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The Aga Khan Rural Support Programme supports soil and water conservation work on private land, a priority identified by villagers, as part of a watershed management project. Villagers suggested that monitoring should look at: erosion controlled; land reclaimed; moisture retention in soil (as inferred from crop growth); and productivity and income generation. The article goes through the process of participatory impact monitoring, illustrated by real results. The benefits of such monitoring are listed, most of them related to increased farmer understanding of processes and control over further experimentation.

Outlines the process of preparing a village resource management plan in Sri Lanka. The villagers used mapping, seasonal calendars, matrix ranking and chapati diagramming to analyze their situation and identify problems and solutions. The exercise was part of a PRA training programme for civil servants from five government departments, many of whom found it very rewarding and demonstrated a strong commitment to the participatory planning approach.

The article describes the experiences of Sri Lanka's North Western Province Dry Zone Participatory Development Project (DZP) in transferring participatory approaches from one institutional culture to another. It summarises some of the difficulties which have been encountered while facilitating participatory planning processes in 40 villages. These included raising the expectations of villagers; difficulties encountered by government officers in sticking to their promises; changing the behaviour and attitudes of government officers; and the temptation to make up results of 'participatory planning exercises'. It argues that to understand the constraints the principal differences between the institutional culture of NGOs and GOs have to be taken into account. The paper concludes that the changes required to realise true participation in large-scale government development projects are so fundamental that due time and resources must be provided if the approach is to succeed.

This paper describes how the combination of chemical soil and water analyses and PRA exercises were found to be complementary methods in assessing the magnitude of the pollution problem caused by the tannery industry in Kamtchipuram village, Tamil Nadu.

This article reports on an innovative secondary school environmental awareness initiative designed to complement a program to develop village level aquatic resource management. Students were provided with discussion questions on past, present and future issues regarding local aquatic resources resand encouraged to use semi-structured interview techniques to investigate the issues in their own villages with elders and relatives. Essays were then written by the students based on this research and the best essays presented at ceremonies where district government officials, village chiefs and members of the school parents committee attended. One of the best essays was also published in the Lao language newspaper. The process increased awareness levels regarding aquatic resource management not only amongst students but also amongst teachers, those who helped supply information and the village leaders and district government officials attending the ceremonies.

The Asian Coalition for Housing Rights has had great success with community-to-community exchange programmes across Asia. Video supplements this process and allows more communities to actually 'see' what's happening with other poor communities in Asia. Groups have found this type of documentation and presentation easier and more productive than writing reports, particularly for confidence building. This story tells about the use of video for urban poor solutions in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. In December 1999 and January 2000, the largest slum community was facing eviction threats from government under pressure to redevelop the land. While having support from the local Municipality for land-sharing alternatives, they needed to influence government at a higher level as the Municipality had little control - the plans for eviction were directed from above, by people in national government. A short 10-minute video was made of the work ACHR was doing involving partnerships with government organisations and slum communities, offering an alternative process to forced evictions. The message was conveyed to the Prime Minister via video, whose response was very positive. The author concludes by reflecting on the potential for using video in even more participatory ways.