Resources

This thought-provoking article reflects on issues around PRA, after the author attended a two day workshop in the UK. Srivastava questions the "mystification" of PRA techniques through using technical labels, such as "transect", and goes on to discuss the political dimensions of "empowerment through PRA". Using examples from her experience of working with poor women in India, she stresses the need for PRA "not to become a one-way process ...of eliciting knowledge from the people."

A comprehensive account of a large scale experimental PRA conducted for SCF in Vietnam. The approach taken and its justification (not agreed by all doners) is detailed. The methodology section is extensive, discussing the theory behind PRA, training, tools and fieldwork, as well as problems such as the external and timeconsuming production of the report. The final report gives details of the education system and educations problems encountered, in general terms and by specific commune. In some communes this is felt to be one of the most significant constraints, and potential solutions are discussed in detail.

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 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 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.

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 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.