Engaging Rural Communities: Participatory Tools for Development

1. Engaging in Participatory Rural Appraisal in developing countries

2. Objectives • Learn about useful tools for working with low literacy populations in rural areas (developing countries) - Participatory Rural Appraisal tools • Stimulate your thinking and creativity for engaging community members in doing participatory needs assessment “The best item to pack for any trip to the developing world or not – is an open mind”

3. Challenges for “outside experts” & students • Expect the unexpected (rodents, mosquitoes, street hawking, open markets) • Expect poor road conditions • No electricity or power failures (your computer loses power…) • Lots of people may follow you around (no confidentiality!) • Time feels different • So how are you going to get your work done?

4. Participatory Rural Appraisal(PRA) • Participatory rural appraisal (PRA) An approach (and family of methodologies) for shared learning between local people and outsiders to enable development practitioners, government officials, and local people to plan together appropriate interventions • Also known as Participatory Learning and Action (PLA)

5. Key Principles • Participation – local people serve as partners in data collection and analysis • Flexibility- not a standardized methodology • Off-setting biases – anti poverty biases are consciously avoided, more listening less lecturing • Teamwork – everyone is involved • Diversity – attempts made to identify and analyse contradictions and exceptions • “Optimal Ignorance” – leave out unessential details • Systematic – to get correct details and conclusions, it is best to cross check • Local materials - dirt, stones, sticks (or paper), not computers/electronic devices

6. PRA Techniques • Interviewing – Not based on questionnaires but issues (households, individuals, focus groups) • Visualization • Ranking – a means by which they can rank preferences, problems, wealth • Mapping - Community members depicting the physical or social characteristics of their community • Social mapping • Time lines • Impact diagrams

7. Social mappingwith rural, low literacy participants • Social Mapping • A space-related PRA • Used to depict the habitation pattern of a particular region • Drawn by local people • Not drawn to scale but reveals what is believed to be relevant and important to them

9. Time lines with rural, low literacy participants • This is a time-related PRA method • Allows people use their concept of time • Captures the chronology of events as recalled by local people • Flexible in terms of the time scale • One day, or a lifetime, or history of the community

10. Time line

11. Impact diagrams with rural, low literacy participants • A flow diagram , commonly used to identify and depict the image of an activity, intervention or event • Takes into account types of changes as perceived by the local people • Helps to identify impacts of certain events - planned, unplanned, negative or positive

12. Impact diagram

13. References • http://www.eldis.org/manuals/participation.htm • http://info.worldbank.org/etools/docs/library/238582/toolkit.pdf • Kumar Somesh. Methods For Community Participation: A Complete Guide for Practitioners. • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6MVTCYDQRI • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEZpsYLqL6M&feature=related

14. Participatory mapping • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jqnm1vkbgx0&feature=related (36 sec.) • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PW9TLDxWzM&feature=related (31 sec.)