This PLA series article provides snapshots from the international "Deepening our Understanding and Practice" conference on participatory development (PD). It offers critical reflections on the successes and failures of PD and also examines how participatory development can be advanced.
The editorial of this special issue on Children's Participation: evaluating effectiveness discusses the focus of the issue and gives details of the guest editor.
Community based behavioural interventions aimed at reducing risky sexual behaviour have yet to be shown to be effective in the developing world. Stepping Stones is a participatory STI (Sexually Transmitted Infection)/HIV prevention workshop programme based on empowerment techniques, which have been adapted to an infertility prevention framework in Gambia. This paper describes a preliminary evaluation in 2 villages where the intervention was carried out compared to 2 control villages.
This issue of Compas magazine focuses on the main controversies that individuals, communities and agencies involved in endogenous development are experiencing, and to show examples of methodologies to handle these controversies. Many of the articles presented show that the experiences of development agencies in consciously and systematically dealing with controversies are still few. The issue focuses on four controversial issues dealt with in separate sections: traditional leadership and governance, gender roles, agriculture and health care.
As part of the special 50th edition of PLA notes, this article looks at the evolution of a particular methodology for the participatory assessment of water and sanitation projects in rural Nepal. The methodology - NPA (Nepal Water for Health Participatory Assessment) - evolved because the staff implementing the methodology for participatory assessment found that the process was long, costly, relied on strong facilitation and created high expectations.
This brief guide to mainstreaming HIV/AIDS was produced by Project Empower in partnership with Oxfam HIV/AIDS Programme (South Africa). It describes the features and milestones of rights-based mainstreaming. It reflects the experiences of 23 South African development organisations as well as some international agencies. The content is based on a review and analysis of a mainstreaming gender pilot conducted in South Africa between 1999 and 2001. The briefly describes mainstreaming and looks at differences in understanding of HIV/AIDS mainstreaming.
A report of poverty consultations in four countries -dialogues with poor people in rural and ruban localities aimed at informing Canadian aid policy. It attempts to provide the reader with a snapshot of the lives and concerns of the people represented in each of the four country consultations. It does not advance a definitve notion or universally applicable set of indicators of well-being, but refers to the great variability that exists between and among even the communities represented and the indivudals within them.
Compas (Comparing and Supporting Endogenous Development) is an international programme whose aim is to understand and encourage the diversity of rural people's knowledge and expand inter-cultural dialogues on farmer's knowledge and indigenous learning. The March 2001 issue of Compas Magazine focuses on indigenous traditional knowledge and the challenges these traditions face in the modern world.
This technical paper produced by the World Bank attempts to discover the reasons for the success of locally organised programmes, run by local associations and institutions, as opposed to Government supported programs in a selection of rural and urban communities across Nigeria. The local associations include traditional and kinship institutions, community associations, occupational associations, co-operatives, women's groups, immigrant welfare associations and religious organisations. These local initiatives seem to flourish.
In 1995, researchers at the University of Hull Department of Public Health developed community-based approaches for exploring the high rates of teenage pregnancy in Hull. With funding from the NHS R&D programme (Mother and Child Health), participatory methods were replicated in two other urban areas. The report outlines the background to the problem of teenage pregnancy in the Hull area, the research methods employed, the establishment of the programme, the results of the study, along with discussion, conclusions and recommendations.