Post-harvest goes participatory

The report on a five-day workshop, organized by the Bay of Bengal's Programme - Post Harvest Fisheries Project and Outreach, which looked at various aspects of PRA. Topics examined included post-harvest activities, credit, women and government links. Exercises were carried out helping to familiarize the workshop participants with certain PRA techniques: matrix scoring, trend diagrams, wealth ranking and the like. An actual series of PRA activities were carried in a small coastal village - Alikuppam, as part of the workshop. The paper also reviews the comments of various groups attending the workshop, as to the application of PRA in their areas of concern. These groups included NGO staff, policy-makers and planners as well as more senior staff from government. This article also contains excerpts from a conversation between Peter Colaco and James Mascarenhas, director of OUTREACH, who acted as the principal resource person for the workshop.