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See-Judge-Act methodology

Understanding the importance of participation

See-Judge-Act methodology

Understanding the importance of participation

The See-Judge-Act method

This Roadmap is based on the See-Judge-Act method, one of the guiding methods of Catholic Social Teaching (CST). It was developed by the Belgian Cardinal Joseph Cardijn (1882–1967) who, as a priest, had ministered to poor workers, founded the Young Christian Workers movement and was one of the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council. The See-Judge-Act method is based on three steps that you need to take in order to ensure that the task you are working on, the situation you are in, or the phenomenon you are addressing is based on the Evangelic principles.

The See-Judge-Act method informed us during the Grassroots Participation Learning Path and when gathering our learnings from it in the form of this Roadmap. There are many tools included which can help you in seeing (like Participant’s Journey interviews), judging (like Participant’s Journey assessment questionnaire), or acting (like Appreciative Inquiry, Golden rules, or Enhancing the journey). But depending on the context and situation, these solutions may be helpful in other steps of the See-Judge-Act process.

We present this method in the Roadmap because we believe this can be very inspiring in the process of assessing and developing grassroots participation in the Caritas organisation. It can help us to keep coming back in our everyday work to our roots: the Gospel and CST. It can help us remind ourselves why we are putting effort into empowering local communities, and how to do it best in order to practise what we preach. Below you will find these three steps explained, along with questions that you may ask yourself when taking each particular step.

Step 1: See

Seeing is an inductive method that starts from reality. It aims at understanding the reality in its social, political, economic and cultural dimensions. Within this step, you may ask yourself the following questions:

What is your knowledge on this phenomenon and what are you observing?
Who is/was involved?
How often does this occur?
How does/did the situation affect those involved?
What is/was said?
Why does/did this happen?
Why do/did people act as they do/did?
What are the causes and consequences of what is happening/has happened?
What are your feelings about this issue? How do you experience it? Does it touch you personally?

Step 2: Judge¹

Judging is based on two dimensions: social analysis and theological reflection.

1. Social Analysis

Social analysis helps us to obtain a more complete picture of the social situation by exploring its historical and structural relationships. In this step, we attempt to make sense of the reality that was observed in Step 1.

Why does this situation exist?
What are the root causes?

To answer these questions, we need to examine:

Economic factors: Who owns? Who controls? Who pays? Who gets? Why?

Political factors: Who decides? For whom do they decide? How do decisions get made? Who is left out of the process? Why?

Social Factors: Who is left out? Who is included? Why?

Historical Factors: What past events influence the situation today?

Cultural Factors: What values are evident? What do people believe in? Who influences what people believe?

Social Analysis assists us in naming the “heart of the matter” which we then take to the theological reflection.

2. Theological Reflection

Theological Reflection explores the experience and its deeper analysis, in dialogue with the religious tradition.

From this conversation, we gain new insights and meanings.

Two important sources of this tradition are the Scriptures and Catholic Social Teaching.

How do they serve as a measuring stick for this experience?

What Scripture passages can help us to interpret this experience?
How do biblical values help us to see this reality in a different way?
What does Catholic Social Teaching say about this issue? What key principles from Catholic Social Teaching apply in this situation? (For example: human dignity, the common good, human rights, the option for the poor.)

Footnotes

1. Australian Catholic Social Justice Council, 2010, Reading the Signs of the Times. See, Judge, Act: A process for social justice groups, pp. 3-4, 15/02/2022

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Step 3: Act

Gathered information (Seeing) and analysis and theological reflection (Judging) lead to ideas on how we can act upon the observed phenomenon in order to change the situation and address its root causes. Our aim here should be doing the will of God and changing the reality so as to bring it closer to the Reign of God.

At this stage, it is valuable to ask oneself the following questions:

What exactly is it that you want to change? (long term goal)
What action are you going to take now? (short term goal)
How could the structures and relations that produced this situation be transformed?
Who can you involve in your action?

When designing the action, make sure to empower especially those who are disadvantaged in this specific situation.

Prepare also measures that will help you evaluate the effectiveness of the action undertaken.

Within this Roadmap, we also take into consideration two more stages or, rather, enrich the whole process with two more important aspects that will encourage our efforts.

Step 4: Evaluate

See-Judge-Act should function in a circle. After the finished cycle, comes the time to look at the fruits of our actions and see whether we have managed to achieve our goals and improve the situation we are addressing. Within the evaluation process, we might ask ourselves:

Did we achieve the original purpose?
Did it change the situation of the persons who were affected by unjust realities?
What difficulties did we come up against?
What did we learn from the action?
Is there anything we would do differently?
Is there any further action we can take?

Step 5: Celebrate

Putting Evangelical values into reality is not only about hard work and practical action but also about celebrating each small step and the fact that it is being taken together with others. Therefore, joint celebration, joy, and resting are intrinsic parts of the See-Judge-Act method. At this step we do not need to find answers to any questions. It is just about being together.

When strengthening grassroots participation in Caritas, it is crucial to engage the people we work with in each step of this method. Within this Roadmap, we are sharing tools to see or listen to our participants, to judge and analyse the situation together with them, to design action, and to evaluate and celebrate together.

Acknowledgements

This section is based on the resource of the Australian Catholic Social Justice Council Reading the Signs of the Times. See, Judge, Act: A process for social justice groups and the presentation that was given by Father Martin Maier during the third module of the Grassroots Participation Learning Path.