Process documentation is the systematic method of observing, recording, and refining procedures in conducting new strategies, methods, and activities to achieve project aims.

Through this, projects can gather objective, descriptive, and action-based information about attitudes, behavior changes, and emerging issues while implementing community participatory BCC and advocacy. Accumulated information can show the before and after stages in projects, and this information can be documented, shared, replicated or scaled up.

From 9th to 10th March in Zambia, and from 17th to 18th March in Ghana, JOICFP delivered two training workshops on process documentation under a UNFPA-supported Africa Regional Project "Community Participatory BCC and Advocacy in the Fight against HIV/AIDS with HIV/AIDS Total Management Model (ATOMM) Concept (RAF5R303)."

The workshops were attended by officers from the project operation districts, representatives of the implementing partners PPAZ and PPAG, youth, people living with HIV/AIDS, and BCC/advocacy personnel from UNFPA.

A view of the participants in the workshop

The participants were introduced to the concepts, purposes, and methods of process documentation, and how documentation tools can be used in different ways to achieve desired results.

One exercise was the simple use of pen and camera to record information. Different styles of writing, such as narrative, descriptive, or that for a project report, lead to different uses of the information.

A simple but effective exercise;
learning different styles of writing with a pen

When taking photographs, it is important to be clear as to how the photographs will illustrate the desired concepts, considering, for example, clarity, mood, and relationship.

Learning different styles of recording information
using a camera

The format in which information is stored will have a critical effect on how it is perceived, stored, accessed, and ultimately used. Furthermore, the categorization of information will also have a great effect on its usefulness.

The participants practiced what they had learned through role-play on information gathering and delivery, with members documenting each other's activities.

All the participants highly evaluated the workshops, highlighting methodologies such as interview techniques and assetizing information.
JOICFP has special expertise in information communication technology (ICT) to strengthen RH interventions, having gathered data from over 25 countries that amounts to some three million unique items. JOICFP is able to bring its experience in data gathering and processing to workshops such as the above.