Download available
PRA methods are being used to study the effect of dams and drought on the fishery of a floodplain in 24 Nigerian villages. The problems and solutions devised to carry out participatory mapping and ranking exercises in such an area are described in detail, including the materials used.
Download available
Training alone will not be able to promote a participatory approach in a top-down bureaucratic institution. Other factors, such as funding base, organisational procedures and institutional priorities, may also have to change. Case-studies from Production Through Conservation programme, Lesotho and Soil and Water Conservation Branch, Kenya, illustrate that "it is possible to change the operational procedures and institutional cultures of large, bureaucratic public agencies, but this transformation is "neither easily nor quickly achieved". Seven conditions necessary for such a transformation are identified from the case-studies.
This comprehensive report, written in narrative style, describes the process of organising a full-scale national workshop on PRA in Sri Lanka. The workshop also provided the opportunity to train four trainers of trainers. In preparation, the trainee facilitators explored two approaches to PRA training (methods vs. attitudes), and selected key themes for the programme. The activities of both the planning stage, the actual workshop and the review are explained in detail (eg games, buzz sessions, role play, frameworks for planning and evaluation, materials /background articles used). The field work was carried out in two villages in Tangalle District with the idea of developing a strategy for SSP to follow up. Organisational aspects of the field work are covered, but not findings nor descriptions of the actual activities
Download available
This short list of numbered steps explains how to organise the "fruit salad" game in order to "get the group active and awake" and as a way of forming sub-groups.
The first section focuses on training techniques for PRA. There is an emphasis on the use of role play, for semistructured interviewing. Both bad and good interviews were improvised. The second section concentrates on the field visits, detailing both the methodology and the findings. After each technique there is a section on 'new learnings' which details both interesting aspects of the villagers agriculturall systems, and the facilitators thoughts on the use of PRA. Maps, matrices, time lines and interviews were used. The final section is composed of individual assesments of the training session and the field work.
Download available
The Women's Development Project (WDP) of CARE-Bangladesh trains women in 441 villages as local health educators. A mapping activity was conducted in a village in Tangail with thirteen of these women. In three "para" (neighbourhood) groups, the women drew maps using sticks and flour, showing the households that they worked with and which new health practices (family planning, latrine etc) they had adopted. The maps (which are given in Figure 1) made the health workers aware of their achievements and helped them plan for the future. The article ends with a list of uses of participatory mapping in WDP's work as a whole.
Download available
A three week PRA course was run for Redd Barna, a Norwegian NGO, with twenty participants from Ethiopia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. These extracts describe the trainer's preparation, her emphasis on "approach" before introducing methods and organisation of groups for fieldwork. A day-by-day schedule lists the themes covered in theory sessions - certain activities (Chairs Game, Mapping for Mars) are described fully in the participants' words. The fieldwork activities are not described here, but available in a full report from Redd Barna, Zimbabwe.
Reflections around the tensions between male fieldworkers and Women's Project Officers on an Oxfam project, lead to the idea that RRA training can help to raise gender awareness. The RRA approach encourages fieldworkers to listen, to see that communities are not "homogenous blobs" and to abandon preconceived ideas. A case-study from Sierra Leone shows how a social map drawing activity done separately by men and women revealed their different perceptions and needs. The second case-study shows how RRA work in Ghana caused male fieldworkers to change their views of women's position in the community. The next most important step would be to "transform fieldworkers' anger and resentment into positive pride in their awareness of difference".
This is abstracted in the annotated bibliography Famine Early Warning and Food Information Systems in the Sahel and Horn of Africa, Lambert et al, 1991, IDS Development Bibliography, no. 7.
This paper describes the use of risk-mapping being developed by Save the Children Fund (UK) in collaboration with the FAO for the purposes of food aid allocation and targeting. The risk-mapping project was initiated because of the need for a method which incorporates a wider range of socio-economic information than is currently being used, and which is simple enough to be operationally useful over a wide geographic area. The paper asserts that the risk-mapping framework is able to bridge the gap between the informal, qualitative knowledge of the local informant and the statistical quantitative data of the household survey. SCF is currently carrying out fieldwork to see if it is possible to obtain semi-quantitative data from key informants and communities. A computer program has been developed which undertakes straightforward calculations on the data to arrive at the proportion of the population with a food deficit of a given size. The aim is to develop a user-friendly database in which relevant information, largely from key informants, is clearly organized and presented.
Download available
This paper looks at two attempts by nutritional consultants to use a stress calendar to improve community nutrition. This technique involves plotting factors affecting nutrition on a monthly basis to see when there is likely to be a deterioration of nutritional status. Initially this was used to assist Save the Children Fund (Norway) establish the food, nutrition and health situation in their community development project area in East Palpa, Nepal. Using a diagrammatic nutritional calendar it was shown that months corresponding to the rainy season experienced a bunching of stress factors and consequent child mortality. There, the outcome was the decision to concentrate resources before the rainy season to familiarise villagers with the oral rehydration treatment of diarrhoea. Secondly it was used to examine at what time aquaculture could improve nutrition in villages on the Chipata Plateau, Zambia. Here the team noted the consumption of various foods throughout the year and they decided that the availability of fish could make a significant contribution to the diet and income of the poor. It is considered therefore that the way stress calendars portray information has a number of advantages, particularly the timing and nature of relevant interventions.
A comparison of two pieces of research for Save the Children, Norway which set out to compile "stress calendars" to improve community nutrition. There is a clear discussion of the research technique - plotting nutrition factors on a monthly basis, to establish when in the year nutritional status is most likely to be at risk. Case study areas were East Palpa, Nepal and Chipatu Plateau, Zambia. Although a smilar research technique was used, the object of the exercise was different in each case. In Nepal, the exercise determined that the greatest problems existed during the monsoon which fed into a decision to concentrate nutritional support in the period before monsoon. In Zambia the exercise determined when aquaculture could best be targetted to improve nutritional status in the villages.
Nutritional surveillance, as part of, or complementary to, the famine early warning system in Ethiopia, has been used to collect reports on local food security from community leaders using structured interviews. It is important to assess the extent to which this information reflects the food-related behaviour of the community. Information on various socio-economic variables related to nutrition was collected at the household and community level through interviews in western Shewa Province. The data was compared and generally the correspondence between the two was good. Information topics which might be missed using only the local leader, and ways to improve collection are discussed.
The paper follows up a workshop on household data collection for food policy needs. It provides an introduction to the use of R/PRA and its recent development, as well as comparing RRA and PRA, and looking at specific food policy applications. Examples of mapping, diagramming and ranking for food policy are given. The key issues identified are the increasing use of visual techniques, with the associated shift in control and increased participation, and the recognition of the role of qualitative, not quantitative, data in policy. Cost efficiency and speed are high, although a number of constraints are identified, namely the problems of jumping on the "bandwagon", and naming what remain essentially extractive excercises, "PRA".
A rapid food security assessment was carried out in Eastern Shewa and Western Hararghe to determine what CARE food-assisted projects have been undertaken, and what impact they have had on the participants. To determine whether the projects were properly designed, a rapid assessment of the household food security situation in each project area was carried out. Peasant Associations were selected on the basis of accessibility, main economic activity, distance from main roads, and history of food assistance. Two villages in which CARE assistance was not provided were surveyed in order to compare project areas with nonproject areas. Information sources included a document review, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions. Other interviews were conducted with government agencies, and collaborating institutions such as United Nations organizations and other NGOs.
Rapid Food Security Assessments (RFSA) are especially useful for determining the causes, dimensions and characteristics of the food security situation in a given area. They are a type of Rapid Rural Appraisal and are particularly good for identifying the most food insecure groups in a given area and the causes and magnitude of the food security situation. The targeting and timing of a RFSA will be triggered by an early warning system already in place in a region susceptible to food shortages. The general procedure followed in most assessments involves: reviewing secondary data to familiarize the team with the sociocultural, econmomic, and ecological attributes of the area, open-ended interview guides to ensure that pertinent issues are covered, and group, household and key informant interviews to gather information about the local situation. RFSAs use other RRA techniques such as maps, diagrams and ranking exercises to elicit a local perspective on resources, constraints, wealth distribution and seasonal trends. Upon completion of a survey, contingency plans should be drawn up to link information to response.