This document outlines the learning process that the Rural Integrated Project Support, RIPS Phase II has gone through in introducing a participatory approach to its work in rural development in two southern regions of Tanzania over the last five years, as seen by the stakeholders and facilitators in that process.
Wild resources are often of vital importance to rural people's livelihoods but are often overlooked in conventional valuations. This paper provides an over view of the methodological approach used by IIED's Hidden Harvest research programme which undertook inventories and valuation studies with the resource users themselves withnthe aim of revealing more comprehensive and relevant, rather than assumed, economic values of local resources and incentives for their management.
The paper is illustrated throughout by examples from case studies conducted in Zimbabwe, Botswana, Brazil, Nigeria and Papua New Guinea.
This research tried to break new methodological ground in learning about children's lives with children, involving them in research and project work. Working in a metropolis with an estimated 5-6 million people, the research consisted of a series of focused, in-depth, qualitative studies about specific types of children's work. The study found that poor children are working the longest hours in the worst conditions for the lowest pay. The work varies greatly, but overall children are most prevalent in jobs requiring few skills and little capital. The work is often hazardous, boring and repetitive, which, combined with the long working hours, hinders children's physical, social and intellectual development.
A summary of a ten day workshop in Bolivia, dicussing the role of information and networking in the context of participatory learning and action approaches for development. The report provides snapshots of the activities of 10 of the networks from different continents and details the exchanges on network organisation and information sharing.
This paper examines how evaluator's roles are defined by the different stakeholders involved in community initiatives and the special challenges faced by the evaluator of community initiatives. An overview of the current status of evaluation in this field is given and the different strategies and possibilities open to evaluators outlined.
The village of Drevdagen, situated in a remote area of Sweden near the Norwegian border had its forest user rights taken away from it by the government in the 1800s and now finds itself squeezed to death between a nature reserve to the south and production forest belonging to an international company to the north. This article describes how PRA has been used in current efforts to secure village management of the forest resources for nature and culture tourism.
A two week PRA method course was undertaken during which social, historical and economic information regarding the village was collected. Information from the PRA exercise was then displayed in the village school and used as a basis for discussing future management options with various stakeholders, including local and regional government and the main forest owners.
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This article reports on research carried out in case study schools from Tanzania, Ethiopia, Sri Lanka and India, to investigate the use of agriculture as a medium for the development of young learners' basic skills of literacy, numeracy and other life skills. The findings were aimed to provide decision-makers at national and international level with information for future planning and implementation of primary education programmes. PRA methods were used to learn more about the formal environments of primary schools, through facilitating the analysis of the school situation by teachers, pupils and parents.