PRA participatory rural appraisal methods
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Transcript PRA participatory rural appraisal methods
Participatory Rural Appraisal in developing countries
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”
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?
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)
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
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
Social mapping with 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
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
Time
line
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
Impact
diagram
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&fe
ature=related
Participatory mapping
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jqnm1vkbgx0&feat
ure=related (36 sec.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PW9TLDxWzM&
feature=related (31 sec.)