Our third questions today:
• Anonymous suggestion forums and grievance resolving mechanisms
• Public forums (barazas) to deliberate on budgets and priorities in County level
• Mobile platforms to report crimes as witnesses or victims. Kenya National Government Administration Officers (NGAOS) have used MULIKA application and USSD code 988 to reduce triple threat (teenage pregnancies, HIV and GBV) situation during and after COVID 19.
• Two-way communication to ensure reporting is followed by actions
• Continuous improvement
• Community advisory boards and stakeholder forums
The involvement of the grass root and other stakeholders who are directly impacted by the issues being addressed is a tedious task and requires considerable comittment and patience and the time taken is to be considered to make meaningful and long tem impact. Mostly a top down approach is observed with focus on reports, Monitoring systems, data collection and lack of completion of the loop..
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A3: Embedding local voices in strategies cannot be seen as a one-off exercise. It is critical that communities are provided multiple touchpoints to create a continuous feedback loop. This can be informal in the form of ongoing dialogue with the farmers, or formally, through surveys and focus groups.
Following a bottom-up approach - deliberate efforts to link and enable communication between all stakeholders from time to time. The brand/customer team visits, where teams meet farmers, supply chain partners, and other key players, provide invaluable opportunities for each party to witness firsthand how others function and the challenges they face. This direct interaction fosters mutual understanding and strengthens the entire value chain.
To ensure fair practices throughout your processes, we have the ‘Speak Up’ campaign, which provides a vital channel for stakeholders and others to raise concerns, report roadblocks, or highlight any malpractices within the system. This proactive approach demonstrates a commitment to being aware of challenges and taking action to address them.
Responding to Material Issues in Sustainable Cotton Production (https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5ff5d85f409193661a071749/t/65b2039eb51fff360fe50e6e/1706165154187/CC_INSIGHTS-Material-Issues+in+Sustainable+Cotton-v06.pdf)
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What practices or platforms help ensure listening and accountability to communities or workers on the ground?
Listening isn’t a one-off. It’s a rhythm. I build it in through interviews, surveys, focus groups, panels whatever suits the audience. I mix the methods to get the full picture. But I always lean on qualitative work to go deeper. That’s where you find out what’s really going on. What people are feeling. Why something’s working. Or not.
The trick is closing the loop. Share what you’ve heard. What you’re doing about it. What still needs work. That’s how you build trust. I don’t see research as something you do at the start and file away. It’s part of the process all the way through. And when it’s done well, it doesn’t just inform the work. It changes it.
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Below are effective practices and platforms that support this,
Community feedback sessions , whether in-person or virtual, should occur at every project stage. Surveys, polls, and digital and physical suggestion boxes, tailored to the community’s language and literacy levels, are critical components.
Digital tools and learning platform : The most effective tools for communication are visual aids, radio and mobile formats, and social media platforms that cater to local content. Nowadays, a B2B platform functions as a community for various stakeholders. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) support initiatives like Feedback Commons, an open-source platform for collecting and managing community feedback. The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) also publishes and tracks aid flows openly. Transparent project dashboards provide communities real-time updates on goals, budgets, and progress. These are some of the tools that participants are actively using.
Community-Led MEAL system : Community-Led Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation and learning systems to Track Progress and Identify Concerns. Let communities define and understand success metrics and assess outcomes.
Community of practices/participatory tools We utilise tools like PGS systems, community advisory councils, PIP and RRA /PRA application tools, enabling communities to determine how funds are allocated. We adapt listening mechanisms to local norms (e.g., oral storytelling, group consensus, community elders and community of practices ).
Some of the tools in practice are
Rural Appraisal (PRA): This approach utilizes various techniques such as mapping, seasonal calendars, Venn diagrams, and ranking exercises to engage the community in the assessment and planning process.
Focus Group Discussions (FGDs): These discussions are conducted to collect qualitative insights from specific community groups, including women, youth, and elders. Community Scorecards and Citizen Report Cards: These tools are designed to monitor service delivery and evaluate the performance of local institutions.
Social Audits : These audits promote transparency and accountability and are often applied in governance and service delivery projects.
We work with young people affected by unemployment at Jabulani Youths for Transformation - our approach in solving unemployment together with them includes - creating opportunities for ownership of the intervention - and positioning decision makers, and other resource and support organizations as equal partners.
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You Said, We Did’ - Closing the Feedback Loop: Listening and Accountability in Engagement
Effective engagement isn’t just about asking questions — it’s about showing people they’ve been heard. One of the most powerful ways to build trust and credibility is to close the feedback loop.
Why It Matters
When communities and frontline workers take the time to share their views, they deserve to know:
- What was heard
- What’s happening as a result
- Why certain decisions were made — especially when not everyone agrees
This transparency builds long-term trust, even in complex or contested situations.
Tools & Platforms That Work
Online Engagement Platforms
Commonplace and CitizenSpace are excellent tools for:
- Gathering diverse input
- Visualizing community sentiment
- Anchoring ongoing conversations
- Demonstrating how feedback is shaping decisions
They’re especially useful for busy communities who need flexible, accessible ways to engage.
Social Media
Social platforms can amplify engagement, reach new audiences, and provide real-time updates. They’re also great for sharing outcomes and inviting continued dialogue.
Internal Communications
Frontline staff are key stakeholders too. Keeping them informed through clear, consistent internal communications ensures:
- They understand the “why” behind decisions
- They can confidently represent the process to others
- Their insights continue to shape future actions
Making Feedback Loops Visible
Use infographics, dashboards, summary videos, or simple “You Said, We Did” updates to show progress. Even when the answer is “not yet” or “not possible,” explaining the reasoning keeps people engaged and respected.
There are various practices and platforms that can support the inclusion of communities, homeowners, and workers on the ground in the design and implementation of resilient housing programs. What is required is the institutionalization of formalization of these as integral to larger implementation processes that are connected to policies and financing mechanisms that ensure the systemic integration of local voices, capacities and traditional knowledge into the design and provision of resilient housing in vulnerable communities. This can be done with all of the practices and platforms mentioned already in our previous responses, as well as others.
- Awareness raising and capacity building workshops help to develop trust and build the relationship with local communities, while at the same time disseminating critical knowledge and skills
- 1:1 technical assistance supports homeowners to ensure their preferences are incorporated throughout the design and construction processes
- Technical assistance hubs such as our Resilience Beacons (Türkiye) and Technical Assistance Centers (Nepal) offer ongoing technical support to local homeowners, ensuring a sustainable way for homeowners to gain the skills and capacity needed to engage with the construction process meaningfully
- Community or city forums, where organized communities of the urban poor can engage with other urban decision makers are valuable avenues for the needs and priorities of these communities to be integrated into city processes
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Ensuring listening and accountability to communities or workers starts with building intentional, ongoing channels for dialogue, not just one-time consultations. Practices such as participatory research, human-centered design, and co-creation workshops allow programs to be shaped by those with lived experience. For example, involving workers early in the design of workplace policies, through focus groups, feedback forums, or worker committees, can surface hidden barriers and ensure solutions are grounded in reality. Platforms like grievance redressal systems, anonymous hotlines, or worker voice tools (SMS, apps, or digital surveys) also help maintain regular feedback loops. But listening alone isn’t enough, accountability requires that feedback informs decision-making and is visibly acted upon. That means closing the loop with workers: sharing what was heard, what will change, and why. Lastly, accountability grows stronger when organizations commit to transparency, reporting back on outcomes and allowing independent evaluations of how well they responded to frontline needs.
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Q3: It probably won’t surprise you to hear us say radio! Despite the rise in digital technology and the increased penetration of mobile phone signals in remote communities, FM radio continues to be the most used and trusted communications medium in many parts of the world, and is relied upon my many rural communities for access to news and information, but also entertainment, culture and social interaction. Our research also shows that the most marginalised members of rural communities are still not accessing online content (due to literacy issues, poor signal, lack of data) and becoming increasingly excluded from the information they need.
The Farmers’ Voice Radio approach puts listener participation at its centre – not only do farmers themselves control and contribute the majority of the content, but there are a number of feedback loops built into the methodology. A dedicated phone line is established for each series and the number read out at the end of each episode. Listeners can call or message, and their questions and comments are logged and responded to in future episodes. This can help to enrich discussion, address any areas of uncertainty, correct misunderstandings and guide future topics. Increasingly, social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook and YouTube are also used to engage listeners in areas where farmers have access to smartphones and data.
In addition, a network of Radio Champions based in the most isolated communities run communal listening sessions to enable their fellow farmers to listen together to the broadcasts and have their own discussions about the content. Our formative research often shows that women do not have access to a radio set or do not have control over what they listen to on the radio – so communal listening sessions create access to the programmes for those people. In addition, these Champions act as an additional conduit for listener feedback, noting down questions and comments from the group and feeding these back into planning for future episodes. These feedback loops work together to ensure that the radio programmes are always responsive to listener needs and accountability to their target audience.
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Grievance mechanisms
Community forums
Continuously engaging with a variety of formal and informal community leaders
Hopefully all these practices and platforms would be designed by the communities or groups in question themselves to ensure they are relevant and adequate.
As mentioned previously, direct engagement with impacted communities is essential to success. However this can present logistical and sometimes cultural challenges. It can help greatly to have a trusted, disinterested intermediary carry out the engagement (for example an NGO expert in the matter at hand), which will deliver an impartial assessment of an initiative’s effectiveness, or lack of it. And involvement of locally or regionally based experts (eg universities, academics) can deliver perspectives otherwise potentially obscured to actors not rooted in the context.
An example of this is FOSEK - a multi year initiative to improve food and nutrition security among coffee farmers in Ethiopia and Kenya, implemented by Dutch NGO Solidaridad in partnership with Nestlé. On-the-ground implementation was informed and facilitated by Rural Outreach Africa, an organisation headed by renowned Kenyan academic Professor Ruth Oniango. Insights provided via this approach included identifying lack of nutrition security especially approaching harvest (and consequently payment/income) time among coffee farming communities. Interventions included education, training and seed provision to grow kitchen gardens, which measurably enhanced farmer family nutrition security and provided alternative income streams. Engaging with the help of local expertise helped identify and overcome some of the barriers to success, including attitudes to gender roles and logistical challenges like ensuring access to classroom space for training sessions at weekends.
At present it is not clear whether this approach is being folded into current initiatives to promote regenerative farming practices among coffee farmers in the region. It is to be hoped that efforts to address global priorities continue to place the welfare of local farmer communities at their centre.
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Q3 reply
In our hyper-connected, digital world, continuous sensing, listening, feedback is ubiquitous, perhaps to the point where TMI (too much information) is making it a lot more difficult to hear/see the signal in the sea of noise. The founders of Hewlett Packard—Bill & Dave—coined the term MBWA (Management By Walking Around) in the 1970’s, and the human side of showing up and being present is probably even more relevant but obviously more challenging and costly in our global, hyper connected, lightspeed pace world today. While the digital versions of the “suggestion box” are unrecognizable today and active, participatory feedback/input accounts for a fraction of the insight and intelligence that strategists, policy makers, and program leaders have and utilise in the roles, active dialogue and engagement with communities and/or workers on the ground is essential, even though the costs (relatively speaking) are high. When the human interaction is removed or replaced with technology for the sake of efficiency, things begin to unravel. And yet in the emerging age of AI, where Therapy and Companionship is now the #1 use of generative AI (https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-all-the-things-people-use-ai-for-in-2025/ ), even the value and importance of human interaction is changing!
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Practices like community advisory boards, regular field visits, and embedded local staff help ensure listening and accountability to communities. Platforms such as participatory rural appraisals, WhatsApp-based feedback loops, and worker collectives amplify grassroots voices. Upaya Social Ventures, for example, conducts periodic impact surveys through in-person interviews with workers to gather feedback on job quality and enterprise practices. This data directly informs investment decisions and technical support. By integrating frontline insights into its strategy, Upaya ensures its capital and partnerships align with the real needs of workers living in extreme poverty. We are now exploring the use of AI to make our listening and collecting feedback more effective as well as affordable.
Based on our experience, the following four practices help ensure that accountability and listening to communities take centre stage:
Duty bearers working with civil society not just as a watchdog, but an architect of accountability processes:
Rather than being reactionary to corporate actions, CSOs in the Horn of Africa increasingly function as co-designers of accountability ecosystems. CSO networks such as BAPENECO are not just engaged in grievance tracking but also training communities in issues such as contract negotiations and creating awareness on existing frameworks such as the National Action Plans on Business and Human Rights. In Kenya, others such as Natural Justice, have pioneered legal empowerment tools and citizen litigation, thereby ensuring that communities’ rights are not just recognised, but also enforceable.
True accountability is more than listening.
Companies need to move beyond “hearing” communities, to truly restructuring their operations. In Uganda’s Albertine region, companies are now being influenced by CSOs to show the evidence base of what communities said, what changes they affected and who was held to account for when harm was caused.
Businesses must move from consultation to co-governance
In the Horn of Africa, companies often pride themselves on holding public engagements or even conducting impact assessments. From our experience, however, true accountability lies in communities co-owning the process, not just participating in it.
In Kenya, for instance, while energy companies have put in place participatory planning, grievances around displacement and sharing of benefits demonstrate that tick-box engagement does not necessarily equal to fair outcomes. A more transformative approach is where communities co-manage revenues or infrastructure, not just providing input at the initial planning phase.
Multistakeholder platforms matter less than the power structures behind them
We need to ask if multistakeholder platforms are truly redistributive or just performative when it comes to power balance. In Kenya and Uganda, local forums, public meetings (barazas), exist to engage communities. Unfortunately, oftentimes, corporate capture or elite gatekeeping often blunts their impact. There is a need for independent third-party facilitators, or citizen assemblies with enforcement abilities, not just forums shaped by corporations or states.
-In our experiecne at BCI accountability is foremost maintained by self-ownership of solutions. Training women who live at the nexus of family, social, economic and political life in their households as Solar Engineers ensures that the foremost practitioners of BCI’s solution have a vested interested in providing genuinely effective, balanced quality of life improvements that serve both themselves and all those around them. This focus echoes the emphasis on vertical integration that is built into BCI’s solutions through the level of agency that communities are given over their development; extensive communication is a matter of course in this system, and the fundamental prioritization of grassroots voices and needs has shown a hugely positive effect in ensuring that those grassroots voices are responsible and accountable for their success and solution management on the ground.
-Empowering women and their communities through practical, hands-on learning gives communities a sense of pride and genuine ownership for their energy, education and economic growth, and we have found this to be the most clear indicator of solution success over the long-term. This is emphasized by the scalability and peer-learning built in features that all of BCI’s programs incorporate; women and their communities are able to not only change their own lives for the better, but share these improvements with all those around them and take credit for them as well as reaping the massive quality of life benefits that solution implementation results in.
-In terms of specific platforms for furthering this type of vertical integration, BCI tends to keep things very simple, such as through ensuring regular communication after training between trainers and beneficiaries, and groups of Solar Engineers, via Whatsapp and easy to use, low-energy comms apps in a similar vein.
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I believe in taking a mix of inputs and looking across those to identify key themes and issues. That way you can get a consensus view and aren’t taken by surprise, or can identify anomalies and trends.
Nothing beats quality conversation with communities and workers on the ground – listening through meetings, workshops, structured and informal conversations.
But this needs to be done at scale and in conjunction with broader insights and research to ensure that you get a comprehensive picture.
More broadly its also useful to zoom out. For example conducting a comprehensive third party human rights risk assessment will help understand current key human rights risks in your supply chain and how best to tackle them going forward
Q3 Response: What practices ensuring listening and accountability..
The approach to ensuring accountability and responsiveness to communities and workers is primarily demonstrated through the systematic incorporation of participant feedback and program evaluation results. Key practices and platforms contributing to this approach include:
Participant Feedback and Program Evaluation:
The program has been continually refined and expanded based on participant feedback, program evaluation results, and independent research. Internal teams and quality assurance mechanisms have played a central role in this process. Additionally, the establishment of a cadre of program trainers, who serve as the primary point of contact for delivering the curriculum, has facilitated the collection of first-hand feedback and insights into the effectiveness of the learning modules.
Independent Research and Evaluation:
Independent researchers and organizations have been engaged to assess the program’s impact. These evaluations typically employ surveys and pre- and post-module assessments administered to participants. While these tools are designed to measure impact, they also serve as systematic methods for gathering data on participants’ experiences and perceptions of the training. For instance, surveys have collected information on self-assessed workplace quality, financial behaviours, access to entitlements, personality traits, and expectations regarding career advancement. The data collected provides valuable insights into the perceived effectiveness of the program and informs ongoing refinement efforts.
Curriculum Customization:
The curriculum is adapted and customized according to location, ensuring that the content is relevant to the specific context and needs of each community. This process necessitates a thorough understanding of local needs, which is achieved through active listening and engagement with community members.
Program Evolution and Expansion:
Since its inception, the program has evolved beyond its original factory-based settings to include community-based initiatives, specialized programming for adolescent girls, and modules designed for men and boys to foster greater understanding of women’s experiences. The development of the water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) curriculum further reflects a strategy aimed at addressing water issues from a human rights perspective. These expansions and curriculum enhancements have allowed the program to remain adaptive and responsive to the changing needs and contexts of the communities it serves.
Partnerships:
The implementation of the program has been carried out in collaboration with a range of partners, including non-profit organizations, intergovernmental bodies, government agencies, community groups, and corporate partners. These partners, being embedded within the communities, maintain direct interactions with participants and serve as vital channels for feedback and local accountability.
Empowering Voices:
A core objective of the program is to empower women to amplify their voices, expand their aspirations, and enhance their work and life skills. Reported outcomes include women advocating for greater participation in household decision-making, contributing to community infrastructure, and securing loans for business development. While these outcomes reflect the program’s success in fostering agency, they also contribute to accountability by equipping individuals to articulate their needs and concerns within their communities.
In summary, participant feedback and evaluation results serve as essential inputs for the ongoing refinement and scaling of the program, providing a structured mechanism for listening to those directly affected. The continual adaptation of the program in response to this feedback and ongoing evaluations demonstrates a strong commitment to addressing the experiences and needs of communities and workers.