How do you match your program goals to community needs?

Matching program goals to community needs is essential to creating a successful program. One way to ensure the goal is matched with the needs of the community is to be certain you are not arriving with the answer. So often in our spirit to make a difference, we tend to see a need and create a solution that makes sense to us. When we remember to turn outward and ASK 'the community' what their needs are we are better equipped to match our specific program goals to the needs the people in the community shared with us.

In most needs assessment you are often only able to access the standard public data on a community e.g. population number, levels of illness, un/employment levels, school attendance, home ownership, previous surveys etc. Informal discussions initially with workers in the area and its local groups can give a background to the characteristics of the community. As to what the local community thinks and identifies as its priorities and needs requires a more in-depth interviewing and surveys.

In addition to data sources mentioned above, getting community input is important. This can be done with surveys, small focus groups and community meetings as a small example.

Sustainability should be considered as early as possible within the process and made a central part of determining program goals and outcomes — is the proposed outcome sustainable? what would sustainability look like? What may be the obstacles to sustainability?

There should always be protocols in place that include but are not limited to the aforementioned that everyone involved in the design, implementation and data collection should be trained on.

When finishing my analysis and preparing findings I present these to the community I have been working with and if appropriate other workers in the community. This is one way of checking your analysis fits how the community sees it and dividing the findings into themes or major issues. Where we have been in a participatory process we will ask for local volunteers to present findings which can be presented to management and/or local community in organised meetings. This includes recommendations based on the findings and what actions will be needed by whom so that all actors are included who have anything to do with the local community.

We shouldn’t forget to establish a strong theory of change: we expect that doing X will lead us to Y outcome (the change we want to see), because doing A will impact BCD etc

It is important to follow up after research process is finished to implement support for those communities to be able to act on the goals they have set down for various projects. Such as how to fill out formal management forms or any other support to enable them to implement their actions/projects. Relevant professionals should also be included in discussing the findings and reccomendations to allow changes in their goals/priorities. The research should be used as part of ongoing training for professionals as well as setting priorities. This includes on courses for post graduate courses at university.