Mar 01 2022
At Smart Villages Research Group, we truly believe in the importance of a community-led approach. We always start by asking the community to tell us about the challenges they’re facing, through focus groups and service value tests. This helps us ensure that any technology or system we develop will definitely provide value to the community, …
Permanent link to this article: https://e4sv.org/challenging-assumptions-through-community-engagement/
May 15 2021
… in the context of the Service Value Test (SVT), a key tool in the Smart Villages approach which engages community members to uncover their needs and aspirations for the future development of their village. It’s an important early step when we start working with a new community, and the quantitative and qualitative data about …
Permanent link to this article: https://e4sv.org/electricity-is-not-a-service/
Apr 03 2021
The Service Value Test (SVT for short) is a key tool in the Smart Villages approach that we like to use as early as possible in our conversations with communities we are looking to work with. We find it really helpful for the following reasons: It gets us quantitative preference data from community members telling …
Permanent link to this article: https://e4sv.org/the-service-value-test-what-and-why/
Jan 30 2021
As part of our project with Clear Sky Power and Energy Action Partners in Somaliland, we ran Service Value Tests (more here) in the three focus communities for the project. The aim was to help us get to know them a bit better, understand their needs and priorities, and so design the COMET toolkit to …
Permanent link to this article: https://e4sv.org/service-value-tests-in-somaliland/
Jan 20 2021
The SVRG approach is grounded in community engagement and human centred design, to ensure the systems we install bring real, lasting benefit. Unfortunately, due to language barriers, we are unable to run focus groups ourselves, but rely on our in-country partners to assist with translation, or with running the entire group following training. Our translators …
Permanent link to this article: https://e4sv.org/language-and-education-barriers-in-community-engagement/