Notes for participants in PRA/PLA-related familiarisation workshops in first half of the year 2001
DISCLAIMER AND WARNING: a familiarisation workshop is NOT repeat NOT repeat NOT a PRA/PLA training. At best it is just a taste. There is no substitute for extended training with field experience.
These notes are an updated foundation. Headings later in this note indicate some of the range of the subject, including some of the many methods. These are a menu, not a syllabus! I hope these notes are of some use, if only for occasional reference. You won't want to read all of this. Some of the more important points are repeated. You are welcome to reproduce, translate or bin anything that follows, but please remember that I have often been wrong in the past and must surely be wrong about some of the things which follow.
See also http://www.ids.ac.uk/participation for other sources on participation and development. The postscript has a listing of changes over the past five years, issues remaining critical, and some frontiers for the next five years.
I think we are lucky, and this is a brilliantly exciting time to be alive and working as development professionals. So much is changing, and changing so rapidly, and new potentials are continually opening up. If we are to do well this means massive and radical learning and unlearning. It means personal, professional and institutional change as a way of life. For some this is a threat; for others a wonderful and exhilarating challenge opening up new worlds of experience.
Participatory methodologies - approaches, methods and attitudes and behaviours -are one part of this. With those known as PRA and PLA things have been moving fast. Alas, rather a lot of activities labelled as PRA and PLA are routinised and wooden, and at worst exploit and disillusion poor people who participate. In contrast, good PRA/PLA activities empower. They are different each time. They improvise and innovate. They fit our world of accelerating change. It is not easy to keep up-to-date. I keep having to revise these notes at least twice a year. If you see them and they are more than six months old, please remember that. Much may have changed. And anyway I am behind the game. It is practitioners in the field who are making the running and from whom those of us not in the field have continuously to learn.
What are RRA, PRA and PLA?
RRA originally stood for Rapid Rural Appraisal, but its approach and methods are also used in urban and other contexts. "Relaxed" is better than "Rapid".
PRA originally stood for Participatory Rural Appraisal, but its applications are in many, many contexts besides rural, and good practice is far more than just appraisal.
PLA stands for Participatory Learning and Action and in practice is used interchangeably with PRA.
Perhaps each of us should give our own answers to what these are. "Use your own best judgement at all times" is one part of the core of what PRA/PLA has become. It continues to evolve and spread so fast that any solid definition would mislead. One description has been that it is
"a growing family of approaches, methods, attitudes and behaviours to enable and empower people to share, analyse, and enhance their knowledge of life and conditions, and to plan, act, and monitor and evaluate". (My emphasis)
Many make a distinction between RRA and PRA/PLA. For them, RRA is about finding out. It is data collecting, with the analysis done mainly by "us". Good PRA/PLA, which evolved out of RRA, is in contrast empowering, a process of appraisal, analysis and action by local people themselves. There are methods which are typically RRA methods (observation, semi-structured interviews, transects etc) and others which are typically PRA/PLA methods (participatory mapping, diagramming, using the ground in various ways, making comparisons etc, often in small groups). PRA/PLA methods are used in an RRA (data collecting) mode, and vice versa.
Labels are a problem but we seem to be stuck with them. For PRA "appraisal" is hopelessly inappropriate now. Good PRA is a process, not a one-off event. It involves much more than just appraisal. The main publication RRA Notes (numbers 1-21) was renamed PLA (Participatory Learning and Action) Notes (numbers 22-39 continuing). "Participatory learning and action" is a more accurate title for what many practitioners of PRA believe in and are doing, but PRA remains the usual label. That is why for the time being I am using PRA, but it could as well or better be PLA. In Pakistan PRA now stands for Participation-Reflection- Action, because at its core are self-critical awareness, personal behaviour and attitudes, and engagement with action.
Some of the best facilitators and practitioners have in a sense moved beyond PRA. They talk of and use "participatory methodologies". There are many of these: popular theatre, REFLECT (regenerated Freirian literacy through empowering community techniques), training for transformation. They can be combined in innumerable ways. Between them there can be "sharing without boundaries".
So good PRA is about empowering. It is linked with distinctive behaviours, attitudes and approaches. "We" are not teachers or transferors of technology, but instead convenors, catalysts, and facilitators. We have to unlearn, and put our knowledge, ideas and categories in second place. Our role is to enable local people to do their own investigations, analysis, presentations, planning and action, to own the outcome, and to teach us, sharing their knowledge. We "hand over the stick" and facilitate "their" appraisal, presentation, analysis, planning, action, and monitoring and evaluation. They do many of the things we thought only we could do - mapping, diagramming, listing, sorting, sequencing, counting, estimating, scoring, ranking, linking, analysing, planning, monitoring and evaluating. PRA is a term which many PRA practitioners and trainers consider should only be used for a process which empowers local people.
Three common elements found in a PRA approach are:
* self-aware responsibility. Individual responsibility and judgement exercised by facilitators, with self-critical awareness, embracing error.
* equity and empowerment. A commitment to equity, empowering those who are marginalised, excluded, and deprived, often especially women.
* diversity. Recognition and celebration of diversity
You can add to this list, yourself using your own best judgement. PRA is not a fixed thing. Some who have been practising it for some time say that for them see and experience it as a self-critical philosophy, a way of life, a way of being and of relating to others.
But this is getting a bit heavy. The best thing to do is to invent, evolve and experience this thing for yourself. If you wish. Making mistakes and learning and changing all the time.
Origins
Some of the methods come from social anthropology. Some, especially diagramming, were developed and spread in Southeast Asia, as part of agroecosystem analysis, originating in the University of Chiang Mai in 1978 with the work of Gordon Conway and his colleagues. For RRA, the University of Khon Kaen in Thailand was a major source of innovation and inspiration in the 1980s. Other methods, like matrix scoring, seem to have been new in the early 1990s. What is also new is the way they have all come together, and the way both RRA and PRA seem to know no boundaries of discipline or of geography. The term PRA was used early on in Kenya and India around 1988 and 1989. Some of the early PRA in Kenya was linked with the production of Village Resource Management Plans, and some with Rapid Catchment Analysis. In India and Nepal from 1989 onwards there was an accelerated development and spread of PRA with many innovations and applications (see especially RRA Notes 13). Parallel developments took place in other countries around the world, with lateral sharing and an explosion of creativity and diversity.
Spread
PRA has expanded and spread:
from appraisal and analysis to planning, action and M and E
from rural to urban
from field applications to applications in organisations
from a few sectors and domains to many
from NGOs to Government Departments and Universities
from a few countries to many
from South to North
from methods to professional and institutional change
from behaviour and attitudes to personal change
from action to policy influence
from practice to theory (asking - why does it work?)
Learning experience workshops for PRA have been convened in many places and countries now. International South-South PRA Exchange Workshops have been held in Guinea-Bissau, India (numerous), Jordan, Kenya, Mexico, Nepal (several), Pakistan, the Philippines, Senegal, Sri Lanka, and Zimbabwe, with China coming soon. There have been probably hundreds of cases of sharing where trainers have gone South-South from one country or continent to another to conduct PRA training .
The spirit of inventiveness and improvisation (linked with optimal unpreparedness) which is part of PRA is spreading, and helping people in different parts of the world to feel liberated and able to develop their own varieties of approach and method. People (both local and outsiders), once they have unfrozen and established rapport, enjoy improvising, varying and inventing methods and applying them as part of participatory processes. Creativity has been shown by fieldworkers, and by local people with whom they have been interacting. PRA activities are often engrossing, popular and powerful.
In some countries and regions, the use of PRA has become almost normal: parts of Nepal, Andhra Pradesh and some District in Tanzania, for example. National networks have been established in all continents. The countries and regions where there is activity or where the Participation Group in IDS can give you useful contacts (those underlined are known or believed to have active PRA-related networks) include
Afghanistan, Albania. Angola. Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Bangladesh. Belize, Bhutan, Bolivia. Bosnia, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso. Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada. Cap Verde, Chile, China. Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt. El Salvador, Eritrea. Ethiopia, Finland. Fiji/South Pacific, the Gambia, Germany, Ghana. Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau. Honduras, India. Indonesia. Iran, Ireland, Jordan. Kazakhstan. Kenya. Kyrgyzstan, Lao PDR, Lebanon, Lesotho, Malawi. Malaysia, Mali. Mauritania, Mexico, Mongolia. Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia. Nepal. New Zealand. Niger. Nigeria. Norway, Pakistan. Palestine, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, the Philippines. Russia, Rwanda, Senegal. Sierra Leone, Somaliland, South Africa. Sri Lanka. Sudan. Sweden, Switzerland, Tadjikistan, Tanzania. Thailand, Tibet, Turkey, Uganda. UK, United States, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen, Zambia and Zimbabwe .
Elsewhere there must be much taking place which we do not know about.
The approaches and methods have proved applicable in many types of institutions. NGOs were the first main pioneers of PRA but many Government field organisations, training institutes, and universities are now using and evolving variants of PRA. All or almost all major donor organisations and Northern-based NGOs are promoting, supporting, and/or being challenged by. PRA applications are many including community- level (urban as well as rural) planning, women's programmes, client ("stakeholder") selection and deselection, health programmes, adult empowerment and literacy (REFLECT) [for others see below]. Policy applications with PPAs (participatory poverty assessments) have become common, and are also becoming part of PRSPs (poverty reduction strategy papers in heavily indebted countries).
Training institutes are interested in adopting and adapting the approach and methods for the fieldwork and field experience of their probationers and students. Many university faculty have been slow to learn, but pressure from students has increasingly led to PRA approaches being "taught" in universities, and PRA methods being used in thesis research.
Concerns
There has been a mass of bad practice (as well as a lot that is brilliant). Quality assurance has been a concern among practitioners and trainers for the whole of the past decade. Dangers and abuses have included:
using the label without the substance!
failing to put behaviour and attitudes before methods!!
rushing and dominating in the field!!!
donors' demands for training in a day or two, with lecturing, without fieldwork, and then implementation in communities as a one-off in a short time!!!!
donors and governments demanding instant PRA on a large scale!!!!!! The labels "RRA" and "PRA" have been used to justify and legitimate sloppy, biased, rushed and unself-critical work. Any approach or methods can be used badly, and RRA and PRA provide some excruciating examples of bad practice.
Abuses which have been many: employing consultant trainers who are prepared to "train" in a day or two; rigid, routinised applications; rushing and dominating in the field; community meetings dominated by the big talkers and the elite; shopping lists of requests from communities; taking local people's time without recompense; raising expectations which are not fulfilled; undermining the long-term sustainable efforts of NGOs and others in neighbouring communities.
Part of the problem is that donors and Governments tend to want to go instantly to scale, in hundreds, even thousands, of communities. So far I do not think any way has been found to do this both quickly and well. Demand for training exceeds supply, although PRA trainers who have really "got it" number hundreds worldwide now. But all too often they have to sacrifice their livelihoods in order to resist the outrageous demands of some donors. PRA has also become a fashionable label, with "expert" consultants saying they can provide PRA and PRA in however short a time. Also the initial prejudice encountered among donors that somehow trainers have to be recruited in the North persists but is weaker than it was. PRA was developed in the South and most of the good trainers are in and from the South. And they insist on training in the field, and on plenty of time for it.
Donors and Government Departments, and even NGOs, rarely recognise that they themselves need institutional changes - of cultures, procedures and rewards - if they are to promote and sustain good participation and good PRA. We are learning what those necessary changes are. It is no good preaching participation at the grass roots while maintaining an authoritarian hierarchy "above", with donor or department-driven targets, punitive management, control-oriented managers, and the like. When it comes to promoting participation, large bureaucracies with pressures to disburse are deeply disabled. We need therapies for their rehabilitation.
There is scattered evidence that suggests gradual improvements in quality. But there is far, far, far to go.
Starting, and going where?
Some people whose attitudes are truly participatory can, with a minimum of exposure, simply go ahead and learn as they go. The short paper "Start, stumble, self-correct, share" which I will hand out encourages such people to start, recognising that much depends on our personal behaviour and attitudes, and that we all make mistakes. The behaviour and attitudes required of us as "uppers" (outsiders, professionals, people who tend to dominate) include critical self-awareness and embracing error; sitting down, listening and learning; not lecturing but "handing over the stick" to "lowers" (people who are local, less educated, younger, usually dominated) who become the main teachers and analysts; having confidence that "they can do it"; and a relaxed and open-ended inventiveness.
Much PRA is enjoyed, both by local participants and by outsiders who initiate it. The word "fun" has entered the vocabulary and describes some of the experience. But some people with a strong disciplinary training find the reversal of teaching and learning difficult. It is not their fault. We can help one another firmly but sympathetically. And we can amiably tease one another when we slip into "holding the stick"; as of course I shall do!
Where does all this lead? How crucial is it that "lowers" should conduct their own investigations and analysis? Does PRA provide a strategy for local empowerment and sustainable development? What happens when it goes to scale? Can self-critical awareness be part of the genes of PRA, so that it is self-improving as it spreads? These are questions you may wish to reflect on for yourself. For many now they are being answered by sharing experience. To present background, and in search of understanding and answers, here are some headings and notes. But write your own.....
Why did Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA) evolve for data collection (in the late 1970s and 1980s)? [this section dates back to the early 1990s]
Accelerating rural change, and the need for good and timely information and insights
Recognising "us" and our confidence in our knowledge as much of the problem, and "them" and their knowledge as much of the solution
The anti-poverty biases (spatial, project, person, seasonal...) of rural development tourism. Being rapid and wrong
The insulation, isolation and out-of-date experience of senior and powerful people, most of them men
Survey slavery - questionnaire surveys which took long, misled, were wasteful, and were reported on, if at all, late
The search for cost-effectiveness, recognising trade-offs between depth, breadth, accuracy, and timeliness, assessing actual beneficial use of information against costs of obtaining it
What happened, leading to PRA for empowerment?
A confluence of approaches and methods - applied social anthropology, agroecosystem analysis, farming systems research, participatory action research, and RRA itself all coming together and evolving...
A repertoire of new methods especially with visuals (mapping, matrices, diagramming.....) and of sequences of methods
The discovery that "they can do it" (that "lowers" have far greater capabilities than most "uppers" recognise)
The relative power and popularity of the open against the closed, the visual against the verbal, group against individual analysis, and comparing against measuring
The search for practical approaches and methods for decentralisation, democracy, diversity, sustainability, community participation, empowerment....
Principles shared by RRA and PRA
offsetting biases (spatial, project, person - gender, elite etc, seasonal, professional, courtesy..)
rapid progressive learning - flexible, exploratory, interactive, inventive
reversals - learning from, with and by local people, eliciting and using their criteria and categories
optimal ignorance, and appropriate imprecision - not finding out more than is needed, not measuring more accurately than needed, and not trying to measure what does not need to be measured. We are trained to make absolute measurements, but often trends, scores or ranking are all that are required
triangulation - using different methods, sources and disciplines, and a range of informants in a range of places, and cross-checking to get closer to the truth through successive approximations
direct contact, face to face, in the field
seeking diversity and differences
Additional Principles of PRA (but develop and discover your own)
PRA, as it has evolved, is all this and more. Some of the "more" is:
critical self-awareness about attitudes and behaviour; doubt; embracing and learning from error; continuously trying to do better; building learning and improvement into every experience; and taking personal responsibility.
changing behaviour and attitudes, from dominating to facilitating, gaining rapport, asking local people to teach us, respecting them, having confidence that they can do it, handing over the stick, empowering and enabling them to conduct their own analysis
a culture of sharing - of information, of methods, of food, of field experiences (between NGOs, Government and local people)....
commitment to equity, empowering those who are marginalized, deprived, excluded, often especially women.
The Primacy of Behaviour and AttitudesBehaviour and attitudes are more important than the methods.
In facilitating PRA there are many traps:
rushing (rapid and wrong again)
lecturing instead of listening, watching and learning. Is this problem worse with men than women, worse with older men than younger, and worst of all with those who have retired? Who holds the stick? Who wags the finger? Who teaches? Who listens? Who learns? (The ERR, which I will explain, is relevant here)
interrupting and interviewing people, and suggesting things to them, when they are trying to concentrate on mapping, ranking, scoring, diagramming...Learning not to interview is not easy
imposing "our" ideas, categories, values, without realising we are doing it, making it difficult to learn from "them", and making "them" appear ignorant when they are not
gender biases with male teams and neglect of women (again and again and again and again and again and...). What are the proportions of women and men among us here?
rushing, lecturing and interrupting instead of listening, watching and learning. Forgive me, but it needs repeating. This can be a personal problem which we do not recognise in ourselves. (It is a problem for me, as you will discover). It is best treated as a joke, and pointed out to each other when we err. Which we all do.
Other recurrent problems are:
people reluctant to spend time in the field or to nighthalt in villages
consultants who claim expertise but do not give primacy to behaviour and attitudes
large-scale implementation of "PRA" in a blueprint mode, demanded by donors and Governments, routinised, top-down, with no changes in behaviour and attitudes. Instructions to all in an organisation that they will immediately "use PRA". Rapid unselfcritical adoption leading to poor outcomes, and discrediting PRA.
(See also "Participatory Methods and Approaches: sharing our concerns and looking to the future" in PLA Notes 22; the Bangalore Statement - "Sharing Our Experience:
An appeal to governments and donors" (July 1996); and the Calcutta Statement
"Going to Scale with PRA: Reflections and Recommendations" (May 1997). The best source on behaviour and attitudes is: Somesh Kumar ed. ABC (Attitude and Behaviour Change of PRA), available on request from Jane Stevens, IDS Sussex or from PRAXIS, 12 Patliputra Colony, Patna 800 013, Bihar, India)
Approaches and Methods
"Approach" is basic. If attitudes are wrong, many of these methods will not work as well as they should. Where attitudes are right and rapport is good, it is often surprising what local people show they know, and what they can do.
PRA entails shifts of emphasis from:
dominating to empowering
closed to open
individual to group
verbal to visual
measuring to comparing, ranking and scoring
and of experience (when things go well) from
reserve to rapport frustration to fun
Don't be put off by the length of the list that follows. The purpose is to show that the menu is varied. There is much to try out and explore, and much to invent for yourself and to encourage local people to invent.
You may already have used some of these approaches and methods. Some are plain commonsense and common practice. Others are ingenious and not obvious. Some are quite simple to do. Others less so. You can anyway invent your own variants, interacting with local people. The first nine come especially from the RRA tradition:
Some Approaches and Methods more Typical of RRA (but relevant for PRA too)
* offset the anti-poverty biases of rural development tourism (spatial, project, person, seasonal, courtesy...)
* find and review secondary data. They can mislead. They can also help a lot. At present, for the sake of a new balance, and of "our" reorientation and "their" participation, secondary data are not heavily stressed in PRA; but they can be very useful, especially in the earlier stages of e.g. deciding where to go
* observe directly (see for yourself) (It has been striking for me to begin to realise how much I do not see, or do not think to ask about. Does education deskill us? Am I alone, or do many of us have this problem?) Combine observation with self-critical awareness of personal biases that result from our specialised education and background, and consciously try to compensate for these.
* seek out the experts. Ask: who are the experts? So obvious, and so often overlooked. Who knows most about changes in types of fuels used for cooking? Medicinal plants? Seasonal rainfall? Who is pregnant? Goats? Treatments for diseases? Edible berries? Water supplies? Ecological history? Fodder grasses? Markets and prices? Factionalism and conflict? Changing values and customs? Resolving conflicts? The priorities of poor people?....
* semi-structured interviewing. The Khon Kaen school of RRA has regarded this as the "core" of good RRA. Have a mental or written checklist, but be open to new aspects and to following up on the new and unexpected
* transect walks - systematically walking with key informants through an area, observing, asking, listening, discussing, identifying different zones, local technologies, introduced technologies, seeking problems, solutions, opportunities, and mapping and/or diagramming resources and findings. Transects can take many forms - vertical, loop, along a watercourse, combing, sometimes even (in the Philippines) the sea-bottom.
* sequences of analysis - from group to key informant, to other informants; or with a series of key informants, each expert on a different stage of a process (e.g. men on ploughing, women on weeding... etc)
* key probes: questions which can lead direct to key issues such as - "What do you talk about when you are together?" "What new practices have you or others here experimented with in recent years?" "What happens when someone's hut bums down?"
* case studies and stories - a household history and profile, a farm, coping with a crisis, how a conflict was resolved...
Some Approaches and Methods more typical of PRA (but relevant for RRA too)
* groups (casual or random encounter; focus or specialist; representative or structured for diversity; community/neighbourhood; or formal). Group interviews are often powerful and efficient, but used to be relatively neglected in favour of individual questionnaire-based interviews
* they do it. as in all PRA: local people (and lowers generally) as investigators and researchers - women, children, school teachers, volunteers, students, farmers, village specialists, poor people. They do transects, observe, interview other local people. Beyond this, their own analysis, presentations, planning, action, monitoring and evaluation....
* do-it-yourself, supervised and taught by them (levelling a field, transplanting, weeding, lopping tree fodder, collecting common property resources, herding, fishing, cutting and carrying fodder grass, milking animals, fetching water, fetching firewood, cooking, digging compost, sweeping and cleaning, washing clothes,
lining water, plastering a house, thatching, collecting refuse...). Roles are reversed. They are the experts. We are the clumsy novices. They teach us. We learn from them. And learn their problems.
* time lines and trend and change analysis: chronologies of events, listing major remembered local events with approximate dates; people's accounts of the past, of how customs, practices and things close to them have changed; ethno-biographies -local histories of a crop, an animal, a tree, a pest, a weed...; diagrams, maps as matrices showing ecological histories, changes in land use and cropping patterns, population, migration, fuels used, education, health, credit, the roles of women and men...; and the causes of changes and trends, in a participatory mode often with estimation of relative magnitudes
* participatory mapping and modelling: people's mapping, drawing and colouring on the ground with sticks, seeds, powders etc etc or on paper, to make social, health or demographic maps (of the residential village), resource maps or 3-D models of village lands or of forests, maps of fields, farms, home gardens, topic maps (for water, soils, trees etc etc), mobility, service and opportunity maps, etc.. These methods are often popular. They can be combined with or lead into wealth or wellbeing ranking, watershed planning, health action planning etc. Census mapping can use seeds for people, cards for households...
* local analysis of secondary sources: For example, participatory analysis of aerial photographs (often best at 1:5000) to identify, share knowledge of, and analyse soil types, land conditions, land tenure etc; also satellite imagery.
* counting, estimates and comparisons: often using local measures, judgements and/or pile sorting materials such as seeds, pellets, fruits, stones or sticks as counters or measures, sometimes combined with participatory maps and models
* seasonal calendars - distribution of days of rain, amount of rain or soil moisture, crops, agricultural labour, non-agricultural labour, diet, food consumption, sickness, prices, animal fodder, fuel, migration, income, expenditure, debt etc etc
* daily time use analysis: indicating relative amounts of time, degrees of drudgery etc of activities, sometimes indicating seasonal variations
* institutional or "chapati"/Venn diagramming: identifying individuals and institutions important in and for a community or group, or within an organisation, and their relationships
* linkage diagrams: of flows, connections and causality. This has been used for marketing, nutrient flows on farms, migration, social contacts, impacts of interventions and trends, causes of hunger, causes of violence etc
* wellbeing grouping (or wealth ranking) - grouping or ranking households according to wellbeing, including those considered poorest or worst off. A good lead into
discussions of the livelihoods of the poor and how they cope, and widely used for the selection of poor and deprived households with whom to work
* matrix scoring and ranking, especially using matrices and seeds to compare through scoring, for example different trees, or soils, or methods of soil and water conservation, varieties of a crop or animal, fields on a farm, fish, weeds, conditions at different times, and to express preferences
* local indicators, e.g. what are poor people's criteria of wellbeing and illbeing, and how do they differ from those we assume for them? Local indicators can be a start or baseline for participatory M and E.
* team contracts and interactions - contracts drawn up by teams with agreed norms of behaviour; modes of interaction within teams, including changing pairs, evening discussions, mutual criticism and help; how to behave in the field, etc. (The team may be outsiders only, local people only, or local people and outsiders together)
* shared presentations and analysis, where maps, models, diagrams, and findings are presented by local people especially to village or community meetings, and checked, corrected and discussed. Brainstorming, especially joint sessions with villagers. But who talks? Who talks how much? Who interrupts whom? Whose ideas dominate? Who lectures?
* contrast comparisons - asking group A to analyse group B, and vice versa. This has been used for gender awareness, asking men to analyse how women spend their time.
* role plays, theatre and participatory video on key issues, to express realities and problems, and to explore solutions. Powerful and popular approaches.
* alternatives to questionnaires. A new repertoire of participatory alternatives to the use of questionnaires, which generate shared information which can be added up in tables. This has developed in an extraordinary way, but is not yet widespread.
* listing and card-sorting. A super way of enabling many people to express their knowledge, views and preferences, and then sort them into categories or priorities, often using "the democracy of the ground".
PRA visualisations often combine some of the following:
mapping
sequencing
listing
comparing
counting, estimating and scoring
sorting and linking
When any three of these are combined, complex analysis tends to result, often with cross checking accuracy through analysis and presentation by groups.
Practical Personal Tips
(These are tips, not a code of ethics)
* Look, listen and learn. Facilitate. Don't dominate. Don't interrupt. When people
are mapping, modelling or diagramming, let them get on with it. When people are
thinking or discussing before replying, give them time to think or discuss. (This sounds easy. It is not. We tend to be habitual interrupters. Is it precisely those
who are the most clever, important and articulate among us who are also most
disabled, finding it hardest to keep our mouths shut?)
So Listen, Learn, Facilitate. Don't Dominate! Don't Interrupt!
* spend nights in villages and slums. Be around in the evening, at night and in the early morning.
* embrace error. We all make mistakes, and do things badly sometimes. Never mind. Don't hide it. Share it. When things go wrong, it is a chance to learn. Say "Aha. That was a mess. Good. Now what can we learn from it?".
* ask yourself- who is being met and heard, and what is being seen, and where and why; and who is not being met and heard, and what is not being seen, and where and why?
* relax (RRA = relaxed rural appraisal). Don't rush. Allow unplanned time to walk and wander around.
* meet people when it suits them, and when they can be at ease, not when it suits us. This applies even more strongly to women than to men. PRA methods often take time, and women tend to have many obligations demanding their attention. Sometimes the best times for them are the worse times for us - a couple of hours after dark, or sometimes early in the morning. Compromises are often needed, but it is a good discipline, and good for rapport, to try to meet at their best times rather than ours; and don't force discussions to go on for too long. Stop before people are too tired.
* probe. Interview the map or the diagram.
* ask about what you see. Notice, seize on and investigate diversity, whatever is different, the unexpected.
* use the six helpers - who, what, where, when, why and how?
* ask open-ended questions
* show interest and enthusiasm in learning from people
* allow more time than expected for team interaction (I have never yet got this right) and for changing the agenda
* be nice to people
* enjoy! It is often interesting, and often fun
Applications and Uses of RRA and PRA
These are now innumerable. You will have your own needs and ideas. Some of the main types of RRA and PRA process have been separately or combinations of
* exploratory, for outsiders to learn about conditions (typically RRA)
* empowering, for local people (and lowers generally) to undertake their own appraisal, analysis, action and monitoring and evaluation, and identification and investigation of problems and solutions (typically PRA)
* training, orientation and attitude and behaviour change for outsiders
Some of the more important and common applications include:
natural resources and agriculture
watersheds, and soil and water conservation
forestry (especially joint forest management) and agroforestry
fisheries and aquaculture
biodiversity and wildlife reserve management
village resource management planning and action
integrated pest management
crops and animal husbandry, including farmer participatory research/ fanning systems research and problem identification by farmers
irrigation
marketing
programmes for equity
women's empowerment, gender awareness etc
children
micro-finance
selection: finding, selecting and deselecting people for poverty-oriented programmes
income-earning: identification and analysis of non-agricultural income-earning opportunities.
analysis by poor people of livelihoods and coping, leading to household plans
participation by communities and their members in complex political emergencies
health and nutrition
health assessments and monitoring
food security and nutrition assessment and monitoring
water and sanitation assessment, planning and location
emergency assessment and management
sexual and reproductive health, including HIV/AIDS awareness and action
adolescent sexual behaviour
urban
community planning and action
slum improvement
urban violence
policy
impact on poor people of structural adjustment and other policies
PPAs (participatory poverty assessments)
Consultations with the Poor, in 23 countries, as a preliminary for WDR 2000/01 on poverty and development
land policy
PRSPs = poverty reduction strategy papers (part of the new conditionality for debt relief in heavily indebted countries) etc etc etc
and now critically institutional and attitude and behaviour change (dubbed the ABC of PRA)
organisational analysis
field experiential learning (e.g. the World Bank's immersions for senior managers)
reflection and developing self-critical awareness
The many other applications include adult empowerment and literacy (the REFLECT approach), education (girls', boys' and teachers' behaviour in school, appraisal and planning by parents, etc), conflict management and resolution, selection of job applicants, and use with and by refugees and displaced persons, children, drug probationers, and people in prisons. A new frontier is the introduction of PRA visual methods of presentation and analysis of complexity into primary education, both non-formal and formal. (Please be in touch if you are interested in this).
Some of the benefits of applications like these have been:
empowering the poor and weak - enabling a group (e.g. labourers, women, poor women, small farmers, street children etc) or a community themselves to analyse conditions, giving them confidence to state and assert their priorities, to present proposals, to make demands and to take action, leading to sustainable and effective participatory programmes
the project process including identification, appraisal, planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, all in a participatory mode
direct learning and updating for senior professionals and officials, especially those trapped in headquarters
* orientation of students, NGO workers, Government staff, and university and training institute staff towards a culture of open learning in organisations
* diversification: encouraging and enabling the expression and exploitation of local diversity in otherwise standardised programmes
* policy review and change- changing and adapting policies through relatively timely, accurate and relevant insights
* research: identifying research priorities and participatory research itself
* learning: developing and spreading participatory modes and methods, with training and teaching becoming helping people learn and you may have others to add. Some Frontiers and Challenges for PRA (see also postscript) These are many. Some which stand out are:
* behaviour and attitudes: the development and dissemination of more and better approaches and methods for enabling outsiders to change
* quality: how to prevent rapid spread bringing low quality - how to make self-critical awareness and improvement part of the genes of PRA
* institutional: how to establish and maintain participation in and through large organisations (government departments, large NGOs, universities.....) with the flexibility, diversity and behaviour and attitudes required by good PRA.
* donors , central Governments and some INGOs: how to help donors, governments and INGO staff exercise restraint, and change their norms, rewards and procedures to permit and promote PRA, not demanding too much too fast, not setting targets for disbursements, and assuring good training
* participatory poverty assessments: how to evolve and spread PPAs, to improve analysis of their findings, and to ensure that they lead to good changes in policy and practice
* governance: how to link PRA more with governance, especially introducing it in local level government administration (a great deal is going on here in many countries)
* sharing and networking: how to sustain and enhance sharing, between outsiders and villagers, between different organisations - NGOs, government departments, universities and training institutes. Sharing and learning laterally, as when local people themselves become facilitators of PRA. And how to develop and spread networks for sharing and mutual support between practitioners.
* participatory Monitoring and Evaluation: how to further develop and spread M and E in which poorer people and communities do their own M and E.
* empowerment and conflict resolution: how to enable women, and the poorer, to take part more and more, and to gain more and more, and how to identify, help the resolution of conflicts between groups and between communities
* inventiveness, creativity and pluralism: how to sustain and enhance inventiveness and creativity, learning from and with other participatory traditions, and evolving new approaches, methods, combinations and sequences, and restraining routine repetition
* trainer/facilitators: how to help more people become good trainer/facilitators, and to have the freedom to provide PRA learning experiences for others.
And you will have your own list. Use your own best judgement
This heading has the final word. One can ask:
Have PRA-type approaches, methods and behaviours come to stay, part of a participatory paradigm? Are they a passing fad, or do they present points of entry for lasting change? Are they part of the agenda for the 21st century?
I hope our workshop will help you towards making your own judgement about these and other questions and to decide for yourself whether PRA approaches, methods and behaviours, if they are new to you, can help you and others in your work.
Revised 22 December 2000 Robert Chambers
Institute of Development Studies University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9RE, UK
Postscript. Here is a note trying to review aspects of the status and future of PRA.
Developments and Issues with Participation and PRA
1. what has changed in the past five years includes
Scale. PRA-labelled activities in 2001 will probably have been at least ten-fold those of 1996. Participatory methodologies more generally have gained acceptance.
Participatory language has become obligatory donor-speak. The World Bank has mainstreamed participation, and others e.g. the ADB are seeking to move in the same direction, but with so far rather disappointing results. Boundaries between participatory methodologies have increasingly dissolved ("sharing without boundaries"). PRA-type mapping is very widespread indeed (Well over a million maps must have been made by local people now)
PRA has become required by many donors, projects and programmes. The issue increasingly is not whether it will be used, but how badly or well it will be used. Lots of bad practice (UNICEF, World Bank.....)
PRA fatigue in some communities (e.g. Malawi parts of which someone told me had been "carpet-bombed" with PRA)
Applications have multiplied and diversified. REFLECT has spread and gone in different directions, as one example. Also drug probationers, HIV/AIDS, prisons, institutional analysis....
PRA and related approaches have spread extensively in the North (especially in the UK)
Networks have multiplied and on the whole strengthened
Relationships have changed between N and S, to become more equal
Gender and participation has been opened up (Myth of Community book)
PPAs have evolved and spread. Participation is now linked with PRSPs
PM and E has exploded all over the place with huge potentials
Children have come into their own (Stepping Forward book)
Universities and university staff have begun to take seriously and adopt (including some enthusiastic and creative social anthropologists)
Academic critics, mostly without practical PRA or participatory methodology field experience, are describing participation as a new orthodoxy. At the level of rhetoric they have a point. Much of the reality, as we all know, falls short of the words. Some of these critics miss some of the weaknesses of which practitioners are quite widely aware (e.g. inherent bias against busy women) but also tend not to understand some strengths (e.g. democracy of the ground, representations and analysis of complexity, ABC impacts of facilitation etc). It would be brilliant if they could engage in a practical manner and contribute to better practice.
2. Issues remaining critical Include
quality with spread (routinisation, rigidity, manuals etc etc)
ethics (expectations, endangering e.g. children etc etc)
donors and governments demanding instant training and instant PRA
experiential learning to replace conventional top-down "training"
attitudes and behaviours
institutional change (x targets, top-down etc)
professional change
3. Some frontiers now for the next five years Include
donor agencies procedures, incentives, cultures
field learning experiences for top people (donors, government...)
empowerment through local people making and showing videos
visuals by children, including presentation and analysis of complex realities by children in NFE and mainstream primary
diagramming cf verbal analysis more generally
participation in complex political emergencies
changing the cultures and practices of training institutes and their trainers, including basics like seating arrangements, not lecturing etc, so that they stop reproducing top-down relationships.
University "teaching" and teachers similarly
PM and E as a clincher for participation, transforming the project cycle, and modifying the dreaded logical framework
Linking PPAs effectively with policy and practice - lots of process and ownership issues (watch UPPAP, the Uganda Participatory Poverty Assessment Process)
The spread of PRA in countries with few NGOs (Iran, China, Russia, Myanmar....)
Recognition, opportunities, empowerment for second- and third- generation PRA trainers and practitioners, reducing the prominence of oldgirl/boy networks
ABC, by whatever name, especially in Governments, donor agencies, large NGOs, and universities and training institutions, including modules, exercises, field experiences etc, and learning what is feasible and what is not, and what works and what does not. Much more self-critical reflection in training and practice.
Participatory alternatives to questionnaires (remains almost a non-subject despite extraordinary SCF work in Southern Africa)
Cost-effective networking using electronic wizardry
Internalising relationships of partnership (N-S, NGO-local people, NGO-Government, donor-"recipient" etc) including exchanges
Diversity of concepts of illbeing and wellbeing
Reformulating the whole PRA thing, in a participatory way, perhaps defining it as having evolved into participation, reflection, and action, or going for PLA and defining that, with a consensual statement of basic values which would include diversity, process and change.
Putting personal, professional and institutional change in the centre of development policy and action. Isn't it obvious? To the point of embarrassment
Further Information
For sources of information on PRA/PLA, and for network contacts in many countries, see "Sources and Contacts", available updated periodically from Jas Vaghadia at IDS - fax (44) 1273 621202, telephone (44) 1273 877263), and emailj.vaghadia@ids.ac.uk Information is available on quite a wide range of aspects and topics, at http://www.ids.ac.uk/participation , which also carries a Participation Page. There is also an annotated bibliography of holdings in the Participation Reading Room at IDS. You are very welcome to come to IDS and use the Room, and to use IDS facilities for photocopying. I am sorry but we do not have a lending service. We work on trust that people can copy but not take away.
For books, Intermediate Technology Publications, 103 Southampton Row, London WC1B 4HH (Tel: 0171 436 9761, Fax: 0171 436 2013, Email: orders@itpubs.org.uk) have published a series of reasonably priced books on participation. They can be ordered by mail or through bookshops. I apologise for including a book by me, but it is one of the series. If you find any of these books useful, do please persuade a suitable bookshop in your country or town where you live to get an IT catalogue and to order some of their books. Some of the participation series are:
* Niki Nelson and Susan Wright eds Power and Participatory Development: Theory and Practice. 1995 (6.95)
* Robert Chambers Whose Reality Counts? Putting the First Last. 1997 (3.95)
* Jeremy Holland with James Blackburn eds Whose Voice? Participatory Research and Policy Change. 1998 (5.75)
* James Blackburn with Jeremy Holland eds Who Changes? Institutionalizing Participation in Development. 1998 (5.25)
* Irene Guijt and Meera Shah eds The Myth of Community: Gender issues in Participatory Development 1998 (?8.95)
* Victoria Johnson, Edda Ivan-Smith, Gill Gordon, Pat Pridmore and Patta Scott eds Stepping Forward: Children and Young People's Participation in the Development Process 1998 (December) (7.95 -9.14 including p&p)
Marisol Estrella and John Gaventa eds Learning from Change: Issues and experiences in participatory monitoring and evaluation, also IT Publications,8.95
* = The first 5 books are available from IT Publications as a mini-library at the reduced price of26.00 plus 3.90 postage and packing = 29.90.