| Dosti's Axis of Influence |
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How much influence do community groups and networks have on the decisions made by
 organisations and partnerships?There is a lot of talk at the moment about participation, engagement, involvement, communities influencing service delivery and policies, getting involved in decision making, being active citizens ….. but how much influence do we actually have and how do we start to explore what that means in real terms?
In September 2005 Dosti initiated some research to find out what makes networks influential, what has an impact on Partnerships in Dudley, and how networks can best equip themselves to maximise on opportunities to influence.
Through a process of interviews with community networks, statutory partners and individuals, presentations, workshops and action research over a period of 18 months, consultants changes developed Dosti's Axis of Influence – a tool to help networks to plot their organisational capacity to influence against the degree of influence that they feel they have.
A handbook for networksDosti's Axis of Influence Handbook, published in June 2007, reflects discussions about what the term influence means to people and why people want to influence.
The Handbook describes the Axis of Influence and then provides a series of worksheets with helpful questions to explore the level of influence within a network. Dosti’s Axis of Influence is a discussion-centred evaluation tool for community based networks, which means that ideally you would work through the worksheets as a group. If that is not possible – or appropriate, the axis can be used by one or two members of a group – to keep an eye on the potential influence that their group may have in the future.
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