A Guide to Participatory Monitoring of Behavior Change Communication for HIV/AIDS

This guide on participatory monitoring (PM) aims to address a need in projects focused on behaviour change communication (BCC) for HIV/AIDS. It is designed to allow frontline workers and community partners to continually assess their efforts and to encourage programme staff and community members involved in BCC programmes to learn from the programme implementation process. This work was developed by PATH in partnership with Family Health International (FHI), with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

As stated in the introduction: "HIV/AIDS ...BCC programs typically engage a range of community partners in the planning and implementation of communication efforts. However, these community partners usually have little involvement in the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of program efforts. This deprives both community members and programmers of an important opportunity to learn from their work and improve outcomes. In addition, frontline staff, such as peer educators (PEs) and outreach workers (ORWs), report on their activities but rarely take part in analyzing their impact. M&E information is overwhelmingly kept in the realm of M&E experts and managers. Frontline staff and community volunteers - who are essential to the success of any community-based communication program - miss out on being able to critically reflect on their activities and the program’s progress as well as their own.... PM ensures that both staff and community partners remain involved participants and genuine stakeholders in the program process.

[The guide] was designed to help managers and BCC specialists support program staff - particularly those in the field - by providing a step-by-step process for how to develop a monitoring system that is responsive to the needs of local partners, program staff, and managers. The guide addresses the following questions:

• Section I: What is participatory monitoring? This section explains what PM is and how it helps to improve the quality of programs. It describes the difference between traditional M&E and PM. It includes PM examples from the field.
  
• Section II: Why do participatory monitoring? This section discusses the benefits of PM and provides examples from the field.
  
• Section III: What are the steps involved in participatory monitoring? This section takes the reader through the steps needed to conduct PM, including how to:
  1. Prepare the groundwork.
     
  2. Decide who else should participate.
     
  3. Decide what information is needed.
     
  4. Determine indicators and benchmarks.
     
  5. Gather, share, and analyze information.
     
  6. Provide feedback and decide actions to improve program performance.
     

Specific PM tools are provided for each step. A training module for orienting stakeholders on PM can be found in Appendix II."