Participatory community development techniques with local people in Berkshire

Participation, Learning and Action (PLA) employs a set of techniques, which enables people to generate, share and analyze data about their community in a participatory and capacity-building manner. This paper describes a number of PLA techniques used in a Community Assessment project in Berkshire, England. Various groups in the community participated in order to gain a broad understanding of issues relevant to the community. The report briefly describes the four-week PLA process and gives two case studies. It describes the techniques used which included mapping, ranking, scoring, photography, time use, problem tree, impact diagrams and interview prompts.