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| Jai and Mtemi (the Starbucks Agronomist) |
PATH recently received funding from Starbucks Foundation for
the purpose of strengthening safe water and sanitation in coffee growing
communities they buy from as part of their cooperate responsibility. Jai and I are here to start this project by
conducting a rapid community needs assessment in their areas of interest. The premise of our proposal to Starbucks was
to work with communities to identify the needs and gaps that need to be filled
in water and sanitation and then work with them to design the appropriate
intervention and then implement that intervention. That may sound like a logical chain of events
to people reading this blog, but actually, in my opinion, it is rarely done in
global health. Sadly, more often than
not, we decide on an intervention and
then go into a community without first consulting the community to see if
they think the intervention is appropriate.
Personally, I have been a part of a number of these interventions in the
past 10 years and I think this is a bit of a backwards approach. All that aside, let’s faces it, who doesn’t
want to work with coffee growing communities in Southeastern Tanzania?! Jai
and I are pumped to be here. ; )
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| Closeup coffee plant |
So, how do you conduct a community needs assessment? Good question! I had no clue before consulting a few people
at PATH much more experienced in these assessments than I am. They offered a plethora of suggestions and then
we came up with our own design of participatory learning approaches (PLAs) to
make up our assessment. While here, we
will be conducting 4 different data exercises in 6 communities that the local
Starbucks Farmer Support Center (SFSC) selected.
Those data collection activities are:
·
Focus group discussions among farmers and
non-farmers from each community
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In-depth interviews with community stakeholders
·
Water testing
·
Asset mapping (visually verifying a checklist of
assets while walking through a community)
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| Water sampling from a spring used for drinking water |
We started water testing and asset mapping today while
waiting for local ethical approval to start the community discussions and
interviews.
As an aside, Starbucks has been buying coffee from the
Arusha (Northern) area of Tanzania for quite a while but they are only now
starting programs in this Southeaster region.
Personally, I think it is pretty cool that they are already starting a
water and sanitation intervention in communities they are only yet thinking of
buying from. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy the hell out
of a Seattle independent coffee shop but good for Starbucks for doing something
worthwhile in areas of the less developed world that they purchase coffee beans
from.
