The vision of every community pre-exists in it as its survival strategy. If we want to be effective, then we must design our intervention to be driven by the community's vision. This results in a program that is sustainable, and a community that is empowered.
The program begins with participatory assessments allowing the community to articulate their expertise on their history, resources, challenges, and opportunities. These assessments culminate in the use of the Holistic Worldview Analysis (HWVA), which is like a snapshot of the survival strategy of the community, and gives insight into the specific interventions required for the development plan. The exercise uses the Ten Seed Technique.
Each of the dots in the diagram represents a seed. Blue seeds are sources of livelihood, gray are uncertainties, and black are problems. The innermost circle represents what the community controls, the middle circle what outsiders (NGOs, government, and others) control, and the outermost circle what is beyond the community's control, a gap the community usually assigns to the supernatural.
Measuring empowerment
The most important expected outcome of a transformed community is community empowerment: evident in the interactions of community members, the quality of life experienced, and the ability to control the survival strategy development plan.
The SSE Index tracks this progress over the course of the intervention. In the HWVA diagram, red numbers represent vulnerabilities and green ones capacities. Dividing the number of capacities by the number of capacities plus vulnerabilities produces the SSE Index. In the community pictured here, the score was 0.09 in 2011. The exercise is repeated each year, and the new score is plotted on a graph to track the community's progress.