The primary step to be taken is to determine or define the objective of the needs assessment process. What would the process want to achieve The objective to be defined will provide guiding light or direction in every step of the way to all people who will be involved in the project.
After the objective has been determined, the key personnel to be deployed, including the Health Educator, shall be designated, briefed and deployed. The same process shall be done for any other key personnel who will join the Health Educator. Along with the objectives, specific targets can also be identified and determined with particular datelines.
The next step that the Health Educator should take is to physically check the conditions of the community (TOPS 2010). He andor his partner should conduct and ocular inspection and observation of the current situation for at least five days, or a period of one week.
A preliminary report should be submitted to the sponsors of the project to ensure that the assessment project would be on the right track. This would also be beneficial because there might be aspects which can yield unexpected directions to take.
When the preliminary report has been approved by the sponsor, the Health Educator can go back to the community to start the assessment project itself. Since this assessment would be waste management in relation to the communitys health, it is important to involve the community from the very beginning.
With the preliminary report on hand, and an objective to boot, the Health Educator can launch the assessment project by utilizing (UNEP 2007 12) multi-media events and awareness campaigns to inform the community about the needs assessment project and the benefits that can be derived from it. Since the community is in a developing country, it can be assumed that there are multi-media facilities and infrastructure such as television, radios and newspapers. The Health Educator and his partner (if there is) can utilize these multi-media to launch to the community such needs assessment program for the waste management and its impact to the people. The launching will increase the awareness of the community and make it easier for the Health Educator to involve the community in the succeeding activities.
The Health Educator can start the involvement of the community by identifying the stakeholders (UNEP 20074). The stakeholders include the residents, schools, companies, community officials, media and other parties which have direct or indirect interest in the communitys welfare. It is quite important to involve the stakeholders for many reasons. Meeting the stakeholders will be multi-purpose and can yield several results. One, they will be informed about the importance of the needs assessment, its potential benefits on the community. It is also possible to tackle in this meeting the availability of the resources. The possible obstacles can also be derived in this meeting because the stakeholders themselves will express apprehensions, if there would be, any.
During the meeting with the stakeholders, a formal team can be created to join the Health Educator in the needs assessment. The official team can then begin the needs assessment tasks by preparing the Gantt chart of activities or the program to be followed. The required resources can also be identified to determine the availability.
The first task that the Needs Assessment Team can do is to define the geographical and operational scope of the needs assessment. To what geographical extent of the community will the assessment be covering How will the team and the Health Educator distribute the team to cover such geographical scope The time frame should also be considered
Then, the method(s) of assessment should be determined. Primarily, videography or photography can be utilized to document the ocular assessment at this stage. Then, interviews or surveys (Chociolko, et.al. 200618) can be conducted among the residents or community members to procure first hand-information regarding the current waste management system.
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