Participants in program planning

While it may seem trivial, deciding who should be involved in planning a literacy program could mean the difference between success and failure.

In one sense, planning a program can be understood as a straightforward, academic, or technical task. Knowledgeable and experienced planners, with some basic information about the situation and some guidelines as to the intent and scope of the program, should be able to design the program at their desk.

On the other hand, program planning also needs to be understood as a mobilizing or consensus-building task. A part of the task of designing the program is seeking to ensure that the plan is viable. Viability, in turn, is dependent on the actions and reactions of the intended participants in the program. If the intended participants of the program do not like the program and refuse to participate, the program design is defective, no matter how conceptually and technically brilliant the design appears to be.

The task of the program planner is to produce a technically adequate program design, and an acceptable or welcome program design.

Whoever is taking the initiative in the program planning should begin by assuming that all stakeholders should have a part in the planning process.

Primary stakeholders or their representatives should be directly involved in the design process. While not all of these people will work on the details of the design, all should be involved in sketching the overall shape of the program. This will make it more likely that there will be “buy in” or support for the program once it begins.

Secondary stakeholders are those individuals or agencies having agendas or programs which will be affected in a less direct way from the proposed program.

Secondary stakeholders could be any of the following:

• Educational officials having responsibility in the target area
• Staff from nongovernmental organizations having development or training programs in the target area
• National officials from other than the educational sector having programs in the local area
• People from communities not included in the target population

Secondary stakeholders should have opportunity to have input into the program design before it is considered complete. Typically, this does not yield major suggestions for changes, but it does serve to alert these agencies to the coming program. This is usually appreciated even though it may seem like a formality and be met with indifference.

• Planning a literacy program

• Fact module: Participants in program planning
• In overview module: Literacy programs, by Stephen L. Walter
• In modular book: Plan a literacy program, by Stephen L. Walter, Barbara K. Trudell (contributor), and Trudy K. Stewart (general editor)
• In bookshelf: Literacy

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 4.0, published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 1999. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 18 May 1999

© 1999 SIL International