Resources

This manual was prepared to facilitate access to participatory planning tools in Tanzania, to make them more accessible to planners and other development workers in order to facilitate sustainable development in the country. Its main purpose is to provide a source of reference for the Tanzania government and other staff whilst engaging in development activities with communities. The manual is structured to explain the background to the underlying planning and local government reforms, and the monitoring and evaluation of development interventions at community and other levels. The background describes how the current local government reforms are designed, how they are implemented, and the measures to be put in place. It also provides an overview on why the new planning approach necessitates a shift in emphasis on participation of communities in creation of their own development interventions, and how other actors are to be involved in supporting and facilitating the successful implementation of development interventions. The manual is structured into four parts which hare based on a build up of knowledge and skills development: preliminaries, concepts, participatory methodology, and opportunities and obstacles to development.

This research examines the conduct and consequences of the use of participatory rural appraisal techniques in four rural development projects in The Gambia. It includes a review of literature on PRA and the identification of a series of themes that allow for an assessment of PRAÆs usefulness. The fieldwork in The Gambia included reviews of project documentation, key informant interviews, and periods of village-based research using PRA methods. The main research findings were that PRA has had some positive effects, particularly in motivating rural development workers, and generating a spirit of enquiry. There are a number of concerns, however: whether these can be maintained over the longer term; data quality, cost-effectiveness and high transaction costs of PRA use; the idealisation of the nature of æcommunityÆ and a bias towards the literate; little evidence that PRA is effective in empowering the poor or challenging long-term power relations. The main policy implications that arise from this are, firstly, although methodological instruments like PRA have some potential for capacity building in development organisations and communities, institutional structures and relationships are likely to be more important. Secondly, practitioners need to acknowledge the limitations of PRA as an analytical tool as its capacity to relate norms and values to other variables in the social system appears very limited. Thirdly, PRA can help engender greater community participation in development, but it is necessary to guard against the substitution of tools and methods for more concerted efforts at changing social relationships.

This article traces a participatory research model used in six village communities in the Central Region of the North-West of South Africa in order to achieve the following broad objectives: to obtain information on the challenges owners face in raising livestock in these areas and to evaluate the livestock owners' level of knowledge of internal parasites in their animals. Participatory workshops revealed a need for improvements in water supply, schools, job creation, and health services; and that lack of pasture for grazing livestock was an important issue. With regards to treatment of animals it was found that most owners used a combination of treatment ranging from traditional to folklore to commercial. Difficulties encountered in using participatory methods were due to the fact that it was the first time that the facilitators and the communities had been exposed to them, and as a result many had difficulty in dealing with the concept of finding solutions within the community, which is an integral part of participatory methods.