This book provides practical guidelines for using participatory approaches for planning social development programmes, particularly in the areas of health and education. It explores how information can be used to develop equal partnerships between professionals and the people who are intended to benefit from the programme.
This paper looks specifically at how a framework that was developed to measure the level of community participation within district health projects can be implemented. The introductory section describes the evolution of the development of the framework designed by Rifkin et al in 1988. The framework basically centres on the identification of five main factors that Rifkin believed to most strongly influence the breadth of community participation. These were identified as: a) needs assessment b) leadership c) organisation d) resource mobilisation and e) management.