background or where they come from), to join the movement. You can sign the People's Charter for Health, join PHMSC’s mailing list or join their Facebook group.
This assessment guide leads you through a five-step process to document aspects of the denial of the right to health care in your country. It suggests how to lobby and set up activist strategies for addressing the violations you identify. The steps, in brief, aim to answer the following questions. Step 1: What are your government’s commitments? Step 2: Are your government’s policies appropriate to fulfill these obligations? Step 3: Is the health system of your country adequately implementing interventions to realize the right to health and health care for all? Step 4: Does the health status of different social groups and the population as a whole reflect a progression in their right to health and health care? Step 5: What does the denial or fulfillment of the right to health in your country mean in practice? In this final step, you should systematically contrast the obligations outlined in Step 1 with the realities documented in Steps 2, 3 and 4, and briefly highlight the main areas of denial of health rights in your country.
The International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) is pleased to announce the completion of the first phase of the Programme for the Enhancement of Research Information (PERI). This is an important programme aimed at the wider access and dissemination of scientific and scholarly information and knowledge with and between developing and transitional countries. Researchers, academics, scholars and librarians in Ghana, Tanzania and Uganda are now invited to access current awareness databases, full-text online journals and document delivery for free.
Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) has published statistics on perinatal deaths based on administrative records captured on death notification forms collected from the South African civil registration system maintained by the Department of Home Affairs.