The Substance of Empowerment
We had become rather critical of the way some agencies had evaluated their non-formal literacy work by using formal exams and tests. This does not enable the women to explore whether literacy was contributing to increasing their confidence and wider empowerment — and if so how? So instead of objects and pictures on the map, the women used flash cards to write the names of the feature,
So, where the shop was identified, a flash card was placed there with the local word for shop. The goods which the shop sold were listed on another flash card with their prices. Various combinations of goods were added and subtracted as a means of assessing numeracy. The key benefit of this exercise was the information which the women generated themselves and their excitement about how they could use it. For the first time, they could see the extent of their literacy in relation to their lives in their village. They had developed their own indicators.
We can see that we are able to recognise and write 63 words on this map. By the end of the dry season we want to increase this to 100 words. And there isn't a funder around that wouldn't accept an indicator like that, or the means of verifying it.
Comparing the number of words generated by each group was an effective way of identifying which groups were doing well. Was it the facilitator, and could we use that person to train other facilitators. Or was it that the women were effective in building a common fund to pay for lamp kerosene so that they could run night sessions? This type of practical information was much more useful to us in effectively servicing our role in the project. But we didn't know that we needed it until it presented itself to us during the evaluation!