World Vision Establishes Ongoing Dialogue with Sri Lankan Communities

The World Vision Humanitarian and Accountability Team (HAT) has been working to establish and maintain ongoing dialogue with communities in Sri Lanka to help them identify and find solutions to their development issues.

The HAT will also assure that communities understand their roles and responsibilities regarding the new facilities they receive in the programme.

Communities can often find it difficult to keep up with the various projects being implemented within the extensive scope of World Vision's Tsunami Response and the HAT will make it much easier for them to take them up.

Now tools such as the Community Transition Programme Calendar will allow World Vision to effectively communicate its transition out of tsunami areas as projects wind up over the next nine months.

The calendar, which is used at project sites and uses easy to understand symbols, has facilitated smooth discussions with communities in the nine tsunami affected districts in Sri Lanka and has created understanding of project progress, transition, roles and responsibilities, problems and possible solutions.

In addition, an innovative 3D animation video is currently used to educate tsunami survivors about their rights, responsibilities and entitlements, while building social capacity and establishing community action groups.

The video, shown by a facilitator, seeks to help communities adjust to their new environments and details problems that a community might face in the future, such as broken windows and cracks in the wall and discusses the roles and responsibilities of the community in addressing these problems.

The Community Transition Programmes Calendar and 3D animation are just two tools helping to increase community knowledge, encouraging them to mobilise and take action on issues that impact their lives.