Learning the Lessons - Affordability
Sustainability | Strategic Approach | Participation | Partnership | Alignment | Capacity Building | Affordability | Transferability
‘Making best use of available resources’
As a demonstration project, Dùthchas aimed to develop methods that would be affordable in the ‘normal’ world – without the benefits of European funding. This does not mean to say that all the methods we used would be advocated as affordable. The Project experimented with several approaches and assessed these in the light of experience. This is the advantage of a demonstration – it does not have to get it right first time.
Affordability is a relative concept. It depends on many factors - the aims and scope of the work; the number of people to be involved; the scale of the area; the resources available etc. Also, different approaches can be used which are more or less in-depth or involve different numbers of players.
Resources involved not only relate to the financial budget, they also include volunteer time and in-kind contributions (time, facilities, materials etc.). To give a realistic picture these should also be costed. It is inevitable that participatory processes will involve volunteer time. The critical factor is that the volunteer time is managed to produce the greatest output for the least input.
The work of developing an effective area sustainability strategy is demanding and takes time and inputs from many people. This fact should not be minimised. It is important that this kind of work is embarked on with an appropriate commitment to adequate resourcing. There are many options for short-cutting the methods tried by Dùthchas, but equally, many short-cuts would also reduce the quality of the outputs.
The experience of the Project taught us that:
- This work ideally requires the involvement of a full-time, trained co-ordinator in the community
- It is unlikely that the work of developing the Area Strategy could be completed in less than twelve months without seriously reducing its quality
- Seeking to involve a large proportion of the community can be costly in terms of facilitator’s time
- Strategic planning, if done well, is very demanding of volunteer time and agency staff inputs
- Good communication is critical but can be very expensive, especially if publications are involved
- The physical resources and equipment required for most of the work, however, were very economical and could be readily found in most situations
