Guest blog by Sharlene Gawi, Nesther Horiva, Audrey Kari, Naijolin Tumul
Gender-based violence has become a prevalent and growing issue in Papua New Guinea. Research from the 2016-2018 Demographic Health Survey showed that at least 68% of women in PNG have experienced this violence at some point in their lives. This is double the global average.
The establishment of the National Gender-based Violence Secretariat to coordinate and enforce the government’s strategy and policies in the fight against gender-based violence is a recent development in the country that fosters much hope.
A small team from the Secretariat and within the Department for Community Development and Religion signed up for the PDIA course in August of 2024 and were inspired to learn as much as we could from Professor Matt and his team about how we could turn the tide on the issue of gender-based violence in a revolutionary way.
Team Members meeting to begin group assignments.
Some of our key learnings were how to construct a problem statement and then asking ourselves why these problems existed, why they mattered and who they mattered to. We also were challenged to think outside the box when exploring and applying the concepts of latent practice and positive deviance in crawling the design space for possible solutions to our problem statement. Small steps and the power of reflection were also one of the key takeaways for our team and the triple A analysis and finding out how big our change space was.
The problem we worked on in the 12 weeks of the PDIA course was to find out how we (The Secretariat) could better coordinate and support the efforts of government and non-government agencies involved in the referral pathway so that survivors of gender-based violence can get the support and care they need.
We started with a very simple statement, “the referral pathway doesn’t work”, and over the course of the first 5 weeks of PDIA, we refined this problem statement twice.
Our fishbone diagram with some ideas of who to engage with.
We identified 5 main causes as we deconstructed the problem and formed our fishbone diagram. These causes ranged from intangible problems such as a lack of awareness on GBV issues to tangible issues like the lack of necessary resources and funding. As a team, what we found insightful and practical was breaking down our ideas for change to small achievable steps and also building trust and confidence with our authorizers. The progress we made has largely been in the conversations each of us have had with different service providers and colleagues in both the government and non-government space that have improved our understanding of the causes we have identified in our problem statement. This will help us to further analyse our change spaces and refine our solutions in our next iteration.
The PDIA approach is definitely a game changer! The PDIA approach could significantly change how problems are tackled in the future by reshaping mindsets and methods used in problem-solving. Here’s how this approach might affect our future strategies:
- The iterative process is flexible enough to accommodate learnings in the process of solving problems as they can be tested, refined, and adapted based on real-time feedback;
- Active involvement of stakeholders to gain insights and build coalitions for collaboration in addressing problems;
- It encourages ownership on all levels of the team from authorizers to team members.
We plan on continuing to analyze and apply what we have started in this PDIA process to develop our work plan for 2025. We are excited to learn more about how we can bring about positive change especially through investigating what our latent practices and positive deviance ideas may be.
To fellow PDIA practitioners around the world, we would say, your commitment to every part of the PDIA process is vital and will reap great results for your team and the important work that each of you do! Celebrate small wins as much as the big wins and don’t forget to show acts of kindness to each other and to yourselves!
This blog was written by participants who completed a 12-week PDIA for PNG online action learning program from August – November 2024. 31 participants successfully completed this program.