The NGO Action Aid, Burundi (AAB) has operated for the last 23 years doing development work with socially disadvantaged communities. After the 1993 ethnic conflict in Burundi, Action Aid adopted the Reflect approach as one of the peace development initiatives.

Reflect is a structured participatory learning process, which facilitates people’s critical analysis of their environment, placing empowerment at the heart of sustainable and equitable development. Through the creation of democratic spaces and the construction and interpretation of locally-generated texts, people built their own multidimensional analysis of local and global reality, challenging dominant development paradigms and redefining power relationships in both public and private spheres. Based on an ongoing process of reflection and action, people empower themselves to work for a more just and equitable society.

In April 1999, Action Aid Burundi (AAB) invited 2 members from the Reflect Co-ordination Unit (RCU) to give support in evaluating their Reflect programme.

• To reduce illiteracy in Ruyigi province by targeting a population of 1160 adult participants to acquire, sustain and develop new uses of reading, writing and numeracy skills.
• To enable Reflect participants to appreciate the participatory learning process and use it to analyse their environment, identify problems and take appropriate actions to improve their livelihood.
• To use the participatory learning processes to analyse conflict in Burundi and promote peace and reconciliation of Reflect participants in the long run to attain peace among communities in Ruyigi province.

To achieve the above objectives, the AAB Ruyigi project does the following activities for the programme:

• Community sensitisation,
• identification, selection and training of facilitators,
• training of development committees,
• provision of instructional materials,
• support the construction of Reflect shelters,
• monitoring and support of Reflect activities.

This evaluation exercise took place between 12-24 April 1999. The exercise sampled nine circles in two provinces (Butaganzwa and Bweru) out of the three in which AAB is fully operational. The methods used in this exercise include: self-evaluation matrices, semi-structured interviews, focused group discussions, literature review and observations.

The information sources were: Reflect participants, Reflect graduates and community structures such as Bashingantahe, AAB frontline workers and others players in the field of development in Ruyigi province. Other sources included written documents on AAB and other specific documents on Reflect in Ruyigi.

The participatory tools employed in this exercise were meant to stimulate positive participation of the learners, by enabling them to feel that it is part of their learning process, rather than an exercise that will lead to punitive action.

The Reflect programme in Ruyigi has the following monitoring and evaluation indicators as relates the objectives of the programme:

• Number of participants who graduate from the circle with the ability to read and write some sentences in Kirundi and can do some basic numeracy.
• Number of new participants who enrol in the Reflect circles per cycle.
• Number of regular attendants per circle, per cycle (Regular attendance = 72 times attended out of 96 times in a year).
• Number of Reflect participants contributing to EJO community newsletter.
• Number of development micro projects started and successfully implemented by Reflect participants.
• Individual income generation initiatives started and successfully implemented by Reflect participants.
• Hygiene and sanitation practices developed by the Reflect participants and for their homes e.g. Pit latrines, bathing and washing clothing and utensils etc.
• Topics discussed on crisis / conflict / peace / reconciliation and actions agreed upon and implemented by the Reflect circles.
• Number of Reflect stirred micro projects with members from both ethnicity’s working together.

• This exercise required more than the two weeks allocated to it, and as a result we missed visiting other key informants that we had intended to see due to earlier tight schedules.
• There were other areas that we had planned to visit -- those areas outside the AAB development area such as in Kumoso, which turned out to be insecure and we missed the opportunity to see Reflect outside the DA for a comparison.
• There were many other planned activities going on at the same time as the evaluation and thus the failure to meet all the respondents and key personnel in Action Aid D.A.
• Language was also another challenge to the team as few respondents in AAB and in other NGOs or government departments could speak English while the evaluators could not speak French. However, we used Kirundi and Kinyarwanda, which eased the communication gap we had.
• There was very little documentation on Reflect in place that could have otherwise provided background information for us to use before and during the exercise.

There was no baseline survey done in an area where Reflect is being implemented and as a result, it was very difficult to assess the impact of the intervention. We had therefore to rely on respondents’ answers and case studies presented by other stakeholders in the Reflect process.

Disparities were noticed in terms of differences in achievements between men and women as men performed better than women did. Men also performed better in numeracy and the reason discovered was that men have space and time to practice what they learn while women are occupied / overburdened by the household chores.

The findings revealed that the facilitators have thus far received an initial training and one refresher training, which were quite sufficient to set the facilitator’s going for the start but eventually proved insufficient for their current needs which change over time.

This is because the training is not supplemented by a variety of reading materials or co-facilitated by any technical person from other organisations or government technical departments. Looking at the contents of the training of facilitator’s workshops, the emphasis was put on the results more than the process of participatory learning that is required in a Reflect process.

The other on-going training process aimed at developing the facilitator’s capacity to handle Reflect as it evolves, includes a monthly meeting of facilitators and support visits to the circles which lack the technical component since most of the support staff lacks it themselves.

The result is that those who did not understand some of the concepts in the initial training will continue to do things the wrong way and since they share the same socio-economic, cultural conditions with the rest of the participants, it adds very little value to the learning process.

The structures in place responsible for supervising the Reflect process are: Action Aid Reflect team, the CDWs, the development committees, and the BASHINGANTAHE. None of these groups have received full training of the Reflect course. They have received a few doses of PRA and have field experience and practise of Reflect.

The implication is that at times they have experienced some technical or methodological problems for which they have had no answers. As a result, supervision has been reduced to checking on the attendance of the facilitator and the participants and looking at the preparation books for the facilitation sessions done by the facilitators. This routine checking on the circles that adds no value to the whole process has ended up by boring the supervisors.

The evaluation further revealed that the participants and supervisors interviewed had to some degree understood the Reflect learning concept. They had even code named it GAKUBA to mean  " ...a new approach that enables people to understand their village better by first analysing the problems that affect them and then looking for possible solutions to those problems."

We looked at the analysis that had been done by the circle participants and they had a lot to do with all issues affecting their livelihoods. These ranged from health, agriculture, income generation, gender relations, and literacy itself.

The evaluation found out that people had benefited much in the agricultural sector in terms of getting modern agricultural knowledge. On the average women scored 61% while the men scored 54%. However when we visited their gardens we discovered that although they had better knowledge on modern agriculture methods, very few practised them.

Most of the health knowledge acquired in the process was on the control of diarrhoea diseases and other water-borne diseases that had been affecting them before the intervention. These issues had been discussed in the circles and participants had understood them.

Participants both Hutus and Tutsis, had join activities such as road construction, brick making, gardening, and they were having dialogue on the causes of conflict and how to stop or manage conflict.

Efforts to find out whether Reflect has helped the participants to engage in activities that would generate income for economic empowerment yielded very wee results. We did not find any pronounced activities worth noting that one would say are income generating.

The team discovered that although participants had discussed the heavy workload of women for example, they had done very little to change the status quo. Again we discovered that some women were now participating in performing some tasks that were formally exclusively done by men.

The evaluation discovered that the Reflect participants especially women had become self confident in terms of self-expression, and attained negotiation skills.

The homogeneity of language and livelihood.

Monitoring and evaluation of Reflect is a very hazy area. Due to the lack of documentation, there is no evidence to show that there has been any serious monitoring. In any participatory monitoring or evaluation system, the interest of all stakeholders should be taken into consideration. With this interest in mind, indicators should be developed, discussed, and agreed upon, including the means for verifying them and clarifying how often that would be.