d. Detailed project planning: a few useful concepts

The specifics of your project plan will undoubtedly differ greatly from any other Scenarios-type project, past or present. The objective of this section is, once again, not to lay out a detailed path to follow, but rather to present some ideas that might prove useful during the planning process.
We recommend that detailed planning be a highly consultative process carried out in close collaboration with the core advisors. A useful point of departure is your project concept paper.
The following ideas reflect our experiences in the context of Scenarios from the Sahel:
Throughout the planning process, try to shape the project in such a way that it builds on what already exists in your area.
In order to optimize the impact of a Scenarios-type project, it is best perceived as an integrated process designed to complement and enhance what already exists in the area of HIV/AIDS in your region. This effect will be maximized if you focus on it during the planning stage.
Use this phase to develop a broader sense of objectives and outputs for the project.

As the sections on potential objectives and outputs in the individual chapters suggest, a Scenarios-type project is capable of achieving far more than you would initially imagine. Please make use of the planning and preparation stage to stretch the team's perception of the potential of the project. One major potential danger we see in the planning stage is that of limited vision and its constricting effect on project outcomes.
Place special emphasis on the development of efficient communications systems among partners.
It would be difficult for a project based on far-reaching partnership to attain optimal success if communications between the partners were poor. Effective communications are a fundamental source of strength and vitality of the project. Therefore, do not cut corners when it comes to your communications budget. When drafting your project budget, be sure that this item does not reflect excessive conservatism.
The planning stage is a good opportunity to establish a system of fluid communications with your partners. In the course of project planning and execution, you will be circulating a great many documents with your partners to keep them informed and to request feedback. The best, most cost-effective way to do this today (in a rapidly increasing number of countries) is via e-mail.
The Scenarios from the Sahel project zone is made up of three countries (Senegal, Mali and Burkina Faso). Our communications with partners located far from our base in Dakar have often been difficult and expensive. However, all of our primary partners live in zones in which Internet infrastructure exists. (Note that Mali and Burkina Faso are among the ten poorest countries in the world, materially speaking). With hindsight, we regret that we did not request that our funders allow us to allocate some of the communications budget to equipping and training key partners so that they could communicate with the project team via e-mail. Those costs would have been amortized long ago, and monthly e-mail subscriptions or fees at a cybercenter are miniscule compared to the costs of phone/fax between countries in this region. Further, it would have been possible for the Scenarios team and our funders to demonstrate that the project had contributed to capacity building in another valuable way.
Plan using extensive consultation by means of e-mail inquiries
During the planning phase and at many times in the course of project execution, we have seen a particular tool work wonders: e-mail inquiries sent to as many relevant project partners as possible.
The initial steps of project planning will generate a certain number of research questions. Later on, there will be several more times when you will want broad-based input from your partners. A good way to get feedback from your partners _ both in the project zone and internationally _ is by sending out a request for feedback via e-mail and asking partners to respond, if they have the time, in ten days.

This approach has the additional benefit of allowing you to inform partners about the project element in question. It can, therefore, be an effective, interactive way of keeping people updated.
If you are requesting that someone spend time giving you their input, it is preferable to send a personal e-mail message. However if you just want to send out unpersonalized update reports to project partners, Listserve mechanisms (whereby the same message is sent simultaneously to a predetermined list of people) are a very useful and time-saving way to keep people informed.
We have found that e-mail communication is appreciated by busy specialists, as it is non-intrusive (no interruptions) and allows them to address the matter at a time that suits their schedule. Requesting they respond within ten days is respectful of your partners' schedules, enhances the chances that they will indeed respond, and forces the core project team to plan well in advance.
Once the project coordinators have received responses back from their partners (via e-mail and whatever other means they choose to employ, such as phone or face-to-face interviews with local people who have no e-mail access) they can shape a consensus response to the question at hand.
Establish and preserve flexibility in the project plan
Project plans reflect decisions that will have a major impact on the remainder of the project. The plan can be rigid and constraining, or it can be flexible and enabling. In the case of a Scenarios-type project, which works on many levels with a multitude of partners, the former could be devastating.

In the course of Scenarios from the Sahel, a number of wonderful, unforeseeable opportunities to enhance the reach and impact of the project have emerged out of nowhere. One good example is the initiative taken by both Peace Corps/Senegal and PLAN International/Senegal to lend a hand in the execution of the contest. Representatives of both of those structures simply appeared on the project's doorstep, said that they felt Scenarios was a good complement to their own activities, and that they were wondering if we could work together. Fortunately, the project plan was flexible enough to allow the Scenarios team to seize upon that opportunity fully. Both Peace Corps and PLAN financed their own participation, so the element of flexibility that came into play was logistical in nature.

Other kinds of flexibility that you might want to reflect on relate to the project timetable and budget. Plan buffer periods into the timetable, e.g., schedule in an "empty" period of two or three weeks between project phases. In addition, try and convince your funders of the necessity of allowing for "unexpected expenditures" in the course of the project or _contingencies_ in your budget. There are three main reasons why flexibility with regard to time and/or to the budget are so important:
1) As mentioned above, it is important for the project to maintain a certain level of openness to unexpected opportunities.
2) Scenarios project planning and execution are based on consensus-seeking processes within a large, diverse team, and that can be less expeditious than more directivist approaches.
3) On a more concrete level: You cannot know in advance how many young people are going to want to participate in the contest, and that means it is difficult to know with any precision:

- How many contest leaflets to print
- How many work hours and materials will be required to carry out the pre-selection process (i.e., will the pre-selection team be processing the anticipated 3,000 contributions, or will you be happily flooded by 8,000?)
- What about work hours and materials for the data-entry and archiving processes?

Our experience tells us that different funders have radically different levels of flexibility and openness to these kinds of imperatives.
A couple of additional comments on the project timetable
When putting together your detailed timetable, remember to take account of:

C Funder disbursement schedules
C Holidays, school vacations and exam periods (especially with regard to the contest)
C Rainy seasons, hot seasons, dust-storm seasons _ (contest logistics, filming)
C Ramadan and other religious observances. (The contest: Inviting people to reflect on and discuss topics that have a lot to do with sexuality might not be appropriate during certain periods. Filming: Out of respect to people who are fasting _ and that also means not drinking any liquids at all by day _ during the month of Ramadan, one might be well-advised not carry out the lengthy and often physically trying task of shooting, especially if it is to take place in particularly hot climes.)

C Special events like international women's day, national youth week, and international AIDS day _ that could be used as target dates for the launch of the contest, the announcement of winners or awarding of prizes, the premiere of a film, broadcasts on national television.

Exhaustively pre-test everything
Not all obsessions are a bad thing. When carrying out a Scenarios-type project, pre-testing is a healthy obsession. It's a low-cost, easy way to avoid plenty of problems downstream and to ensure quality and effectiveness.
In addition, pre-testing sessions are superb opportunities for broad-based involvement of large numbers of project partners. Thus, pre-testing is also a vehicle for capacity building, bolstering a sense of ownership in the project, and maintaining continuity of involvement.
During the planning stage, make provision (time, funds) for pre-testing wherever you could imagine it would be beneficial.
A few of the many times you might want to consider extensive pre-testing are:
C Pre-testing of the various elements of the contest leaflet (basic instructions, list of suggested topics, questionnaire)
C Pre-testing of the selection methodology and all associated survey-style documents
C Pre-testing of your evaluation methodologies, e.g. questionnaires
C Pre-testing of the archiving system you choose
C Pre-testing of the selected data-entry and data-analysis methodologies
C Pre-testing of qualitative tools selected for analysis of the young people's scenarios
C Pre-testing (until you drop!) of the scripts before starting audio-visual production
You might well want to pilot the entire process on a small scale before launching into a full-scale project.
During the planning and preparation stage, there is already a great opportunity to establish pre-testing methodologies and networks, namely the development of a project logo. Why not get a local art school on board, explain the project to the students, and ask them to submit ideas for the logo? Those same students might be valuable project partners later on, for example when it comes to drawing storyboards for script pre-testing.

Set up fluid, easily administered and regularly updated systems of information management
As the project progresses, you will find that relevant and potentially useful information on several aspects of the process is coming at you from many directions. We recommend that you take some time during the planning phase to create a number of simply structured, user-friendly files and make a point of updating them on a regular basis. These files render both project execution and reporting easier:

C Lists of e-mail addresses, web sites and other resources for each project phase
C General contact list
C Annotated list of potential jurors for the selection phase (a sub-list of the above)
C Annotated list of funders for the project at large and for each project phase (also a sub-list of the general contact list)
C Map of synergies directly attributable to the project
C Potential channels / sources of support for distribution of audio-visual products
C All information relevant to the Users' Guide (the guide that will accompany the compilation tape of the Scenarios films and will include instructions on how to use the films to optimum effectiveness). This information might include: text of the original scenario, comments by jurors at each stage, pre-testing results, evaluative materials on the final product_
C Comprehensive file of media coverage of the project (including copies of articles, recordings of relevant radio and television coverage, statistics regarding frequency and reach of relevant broadcasts_).
C Log of requests received for project products or for information
C Lessons learned, innovative ideas and suggested improvements in the Scenarios methodologies
A few comments on monitoring and evaluation

You will need to formulate an evaluation strategy for your specific project that will satisfy your own evaluation needs and those of all your stakeholders, including your funders (different funding organizations require different kinds of evidence of impact). It will be based on the objectives that you set for your specific project. Given that replication is to take on a number of different forms, and in light of the fact that each project will have its own specific objectives, we would like to limit our comments at this stage to a few general remarks:
C Even if the primary target group of your project is "young people under the age of 25", remember that many other people will also benefit from the project and could be considered as the focus of certain monitoring and evaluation activities. Among them are:
a) The public at large

b) The multi-disciplinary project team

c) NGO's and CBO's involved in HIV/AIDS in the project zone
C Be realistic with regard to attributability, and establish honest indicators. That is to say, do not to fall into the trap of stating that certain changes in behavior or increases in condom sales (for example) are attributable to your project when you know fully well that many other related activities are currently being carried out or have been in recent years in the project zone.
C Be realistic about what individual components of the project can achieve in which populations. And be realistic about what can be measured, especially when it comes to behavior change.

In many cases, behavior change is a long, slow, incremental process. For this reason, intermediate steps to behavior change are likely to provide important indicators for the evaluation strategy of a project of this kind. These can take many different forms. Examples might include: seeking out information, levels of awareness, discussion generated, personal reflection on risk behavior generated, perception of reduction in obstacles to behavior change (e.g., embarrassment at buying condoms), intention to change behavior_ Your evaluation advisor will be able to fine-tune your ideas. You might want to consult some documents on theories of behavior change when formulating your evaluation strategy. Also, be sure to select indicators that correspond to your own target audience.

C Scenarios from the Sahel is made up of many different elements, which reinforce each others_ impact. It includes mass media components and others based on interpersonal communication. You will want to evaluate the impact of these individual components. You may also want to evaluate their cumulative impact, a particularly challenging task. Evaluating project components both cumulatively and individually will give you a better understanding not only of the impact the project has had, but also of how that impact was achieved.

One strategy for cumulative evaluation you may want to consider with your evaluation advisor and your stakeholders is a time series survey (a series of KAP questionnaires administered at specified intervals over the length of the project). This method has the potential to register the impact of the various successive project components on your indicators within the survey population.

C Establish truly pertinent evaluation indicators. For example, if your objective with regard to television broadcasts is to generate dialogue among young people, it would probably not be pertinent to set an evaluation indicator that has to do with total viewership among the population at large.
C Try to feed into the evaluation activities of your project partners. For example, depending on your objectives and your evaluation needs, you may want to consider asking service providers to share their condoms sales data or STD treatment centers to share their statistics with you. (Remember that you would hope to see figures for STD treatment increase in the short and medium term, indicating that more people were seeking treatment). Of course, your project alone will not be able to take credit for any improvements in these figures, but depending on its nature, it might have contributed towards them.
C Consider budgeting for an external evaluator to assess your project at an appropriate stage. This ensures objectivity and can reinforce the credibility of your project, especially with funding organizations.
C An interesting object of monitoring and evaluation, one that might be particularly appropriate for an outside evaluator, is the synergies, spin-offs and partnerships that can indeed be directly attributed to the project.

C Think innovatively about ways to involve young people in monitoring and evaluation activities with a view to providing them with training that could be useful to them beyond the realm of Scenarios.
An ounce of prevention : seek out expert legal advice early on
Take account of the following tasks in your budget. They are essential.

C As soon as funding is secured, take time to work with a specialist intellectual property and/or media lawyer to develop all necessary model contracts. Doing this in advance can help you to avoid unnecessary delays later on.

C Contracts for consultants
C Contracts for partner organizations carrying out individual tasks
C Contracts / other legal documents pertaining to intellectual property rights (the young authors, professional scriptwriters, film production teams_.). Also seek legal advice on the wording of the contest document.
C Contracts for all types of envisaged distribution: via compilation video, cinemas, television Some distributors will be able to provide you with model contracts.

C Address with the legal advisors the question of whether and in what fashion you may state or make other use of the young participants' names in the archive, published research results, film credits. Answers to this question differ radically from one culture (and legal system) to another.