Activity Mapping - Example: Mapping of Activities on Domestic Violence in Cambodia

Step 1: Definiton of the Research Question

The GTZ project “Promotion of Women’s Rights” assists the Cambodian
Ministry of Women’s Affairs to protect women’s rights. Main focus of the project is the implementation of the Law on Prevention of Domestic Violence and Protection of the Victim (DV Law). A multitude of international, national, governmental and non-governmental agencies work to enhance women’s status in society and to improve the living conditions of Cambodian women. Many activities in the field of gender, conflict resolution or legal literacy contribute to combating domestic violence or to implementation of the Law on Prevention of Domestic Violence respectively. At the same time a multitude of agencies work in different location, with a different coverage and with a different intensity. For a substantial DV Law implementation plan it was essential to map existing development programmes dealing with gender, domestic violence and conflict resolution in order to identify entry points for implementation, training mechanisms and to avoid overlap among agencies. To date many organizations are working side by side in different districts or provinces without have the chance to learn from each other – as they do not knowing the scope, coverage or content of other institution’s activities.

Step 2: Identification of existing information and core issues

Information and reports on ongoing activities of related organizations were collected, the project identified the following core field activities to combat “Domestic Violence”:

• Information and Education Campaigns
• Training
• Policy and Advocacy
• Services

Step 3: Define a grid of activities that are commonly applied to tackle the identified core issues

Based on the previous core field of activities, each field was specified in detailed categories - a number of activities and services has been identified

A. Information and Education Campaigns:

• Events (e.g. concerts, workshops etc)
• Media campaigns
• TV/radio broadcasting
• Articles in newspapers/magazines
• Promotional materials (t-shirts, banners, caps etc)

B. Training:

• Gender awareness training
• Violence against women
• Rape
• Conflict resolution
• Other

C. Policy and Advocacy:

• Policy (development, implementation)
• Advocacy

D. Services:

• Shelters
• Counselling for victims - individual
• Counselling for victims - group
• Counselling for perpetrators - individual
• Counselling for perpetrators – group
• Conflict resolution for families and communities
• Other

Step 4: Identify the level on which information about the activities is collected

Different organizations implement their activities on Provincial, District, Commune and Village level. For the mapping activity a decision needed to be made on which level information is going to be collected. This decision includes a trade off between too detailed information on the village level or the danger of collecting not enough information on the province level. Since the major actors working domestic violence are bigger organizations with a wide coverage, the project decided to carry out activity mapping on district level.

Step 5: Identify the target organisations to be invited for an activity mapping exercise / workshop

More than 90 organizations were invited to participate at the mapping exercise. To some organizations, that were not able to attend the workshop, the questionnaires were submitted, and assistance was given to fill them correctly.

Photo 1: Participants get briefed about the Methodology

Step 6: Develop and pretest a questionnaire

An introductory questionnaire was designed with the aim to collect contact information and details about the particular organization implementing activities in related fields.

Figure 1: Activity Mapping Questionnaire (Excerpt)

to be continued for every core issue...

Photo 2: Introduction of the questionnaire to the participants

The questionnaires also asked the location of the ongoing activities, information on the time frame and target groups. The questionnaire consisted of different forms. For each activity the organization were requested to fill one form so the researchers could refer one activity to one location. If an organization conducted several activities in the same coverage area, they were requested to fill in several forms with the additional information of time frame and target groups for the specific activities.

The questionnaire also collected the number of staff assigned to one activity. This aimed to estimate the intensity of the activities. However, for most representatives of agencies this information was not available. Due to this, the activity mapping exercise focused on a quantitative coverage rather than a qualitative, by counting the number of organizations active in one or the other district regarding a particular subject.

Step 7: Activity Mapping Workshop: Data collection

A web database and a web mapping system has been set up to store, retrieve and visualize the collected data. After the workshop, project staff was assigned to fill the questionnaires into the database as well as contact information of organizations and contact persons. Figure 3 depicts the structure of the database.

Figure 2: Data entity relationships

The web database was useful to collect, enter and cross-check the data gathered by multiple users in a short period of time. Some questionnaires have been sent out to some organizations based in the countryside, which were not able to attend the workshop.

Step 8: Data processing and -analysis

Data analysis tools were developed to quickly visualize and analyze the results from the questionnaires. The following modules were developed to reflect the information in the database:

• A catalogue listing up all details of information for each organization, with filters to focus on one organization / activity;
• A web mapping tool allowing to show the geographical coverage of activities / services;
• A tool showing the time span of ongoing activities.
• An export tool allowing to export the data into MS Excel readable format, in order to allow in depth research on detailed questions.

Figure 3: Activity Mapping Catalogue

Since the time frame was included in the questionnaire, it was also possible to visualize the time span (Figure 2), some activities were ongoing. However, information on future and past activities were assumed to be not comprehensive.

Figure 4: Time span of activities

Step 9: Visualisation and redistribution of results

More than 180 maps have been generated from the database using a mapping module, which visualized the statistical data of the database. In general, for every organization and activity, one map has been produced as shown in Map 1.

Map 1: Coverage of ADHOC: TV/radio broadcasting on domestic violence

For each activity and core issue, the number of involved organizations have been counted and therefore the entire coverage of services was visualized (shown in Map 2) and discussed.

While the database was web based, all results were immediate published when entered. All participants have been informed, when data entry was finalized and the mapping module updated.

Map 2: Number of organisations involved in Informaion & Education Campaigns

Step 10: Discussion of Results / Policy Making

Internal and external group discussions were carried out to make use of the results from the Activity Mapping Exercise.

As a result:

• All participants appreciated to get an insight on the overall coverage of activities/services in the field of Domestic Violence.
• There was a multitude of local organizations, that could be integrated in further dissemination efforts to ensure that all organizations use the same messages.
• There are ongoing discussions and cooperation in the field of domestic violence between the organizations and the National Ministry of Women’s Affairs in Cambodia.
• The GTZ project “Promotion of Women’s Rights“ has identified its role which is reflected in planning of future activities.