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PDIA to Address SARV Cases in Simbu Province, Papua New Guinea

Remote village in Papua New Guinea

Guest blog by Team Akepile: Surgant Gand Mond, Rose Dama, Mathew G. Jonathan, Elizabeth Kai, Lilly Graham, Jack Maima, and Belinda Kora

Key Learnings from the PDIA Course

Our PDIA journey taught us valuable lessons about addressing complex social issues:

  • We were able to identify different causes and sub-causes as a team when applying the PDIA process
  • We were able to identify local solutions to our local problem
  • We realized the importance and understand the true meaning of working together as a coalition team in addressing our local problem
  • The development and the consistency in updating our team constitution is something that we learned and embrace to solve our complex problem
  • Importance of trust, commitment, delegation of responsibilities and time management have helped us to identify and work on the task that is before us
Team Akepile sits at a table

Problem we worked on over the past 12 weeks

We selected our Cause two (C2) Lack of Coordination in responding to SARV, we select sub-cause 2.1 (Breakdown in communication and connectivity from coalition) in our fishbone diagram as the first and important problem to address to improve the coalition team in order to effectively improve on our communication and connectivity through collaboration to address the SARV problem in Simbu Province.

Fishbone Diagram for SARV in Papua New Guinea

Our Progress

  • We were able to build team capability and strengthen our networking and partnership in responding to SARV
  • We learned to communicate effectively in our different consultations with different service providers and authorizers during our iteration process
  • We were able to connect well with the different authorizers to inform them of the problem we identified and are working towards addressing those problems as a coalition team
  • Established contacts with different service providers and their authorizers

Lesson Learned

  • We learned to communicate effectively in our different consultations with different service providers and authorizers during our iteration process
  • We were able to connect well with the different authorizers to inform them of the problem we identified and are working towards addressing those problems as a coalition team
  • Identified different unique organizational structures and their operations
  • Established contacts with different service providers and their authorizers
  • The power of being together as a TEAM and mobilize actions that can make big difference
  • Solving problems that matter in our own context (identified local solutions for local problems)
  • Applied the steo-by-step PDIA Process to solve complex problem
  • We Learned about the importance of time management & delegation of responsibilities
  • Kept daily diary and celebrated small wins

Team Akepile’s Wisdom

Implementing the PDIA process in our approach, we have seen changes and improvements in our iteration process and hope to continue to implement this approach in the future as it reflects our different levels of authority, acceptance and abilities we have in the province.

We will continue to provide support to each other as a SARV Coalition Team to address our SARV problem in the province, districts and communities.

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.