SSE Index (Survival Strategy Empowerment Index)

​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 will result in the program being sustainable, and the community will be empowered as a result. 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 a participatory tool designed by Dr Ravi Jayakaran called the Holistic Worldview Analysis® (or HWVA, pictured at the left) 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 another participatory tool developed by Dr Ravi Jayakaran called 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 (like NGOs, government, etc.) control, and the outermost circle is what is beyond the community’s control (The community usually assigns this ‘gap’ to the supernatural).

​Empowerment : The most important expected outcome of a transformed community is community empowerment evident in the interactions of community members (exhibiting equality, courtesy, and shared responsibility), quality of life experienced, and ability to control the survival strategy development plan. Ultimately developing a community collectively and working for a better future. The SSEI is a tool designed to track the progress over the course of the intervention. In the HWVA in this diagram, the red numbers represent vulnerabilities and the green capacities. By dividing the number of Capacities by the number of Capacities plus Vulnerabilities, a score, or SSE Index is produced. In this particular community, this score was 0.09 in 2011. Each year this exercise is repeated, and the new SSE Index score is plotted on a graph to track the progress of the community.