Village ECO^2 Scoreboard!

Rainmatter Partner Updates
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Village ECO^2 Scoreboard!!

How does the community view their own habitations? How do they perceive the health and well being of their Ecology and local Economy?

According to the community, what is the status of the key resources that determine the quality of their lives and of their future generations?

A scoreboard for their village prepared by the community themselves!

Why a scoreboard?

A visual tool:

  • that nudges the community to think about their village as a unit- the resources they have, existing burden on these resources, constraints to utilize them efficiently, nature of their production systems, benefit/harm that they are causing to their ecology, family health, nutrition, aspirations, ways of enhancing their real incomes and overall well-being etc.
  • which highlights the main challenges faced by the community and provides a basis for planning and designing interventions.
  • which appeals to the ‘collective conscious’ and ‘decision-making’ (individual and community level).

The ‘scoreboard’ exercise was facilitated with the community during the ‘Participatory Landscape Assessment’ workshops held in some of the project locations - Sakri, Baijnath (Kangra, HP), Bothali , Arvi (Wardha, MH), Kantasole, Dumariya (East Singhbum, JH).

Sakri, Himachal Pradesh

The following questions were placed before the community:

Q: Can a household survive on its own?

Q: What are the things that you are dependent upon within the community, environment and larger society?

Q. How would you assess a good village?

The ensuing discussion led them to list out the key indicators that define the health of their village and quality of their lives.
Sakri GP scoreboard

To understand further, please refer to the detailed note on the exercise and resultant scoreboard (attached).

Bothali, Maharashtra

The ‘scoreboard’ was facilitated as a way of summarizing what the group had discussed during the workshop.

It started with a discussion on the interlinkages between the issues raised by the community – crop protection, income from farming, technical and governance gaps etc.

Building on this, they were asked a question:

Q. What makes a village sustainable and prosperous?

In the process of answering this question, the group came up with some 41 indicators!!

Bothali scoreboard
Bothali scoreboard2205×1380 175 KB

To understand further, please refer to the detailed note on the exercise and resultant scoreboard (attached).

Participatory Landscape Assessment at Sakri Panchayat (1).docx (5.7 MB)
Participatory Village Scoreboard_Bothali (Wardha).docx (1.9 MB)

7 Likes
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Wow! This is amazing stuff @Gijivisha_WASSAN. have two questions on this -

  1. What is the current thinking on how different people/communities/collectives within the village use this scorecard? Like what next using this scorecard?

  2. How is this different from Participatory Rural Appraisals

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Hi Rishabh,

Sorry for late reply (unwell);

  1. In the two field exercises- Sakri (HP) and Bothali (MH), we basically introduced this as a visual participatory tool where in they can articulate as to what will make their village ‘sustainable’ and improve the quality of their lives. Also , where do they think the village is currently placed with respect to the areas thus identified by them.
    Although the exercise was engaging , your questions will be answered in due time. We will be sharing a poster of the scorecard with the community which they will display in their villages.
    Besides, the exercise was part of the larger landscape assessment at each location. The 3-day field exercise at each location has resulted in an action plan articulated and endorsed by the community. So we will also try and refer to the scoreboard in our ongoing work with the community.

  2. The tool is quite new, as it evolves it can surely become an important technique for conducting PRA; thus it is very much like PRA

Hope this answers your questions.

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This is a good modification of the PRA.

Putting here a paper on Participatory Action Learning Tools that was used by an organisation in Gujarat.
mayoux2005.pdf (355.0 KB)

Some examples of the tools mentioned in this paper are attached below:
Entitlements of Women Farmers_Hindi.pdf (1.5 MB)
Gender division of Work and Decision Making_Hindi.pdf (2.6 MB)
Institutional Engagement Tool_Hindi.pdf (2.1 MB)

@Mari @tanmayi do see this paper and the tools. Maybe a future blog on various participatory tools available in the sector and their ability to inform social action and change.

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Very interesting method and tools used here, thanks for sharing.

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Hi @Gijivisha_WASSAN - I am sorry, but this tool is demanding too much cognitive load. Since everyone is saying nice, it seems I am the only one with low cognitive abilities :slight_smile:

Here are two things

  1. Can’t we make this tool a bit simpler so folks like me can understand as well
  2. It would be great if you use something like Google Docs to share such details explanations, so folks don’t have to search and look. Having said that, I have a dedicated Dropbox folder for materials from Grove. :slight_smile:

:clap: on work, I can understand it must have taken a lot of dedicated and detailed work! :slight_smile:

1 Like
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@suman_jile, We would really appreciate if you could build a simpler tool and share it for the community good

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Thanks, @Vikas This is 60+ hours of work :slight_smile: I will plan, I do have some initial math, let’s see. :slight_smile: