PRA methods and their application to participatory monitoring and evaluation

This short report provides some useful comments on a two week training course on the use of PRA for PM&E conducted by the Development Support Programme Khartoum, part of the Community Development Services in Cairo. It took place over two weeks in Kordofan and involved fieldwork in villages, with varying involvement in SOS Sahel's Natural Forest Management Project, near to El Obeid. Among the problems that emerged from this course, were; 1. the difficulties in encouraging a "suitable PRA attitude" amongst course participants in their approach to the villagers; 2. A lack of confidence amongst the participants; 3. Problems with the use of symbols during the fieldwork. Although participants were slow to grasp the usefulness of PRA for PM&E, three "tools" were found to be most useful for evaluation, namely; Impact diagrams, Impact matrices and Evaluation Matrices. The later was developed from the Innovation Matrix in the SCF/IIED manual; PRA for community development (1991), and its purpose was to generate discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of forestry activities.