Methodology

Future Generations Haiti is pioneering a new methodolgy known as “Success Mapping” to bring forward the evidence of Haiti’s community-led efforts to create positive change.

In the second half of 2012, a team of 8 Haitian community mappers traveled across 4 out of Haiti’s 10 departments (provinces/states) to identify and map community-led processes resulting in positive change. The community initiatives featured in Wozo Ayiti have been carefully analyzed and categorized through Future Generation’s SEED-SCALE methodology.

SEED-SCALE is both a process for practicing community development and an analytic framework for assessing community-driven change. SEED-SCALE originated from a world-wide study of successes in equitable and sustainable community changeconducted in the early 1990s by Future Generations, UNICEF, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Johns Hopkins University. The study tackled the questions of what has worked in the field of community development, specifically on how to take community-based successes to regional scale and sustain their momentum.

 The 8 community mappers traveling throughout Haiti searched for activities that demonstrated  a series of fundamental characteristics of successful community-led initiatives, identified by consultative focus groups with community leaders throughout the country.  They use a snowball sampling approach, identifying references from each community for their next visit. 

The term "success" is very broad and takes many different forms - we do not claim our definition of success is the only correct one, and we are looking at the successful realization of development initiatives that are driven by the community in which they will be taking place. We have classified the different examples into categories based on domain (agriculture, natural resource conservation, youth empowerment, etc). They are also divided into a gradient which discerns the demonstrated sustainability of the examples: positive initiatives (which are recently started but show a promising start to all of the characteristics of community-driven change), sustainable projects (projects which have been successfully completed but have been maintained afterwards with community resources), dynamic organizations (community-based organizations whose work goes beyond one project in one domain and who are able to sustain their operations with community resources), and resilient communities (communities which have so integrated the development/change that it would now continue irregardless of the community-based organization that initiated it). 

The idea is for this map not to be static, but for it to be a basis for peer learning, exchange, and the identification of successful examples for case studies and learning. All of the information we have - from the GPS coordinates to local contacts - is open-source and available because we believein the potential of collaboration. FGH is currently facilitating peer trainings among dozens of the communities on this map, and sees the connection of these communities to be an essential part of our approach.

This is an evolving methodology that is being informed by community workshops and focus groups and the analysis of our field teams. It is important to clarify that communities are always changing and evolving so what is written on this platform may not reflect 100% the current reality of this community, and we are always welcoming feedback and corrections from those who have recently visited these sites.

We also identify our communities through snowball sampling methods, which means that this map does not by any way represent the only successful communities across Haiti. We also always welcome new contacts for communities that are the engines of their own development.

Please contact Sabina Carlson Robillard at sabina@future-ht.org with any questions, recommendations, or corrections.