Kar, K.

This brief paper shares the author's experiences of running PRA training and other related activities and their impact on inducing attitudinal change in the participants (trainees). The paper asserts that on the one hand changes in attitudes and behaviour are hard to come by due to structural and cultural barriers in many large organisations, and on the other hand such changes even when visible remain to be in a fluid state of affairs unless supported continuously by follow-up activities.

The North Western Dry Zone Participatory Development Project in Sri Lanka attempts to introduce a participatory approach in all stages of programme planning and implementation. This booklet on user's guidelines on PRA techniques has been developed using the recent experience of PRA conducted in the project area. Brief guidelines are given on how to use the following techniques: mapping and modelling, seasonal analysis, wealth ranking, venn diagrams, matrix scoring and ranking, transects, change and trend diagrams, and semi-structured interviews.

Outlines the process of preparing a village resource management plan in Sri Lanka. The villagers used mapping, seasonal calendars, matrix ranking and chapati diagramming to analyze their situation and identify problems and solutions. The exercise was part of a PRA training programme for civil servants from five government departments, many of whom found it very rewarding and demonstrated a strong commitment to the participatory planning approach.

A training workshop was conducted for staff of programme in order to expose them to the use of participatory techniques. There is an introduction to the use of PRA methods, and to the preparations for the workshops. The emphasis was on experiential learning, with morning classroom sessions and afternoon fieldwork followed by feedback sessions with the villagers. Various techniques were identified as being of use for different components of the project, although the emphasis was on the use and sequencing of techniques, which were often conducted at speed.

Details the activities of a 60 field orientated PRA training programme. The purpose of the training was to enable village resource management planning to become participatory. The recommendations from the training excercise include follow up to the PRA and the development of VRMPs; sharing of knowledge about PRA; study trip to India for project staff to see PRA in practice; encouragement of village level animators. The remainder of the report consists of details of the itinery of the consultant, schedules of the PRA training workshops and methods of evaluations of the courses

Much PRA has been through NGO, although government organizations are increasingly recognizing the need for participatory approaches. This is a greater challenge, as these organizations have a greater institutional inertia, requiring more time for real change to occur. This is illustrated by a programme in the Dry Zone of Sri Lanka. Several problems commonon to government organizations are discussed. Pressure to acheive unrealistic targets leads to critisism over the slow process of participation which may result in a desire to revert to faster top down approaches.