Time to do what you've planned. Where do you begin? There will always be far more options of how to spend your time than there is time to accomplish them all. The work plan will guide you to direct your time into the tasks that will have the most impact. The work plan should only include the tasks that the project staff can realistically accomplish. Begin with the work plan. It represents your best thinking as to what to do to most effectively achieve your goals.
As you implement your strategy you will regularly encounter new opportunities to engage new partners, participate in new or related activities, or work in new areas. There is a tremendous temptation to take advantage of each new opportunity. This is one of the most common pitfalls of development or conservation projects. If the staff pursues each exciting, new opportunity, they are soon over committed, working on many different activities but not able to devote adequate time to any one. They work excessive hours to complete bits of many things, but do few things as thoroughly as necessary to have the impact needed for stakeholders to change key behaviors. At some point, it is no longer clear how all the different tasks which the staff have adopted help them to most effectively achieve the team's overall goal. Eventually, the staff sees little progress despite long hours of work. Talented people begin to leave as they become disheartened and find work someplace where they feel they can have a real impact. Donors are unhappy because the promised results do not materialize and future funding can be at risk.
The work plan can help prevent this situation. When a new opportunity arises, review the work plan and clearly define how the opportunity will help you accomplish your activities and objectives. Do not pursue the new opportunity until you are certain how it will help you achieve your goal. The individual work plans of your staff should also explicitly aim to accomplish the project work plan. Your team will achieve your goal more quickly and efficiently if staff members focus on tasks, which they can demonstrate directly support the work plan.
There is an exception. Now and then a new opportunity will arise that does not easily fit into the work plan but that the project staff feels you need to pursue. These opportunities are very important. They help you rethink and adjust the project strategy. When these opportunities arise, review the project strategy. If it is vital to incorporate the new opportunity but it does not fit into the current objectives, you will need to add a new objective. In this case, determine how to incorporate the new opportunity into the overall strategy, but do not pursue it until you either modify the strategy, or you determine how the new objective fits into the existing strategy. (If you do take on new tasks as a result of a new opportunity, determine how you will find the time to accomplish it without overworking the project staff. This generally involves either cutting back on or replacing current tasks, or hiring new staff. If you are unwilling to do either of these, honestly question whether the new opportunity is really all that important.)
As you begin to implement the work plan, schedule staff time and attend to the details of logistics. Many projects inadvertently schedule staff to do two or more tasks simultaneously. For instance, no one likes to prepare reports for the donor. But you are far more likely to get future funding if the donor feels you are responsive to their needs and help them meet their own objectives. So when a report is due, realistically anticipate how much time is needed to write the report and schedule staff time so the key people are available to meet the reporting deadline. (It is surprising how many organizations ignore reporting deadlines, schedule field trips for staff when they need to be writing a report, and then are surprised to find themselves in trouble with donors for not meeting deadlines.) Plan ahead. Plan who will do what when, in detail. Be realistic, recognizing that staff need personal time outside work. Plan workloads that recognize time outside normal working hours belongs to the staff-scheduling field work every weekend for months is a sure way to burnout staff and incur large costs from high staff turnover rates.
Anticipate logistics. If you are planning a workshop, anticipate the time needed to design it, prepare and practice the presentations, arrange the presentation space, handle logistics of attendee lodging, ensure presentation supplies are available, etc. Few tasks are completed well when done in a rush at the last minute. The farther ahead of events you can begin planning, the more thorough and relaxed the process will be, and the fewer errors will occur.
Refer to the work plan regularly to help you choose and prioritize how to spend your time and staff time and to anticipate upcoming logistical concerns. We recommend the following tools to facilitate the project implementation process.
Would you like your project to be implemented with more participation from relevant stakeholders?
Stakeholder Collaboration: Building Bridges for Conservation
By Ecoregional Conservation Strategies Unit, 2000, World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
By explaining the principles of collaboration, introducing a range of tools, and reporting on a number of case studies from around the world, this resource book aims to help practitioners and stakeholders develop new and innovative relationships with those individuals and institutions who can help make collaboration a reality. This resource has been designed as an introduction to the stakeholder themes and issues that you are likely to face when implementing ecoregional conservation.
English (74 pages, PDF, 427 KB)
Working with Community-based Conservation with a Gender Focus: A Guide
By Mary Hill Rojas, 2000, Managing Ecosystems and Resources with Gender Emphasis (MERGE), University of Florida
This guide is built on examples and lessons learned from the Parks in Peril Program. It provides six steps to begin to understand gender analysis and its importance to conservation, including the following: developing a rationale for paying attention to gender; deconstructing terms to understand roles and relations; highlighting women as participants in conservation; building on women's individual and group experience; removing barriers to participation; and working across sectors.
English (12 pages, PDF, 800 KB)
Español (14 páginas, PDF, 137 KB)
Português (13 páginas, PDF, 138 KB)
In Search of the Lost Gender: Equity in Protected Areas
By Lorena Aguilar-Itza Castañeda and Hilda Salazar, 2002, World Conservation Union (IUCN)
This document was developed to facilitate protected areas planning, management and administration, to seek greater social equity, particularly among women and men. The document is useful to conservation practitioners interested in promoting gender equity in protected areas initiatives.
English
Part 1 (6 pages, PDF, 783 KB)
Part 2 (8 pages, PDF, 2.41 MB)
Part 3 (38 pages, PDF, 2.41 MB)
Part 4 (16 pages, PDF, 2.41 MB)
Part 5 (52 pages, PDF, 2.40 MB)
Part 6 (30 pages, PDF, 2.40 MB)
Part 7 (26 pages, PDF, 2.40 MB)
Part 8 (22 pages, PDF, 2.40 MB)
Part 9 (32 pages, PDF, 2.30 MB)
Would you like to learn about increasing the effectiveness of training sessions associated with your project?
Gender Analysis and Forestry Training Package
By Vicki L. Wilde and Arja Vainio-Mattila, 1995, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
This training package includes information about: how to design and implement participatory training programs; how to design and carry out participatory training workshops; how to use rapid rural appraisal (RRA) to develop case studies; and how forestry can benefit from gender analysis.
English
Part 1 (1 page, PDF, 35 KB)
Part 2 (2 pages, PDF, 454 KB)
Part 3 (13 pages, PDF, 728 KB)
Part 4 (22 pages, PDF, 975 KB)
Part 5 (22 pages, PDF, 1.52 MB)
Part 6 (23 pages, PDF, 1.32 MB)
Part 7 (6 pages, PDF, 650 KB)
Part 8 (28 pages, PDF, 821 KB)
Part 9 (22 pages, PDF, 1.70 MB)
Part 10 (79 pages, PDF, 3.91 MB)
Part 11 (15 pages, PDF, 2.72 MB)
What's Your Role? Training for Organisational Impact: A Guide for Training Officers in Protected Area Management
By Ralph Stone, © 1997 Biodiversity Support Program (BSP)
This handbook is designed to help natural resource training officers develop training programs that are systematic, needs-based, and broad-reaching to enable staff to achieve optimum job performance and, consequently, greater conservation impact.
English (91 pages, PDF, 9.36 MB)
Français (150 pages, PDF, 18.02 MB)
Training Trainers for Development: Conducting a Workshop on Participatory Training Techniques
By Center for Development and Population Activities (CDPA), 1995
The manual is intended for use by trainers of governmental and non-governmental organizations working in development. It teaches interactive, learner-centered methods, in an approach which is based on the research of human resource development experts. This manual is based on the premises that adults generally assimilate only what they find useful and that they want to be able to apply their new knowledge and skills.
English (93 pages, PDF, 183 KB)
Are you in need of more information about how to integrate population and environmental issues during project implementation?
Conservation on a Crowded Planet: A Population Sourcebook for Conservation Practitioners
By Center for Conservation Innovation/Conservation Strategies Unit, 2002, World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
This sourcebook has been designed to give practitioners guidance in how to undertake or collaborate in population-related assessments and actions. It includes the following: information on how population dynamics affect ecoregions and a summary of current and projected population trends; a set of questions to help assess population-environment interactions at ecoregional and site-based levels; suggestions for specific actions to address population dynamics, including information on partnerships; information on what impacts can be expected from specific interventions, and in what time frame; and resources to support practitioners' efforts to act on population-conservation connections.
English (36 pages, PDF, 1.25 MB)
Responding to Reproductive Health Needs: Participatory Approaches for Analysis and Action
By Denise Caudill, 2001, World Neighbors
This guide outlines two workshops held in Nepal in 1997-1998 to help staff of non-profit organizations understand health from a gender sensitive point of view, analyze current reproductive health activities, use participatory tools (includes 15 exercises), and develop realistic action plans.
English (56 pages, PDF, 2.95 MB)
Français (58 pages, PDF, 613 KB)
Español (60 páginas, PDF, 1.97 MB)
Tools of Gender Analysis: A Guide to Field Methods for Bringing Gender into Sustainable Resource Management
By Barbara Thomas-Slayter, Andrea Lee Esser, and M. Dale Shields, 1993, Ecology, Community Organization and Gender (ECOGEN) Research Project, Clark University
This document includes eleven chapters covering: problem identification; in-depth household interviews; focus group discussions; participant observation; improving project design and implementation; surveys; gender-disaggregated seasonal activities calendar; activities, resources and benefits analyses; improving project management; and gender-sensitive monitoring of project progress (GMPP).
English (18 pages, PDF, 417 KB)
What Works: A Guide to Environmental Education and Communication Projects for Practitioners and Donors
Edited by Martha C. Monroe, Academy for Educational Development (AED)
This manual illustrates some of the most successful environmental education and communication projects from around the world and provides program ideas for conservation practitioners. Over forty unique projects-from a puppet show in Guatemala that explains the consequences of deforestation, to an air-pollution monitoring program with youth in Brazil - highlight the strategies that have worked for environmental educators, program directors, and their financial supporters. It includes sections that focus on sustainable community development, creating change in school systems, using the mass media, fostering environmental policy, supplementing formal education, organizing non-formal environmental education, and building local capacity.
English (available for purchase online from New Society Publishers at: http://www.newsociety.com/bookid/3651)
Is community development one of the strategies you are implementing in your project?
A Community Economic Development (CED) Training Manual for Peace Corps Volunteers
By Center for Field Assistance and Applied Research, 2002, U.S. Peace Corps
This guide was developed to demonstrate why and how community economic development is used to improve individuals' and communities' economic well-being. The manual promotes community economic development by contrasting it to more traditional economic development approaches and stressing the participation of citizens in the process. Practical methods for planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating strategic community economic development agendas are also discussed.
English (165 pages, PDF, 682 KB)
Ecotourism Development: A Manual for Conservation Planners and Managers, Volume 1: An Introduction to Ecotourism Planning
By Andy Drumm and Alan Moore © 2002 The Nature Conservancy (TNC)
This manual focuses on providing a set of criteria to ecotourism planners and managers at conservation non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to facilitate decisions with respect to ecotourism management and development. It includes an introduction to the critical elements of ecotourism management planning, including zoning, visitor impact monitoring, visitor site design and management, income generation mechanisms, infrastructure and visitor guidelines, and naturalist guide systems. It also outlines the business planning process for promoting viable business partnerships with communities or private tourism operators.
English (85 pages, PDF, 3.53 MB)
Español (88 páginas, PDF, 1.71 MB)
Sustainable Agriculture Extension Manual
By International Institute of Rural Reconstruction (IIRR), 1998
The manual provides an overview of selected problems and issues in sustainable agriculture in Eastern and Southern Africa, and the various attempts by individuals, communities and development organizations to overcome these problems. It provides specific examples of technologies and approaches, as well as selected cases of individual farmers' and communities' experiences. It is hoped that these will stimulate researchers and field practitioners to test and adapt these options to local conditions, and to generate and share new approaches and technologies.
English (HTML, available online at: http://www.iirr.org/book.htm)
Would you like to enhance your skills for creating an effective advocacy program?
Advocacy: Creating a Programme for Change
From Activist Training Manual, Environmental Justice Foundation
This chapter of the Activist Training Manual provides information on ways and means to create an effective advocacy program. It seeks to provide a framework to develop advocacy skills and strategies, and highlight useful techniques and tools.
English (22 pages, PDF, 188 KB)
Media: Creating an Effective Media Campaign
From Activist Training Manual, Environmental Justice Foundation
This chapter of the Activist Training Manual provides information about why the media is so important to advocacy and how to work with different media. It covers the steps of creating an effective media strategy, including: building a relationship with the media; grabbing the headlines; creating press releases and press conferences; and video news releases.
English (10 pages, PDF, 160 KB)
An Introduction to Advocacy: A Training Guide
By Ritu R. Sharma, 1997, Health and Human Resources Analysis for Africa (HHRAA), U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)
Written specifically for an African audience, this training manual provides tools to help people engage in advocacy to change policies, positions or programs of any type of institution. Policy advocacy is not limited to decisions that are made through open, organized and formal systems of governance. The tools presented in this guide can be applied to situations in which decision-making is informal, adaptive, opaque or even secluded. The guide has been divided into three downloads: the first contains the cover, table of contents, and introductory pages; the second contains modules 1-5; and the third contains modules 6-10, the glossary, and references.
English
Part 1 (8 pages, PDF, 451 KB)
Part 2 (64 pages, PDF, 770 KB)
Part 3 (65 pages, PDF, 766 KB)
Français
Part 1 (8 pages, PDF, 313 KB)
Part 2 (66 pages, PDF, 718 KB)
Part 3 (72 pages, PDF, 700 KB)
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