Tips on Collective Sensemaking

These tips are part of a series of tips and resources to support context-driven adaptation in programming. For other resources, see the Context-Driven Adaptation Collection at https://usaidlearninglab.org/context-driven-adaptation-overview (internal staff version at https://programnet.usaid.gov/collection/context-driven-adaptation) or the Google Doc versions here.

Previous tips have explored the importance of building diverse alliances and of strengthening local capacity to think and work politically, and in both cases, some of the tips focused on engaging local actors in making sense of data and patterns related to both programming and context. Defining how things are changing with local stakeholders and partners both helps programming to be more alert to changes in context and shifts ownership, enabling greater local leadership of the effort. This set of tips focus in further on what it takes to do collective sense-making with local partners.