Simon Koolwijk

On the 3rd and 4th November, 2015 the final event for the second Participatory Video Oscar Award was held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Twenty-seven organisations participated in this competition for becoming the best participatory video maker 2015 in the Ethiopian Social Accountability Program. Between May and September, 2015 the Social Accountability Implementing Partners implemented participatory video interventions to initiate dialogues on social accountability. On the 3rd November, 2015 the organizations had an opportunity to exchange experiences with each other. The four best nominated organizations competed for the PV Oscar Award. On the 4th November, 2015 the price winner was awarded. This PV Oscar competition is part of the Ethiopian Social Accountability Program Phase 2. It stimulates dialogue between service users and service providers for improving service delivery in the sectors of education,health, water & sanitation, rural road infrastructure and agriculture. Watch vid...

‘Outcome harvesting is an excellent tool for evaluating projects, that operate in a complex environment and that do not have a pre-defined strategy!’    This was one of the comments from one of the participants, who participated in a workshop conducted by Ricardo Wilson Grau, one of the founding fathers of the Outcome Harvesting method.  The workshop was hosted on the 23 rd June, 2015 in The Hague by the Nedworc Association and OXFAM Novib ,   participants were Nedworc consultants and MEL-officers of OXFAM Novib. Outcome harvesting is an evaluation approach, involving all stakeholders in a project,  in a program context where there are no clear relations between cause and effect.  Especially projects that involve lobby and advocacy,  fast changing contexts and unpredictable situations can benefit from the Outcome harvesting approach. In 2013, UNDP selected Outcome Harvesting as one of the 11 major Monitoring and Evaluation innovations. Th...

This video shows on how stories are visualized through participatory video stories in one week. From story board development to filming, to editing and then finally presenting and discussing the videos at a community dialogue meeting participants from social accountability partners learn to apply participatory video for dialogue with the community in discussing the progress on educational service delivery in Shashemene, Ethiopia. The training took place from 23 – 27 March, 2015 in Hawassa and Shashemene, Ethiopia. The participants inteviewed and involved 6 stakeholder groups in the discussion on the progress of educational services in Shashemene, Ethiopia. Both user groups, students, and service providers, teachers were involved in this participatory process. As experiment, also control groups from both students and teachers were involved in the PV process. The control groups came from schools, who did not participate in the social accountability process. The training was implemen...

From 18th – 20th March, 2015 twenty participatory video facilitators and practitioners attended a three day advanced training in participatory video. The twenty pv facilitators are representing 10 social accountability implementing partners (SAIPs), that are involved in implementing social accountability processes in the sectors of health, education, agriculture, water & sanitation and rural roads in the whole country of Ethiopia. The pv facilitators conducted pv interventions between October 2014 and February, 2015. This training gave them the opportunity to share their experiences and update their knowledge on participatory video, to learn to work with advanced software in video editing and to learn how to use the participatory videos for monitoring and evaluation and to discuss the opportunities and challenges on how to sustain participatory video in their organisation. Between May and July 2015, these SAIPs will continue to implement new participatory video interventions and ...

In early 2015 I conducted a Participatory Strategic Planning for a consultancy business. For this I applied the Participatory Strategic Planning (PSP)  approach, which has been developed by the Institute of Cultural Affairs .  The Strategic Planning consists of six key steps, 0. Intake formulation of the focus question 1.  Formulation / Review  Mission, values/ Trend analysis and environmental scan; 2.  Practical Vision; 3.  Underlying contradictions; 4.  Strategic Directions; 5.  Operational planning. The method Step 0: Intake and formulating the focus question Before step 1 takes place in the strategic planning process, an essential step is necessary, to move forward.  This is the intake and the formulation of the focus question. The ownership of the organizational change starts at the intake. Asking the right questions and getting the right people at the table are crucial conditions for enabling a successful ...