Guest blog by Kevin Gou, Dorothy Jack, Carolyn Kuk Kop, Shadrick Paraka, Mark Paroa, Johnson Trepi, and Yangga Treppe,
Over the last 12 weeks, Team Baiyer Range has been working on the problem of gender-based violence (GBV) in our district. After we identified this problem, we used PDIA to identify ideas we can use to address the problem. We shifted from a solution-driven mindset to a problem-driven approach. The PDIA course has helped us to evaluate and assess the prevention and response strategies currently being used in our country to address GBV. We discovered that the approaches, strategies, and tools being used were not appropriate and have therefore contributed to the high prevalence of GBV in the country.
Using the fishbone analysis, we were able to identify the sub-causes of GBV. Throughout the course, we iterated on our fishbone 3 times, as shown below:
Doing the fishbone analysis taught us that current programs, strategies, and interventions are not doing enough to address the problem with GBV still being prevalent. In fact, the analysis allowed us to realize that there is too strong a focus on “SHE 4 SHE” programs (that focus on women) or programs that target both men and women. However, there aren’t many programs that focus solely on boys and men.
This led us to come up with a new idea that we call “HE 4 HE”. Meaning men would be the ones challenging other men’s cultural beliefs and norms that influence GBV. Our new idea is rooted in a gender-transformative approach wherein we’re working to challenge the social norms and structures of power and privilege that disadvantage people on the basis of gender. This idea also fits well within the human rights-based approach by ensuring that women and men have the same rights. We believe that this idea will help us address the underlying sub-causes found in our fishbone diagram.
KEY LESSONS LEARNT:
- Problem-driven approach
- How to deconstruct big problems
- Approaches, strategies and tools to address problems, especially the iteration-check in tool questions; What did we do? What did we learn? What are we struggling with? What’s the next step we must take?
- Reflecting and keeping daily diaries, something that we can refer and reflect on
- Iteration process
- Working on small tasks and progressing to bigger activities
- Identification of Authority, Ability, and Acceptance.
- When to best use the Search frame vs. log frame.
How might the approach change the way we tackle problems in the future?
The PDIA course has taught us many key ideas that are very useful and that have really shifted our way of handling problems. In the future, this approach will help us start with the problem and not with the solution. This means that we will work to understand the problem fully before jumping into assumptions and solutions. This will help us think deeply about the nature of the problem, its root causes, and figure out the real issue. This requires us taking our time to reflect on the problem and looking at different ways to approach it.
The PDIA process tells us to test out the solutions in a small way knowing that this is not the only solution. This would mean that we must not spend too much time and resources on one strategy or solution that would not work in our context. This really encourages us to experiment first and to see if the idea works for us, in our context.
We can use what we have learnt in many ways in our everyday life in individual, family, community, workplaces, projects and in other community development interventions.
Word of wisdom:
“Start small, learn fast, and adopt always for improvement.”
This blog was written by participants who completed a 12-week PDIA for PNG online learning program from August – November 2025. 44 participants successfully completed this program.