A project team meeting was held to discuss the findings and determine areas of focus for the next visit.
We then asked more focused questions to clarify areas of discrepancy and to further investigate the information given. This was again carried out with a male and a female focus group.
Village mapping was carried out with a mixed group to get a clearer idea of the surrounding area and amenities.
A semi-structured interview was held with the Community Health Worker to find out more about her role and health in the community.
A list of all the needs identified in the Church and community was drawn up by the project team (see Appendix 2). Opportunities to meet these needs particular to this area were noted alongside them. Ideas of mini-projects that may help to meet these needs were produced.
Research was done into a number of these ideas to look at the practicalities of carrying out these mini-projects in this area. This looked at what other organisations are doing, existing research on best development practice and potential costs of each mini-project.
These mini-project ideas were discussed at the Malawi Project Team meeting. The ideas were reduced to those which were felt to be potentially achievable over the next few years and cost-effective.
Preliminary meetings were held with various government departments to find out about the various regulations and procedures and also what things they might be able to offer to help.
We then went back to the Church and discussed the list of all the needs they had told us about. They then carried out a ranking exercise for each need based on how serious a problem it was, how widespread a problem it was and how suitable for joint action. This ranking exercise formed the basis for deciding the area of need that was the priority to be addressed in the first project in this location.
Further discussion was then carried out with the relevant government department to discuss practicalities and try and determine more exact costings.
The proposed project was then discussed at length at a Malawi Project Team Meeting and a detailed proposal including approximate costings was drawn up. Outline proposals for possible future projects have also been included in this document. These address significant needs but were not identified as the first priority. As the first project succeeds and more confidence in the community is generated, we can follow up the next one based on this information.
