Blog FeedMeasuring Success
I have been out in the field the last couple of weeks with our partners in The Philippines and India. As Chairman of the Board of Trustees, I believe it is important to understand well what we are actually doing with our women clients to solve the problem of chronic hunger in a sustainable way. I also wanted to understand our follow-up and measurement systems so that we can fulfill our commitment to ourselves and donors to have an effective tracking system in place for our results.This week I participated in two focus group sessions in the village of Gangodanga Para in West Bengal, India. Our initiative, Reach India, has been conducting sessions called “Learning Conversations” for groups of adolescent girls and their mothers.
Yesterday, we sat on a large sheet of plastic and talked with a group of eight of the girls about what they learned from the Learning Conversations they participated in. They were asked to rank the sessions-which was most useful, second most useful, etc. Then rigorous questioning by the outside focus group team was conducted to better understand why they ranked them the way they did.
It was marvelous. The young girls were enthusiastically engaged and it was a lively conversation. In the end, the most important Learning Conversation for them was “Knowing Our Bodies.” At this age, teaching these young women how to stay healthy, and how to become pregnant only when they want to have a child, is a powerful way of helping them not slip back into chronic hunger.
We then did the same with their moms, and they also ranked this particular Learning Conversation the highest. I was astounded. I had assumed that because the moms had three or four children they would be knowledgeable about the female body and its reproductive system. To the contrary, they knew what act caused them to become pregnant, but little else.
Watching these focus group discussions in person, sitting in a circle on the ground with the women, gave me great comfort not only that our programs are really helping women of India, but that we also have a thorough and systematic way to make sure they have learned what we have taught and are applying it to solve the critical problems they are facing.
