The public perception survey - talking to communities

The Public Perception Survey resembles a feedback mechanism, which will represent an innovative pilot idea aiming at hearing people’s voices and assessing their perception of the United Nations in LesothoIn collaboration with GeoPoll, the leading mobile survey platform in Africa and Asia with an outreach to over 200 million users, UN Lesotho administers a sms based mobile survey reaching out to 2000 Basotho gathering their perceptions of the overall work of UN Lesotho and survey means and needs for increased effectiveness of UNs engagement. Reaching out to the people and surveying their understanding will help not only to increase the overall awareness of the UN, but also focus on analysing and assessing the UN interventions in support of national development results; the effectiveness of the strategies employed for development cooperation by the UN in Lesotho; the obstacles that the UN faces in its work; and how best it is positioned to deliver on its commitments to the national development agenda through the UNDAF.

For the sms based outreach UN Lesotho will create a short list of key questions focusing on what people know about the UN in particular and what people think the UN could do better in its future work. The gathered data will help to identify areas of necessary improvement and/or areas of need for further attention, be it geographic- or thematic areas. Gathered respondence data can also be used to create a quantitative listing of priorities, bringing peoples’ perception into the UNDAF design process. Integrating people’s engagement in the design- and planning of national development policies is further interlinked with transparent work ethics and sustained by the principle of collective idea sharing, contributing to a better understanding of the Basotho society.

In a second phase the Public Perception Survey will be made available offline and outreach to communities will be based on tablets through the help of national- and UN volunteers distributed at the 10 districts in Lesotho. The offline survey will focus on the part of the population that has not been previously surveyed and be enhanced through the social media campaign Humans of Lesotho featuring nation-wide cover stories of the local population. Lastly, results of the Public Perception Survey will be directly sent to the MyWorld2030 action campaign directly contributing to a global advocacy of our cause.