Stichting Stepping Stones for Africa

On April 26-27, 2017 we organised a village meeting and a walk-though of the village.

This ‘transect walk’ was a follow-up on the first exercise of telling the community story from the past to the present. Essentially, the goal of this exercise was to produce a social map by identifying community resources. This will in turn aid in identifying the tourist potentials, places of interest, individuals with special skills and unexplored potentials. The exercise was also intended to identify community weaknesses – what these community potentials are lacking and therefore making them ineffective, unprofitable or unattractive.

At a village square meeting prior to the exercise 20 participants were selected from different identifiable groups within the community to do the transect walk. These groups were:

• The chief and elders
• The Queen mother and her council
• Tourism management staff
• Town Development Committee
• Water and Sanitation Committee
• Wote Afadjato Youth Association (WAYA)

Cindy Noordermeer-Panou gave an overview of the first meeting and the purpose of the current meeting which was to identify and locate the developments versus underdevelopments and to identify development needs and potentials.

The participants were divided into two heterogeneous groups. Participants were asked to explain or mention all the aspects that are important to them either positive or negative. Each group was assisted by a facilitator, Kuma or Cindy, who facilitated the discussions during the walk, and by Sandra or Christoph Gavi who sketched everything that was said. Based on these sketches, a larger map of the walk was drawn. These maps identified and located all the concepts that were mentioned and were presented to the group by one of the participants. The two maps were combined to produce a community resource map of the village. This map was later reproduced on a large plywood and displayed at the village square for wider community input.

Below is the full report of our meeting and the transect walk:

Our meetings and actions ultimately lead to the start of our plastic waste recycling project in 2019. More info about this project can be found here:

• The Liati Wote plastic waste recycling project