Communities think and act for themselves.

Facilitators stimulate them to take action through an approach that appreciates strengths and fosters local ownership.

This is the Community Life Competence Process.

Read the transcript in english

The community of Ta Tum, in Northern Thailand, takes action

In the ’90s, northern Thailand was hit hard by the HIV epidemic with an HIV prevalence of 18% in some provinces. But gradually, change started to take place because people took ownership of the HIV response.

In Ta Tum sub-district for instance, members invited a Constellation coach to help them to take action and to measure their progress. “When we did our Self Assessment, we found that in Practice 1 ‘Acknowledgement and recognition’ our scores were rather low. In the last few years we had focused so much on supporting HIV groups and so we had not done much on prevention. We realized that this was an area in which we had to improve.”

The community then built an action plan with the help of the coach. “We decided to focus on the school children in Grade 6. We organized a workshop involving the parents and the children to prepare the pre-teens to become quality teenagers. The temple provided a budget. After the workshop, when we did our Self Assessment again, the community agreed that we were doing much better in this practice. An evaluation of the workshop showed almost 100% satisfaction from parents and children.”

During the process the coach appreciated people’s strengths and asked strategic questions to stimulate and to support Ta Tum.