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SESSION D.1 (b) : TRAINERS NOTES

THE SOCIAL AUDIT TEAM

As enterprises with entirely different aspirations to regular commercial organisations, community media will require to evaluate themselves in different ways.

This evaluation will be more inclusive than that of commercial projects. It should involve all of the stakeholders: membership, staff, volunteers, the wider community and the various funders.

This process is termed a Social Audit and it should:

  • Be on going, regular and generate a report at its conclusion.
  • Be owned by the organisation, that is all stakeholders.
  • Focus on the organisation, i.e. not just a programme or specific
  • project.
  • Be publicly accessible.
  • Be part of a monitoring process.
  • Be systematic.
  • Include external verification process.

Social auditing allows a community media project to organise a systematic and objective evaluation procedure that will enable the organisation to measure a range of internal and external factors not covered by traditional financial auditing.

The real purpose of such social auditing is to give all concerned a real sense of ownership of the community enterprise.

The exercise suggested seeks to simulate such a broad based, inclusive social audit and will require some role-playing by the participants.
This can either be done by breaking the larger group into smaller groups and by having all do the same role-play, or you can opt for having one group of extroverts act out the process in front of the rest as audience.

Materials:
Role play character notes.
Writing paper, pens.

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