Resources

This chapter summarises the PRA Handbook, a guide to conducting participatory rural appraisals in Kenya. It explains the merits of PRA and briefly outlines the rationale and eight steps for carrying it out, from site selection to adopting and implementing a village resource management plan.

This book introduces forest management from a macro perspective illustrating the increasing levels of participation in forestry. The most important aspect of these two volumes is the clear description of the steps which need to be taken to prepare for community forestry research. Issues higlighted include the use of secondary sources of data and the importance of the research team's approach. Details of the process of a rapid appraisal for community forest management are given. A wide spread of information sources need to be tapped for effective community forestry research (and possibly by implication for all development research). These include both community values and perceptions of the forest and levels of forest product use. All levels of forest staff must participate for effective interventions and truly participatory research. Ways of analysing, using and communicating this knowledge are discussed.

This article considers the use of PRA in the general area of health both in determining what peoples' percieved health needs are and in designing interventions. There has been a recent increase of interest in applications of PRA in this area. This paper documents this increase in interest. It considers issues in this respect, the first being that the type of information supplied tends to be localised and cannot form the basis for widespread intervention. Linked with this concern is the inability of professionals such as epidemiologists to accept the validity of the type of information that PRA methods can provide.

This article describes the adaptation of the matrix scoring technique to investigate local perceptions of agroecosystem properties - productivity, stability, sustainability and equity. Methods discussed include transects, mapping and modelling, matrix ranking of productivity, and matrix ranking of the productivity of different crop combinations, seasonal calendars and timelines.

The introduction to this book asserts that RRA has been used in coastal communitites, but "what has been lacking so far are attempts to use RRA systematically in looking at fishing communities, their way of life and livelihood, and the coastal ecosystems in which they live". This manual attempts to fill that gap. It is specifically intended as an introduction to RRA for people in departments of fisheries, local fisheries services and NGOs.

A six-day PRA workshop organised by the NGO World Neighbours was held in Waita sub-location in Kenya in March 1994. The workshop involved ten villages and was attended by two hundred people from central and local government. The report describes the methods used during the PRA, which included social mapping, natural resource mapping, historical time lines, opportunity (service giving) mapping, venn diagrams, seasonal diagrams, income and expenditure charts, daily activity charts (of women and men), and decision-making within the household.

Describes the main process, and explores the problems encountered, during the ACTIONAID-Nepal utilization survey in the Rural Development Area of Sindhupalchowk, in September 1991. Objectives of the survey were: to assess how far the ideas and assets which the community has developed with Action Aid Nepal are being utilised, and the community's perception of the impact of these; to involve the community and thus increase their understanding; to increase AAN's understanding of the conditions of the poorest. The week of survey work was carried out by teams which comprised of the Community Development Committee (CDC) members, other local people and staff facilitators - staff, but not community members, were trained in PRA. Selective tools and techniques of PRA methods were used to gather all the information; the village map (of which examples are given in the appendix) was the most extensively used, semi-structured interviews were employed to collect information on household's participation in activities, and time trend and preference ranking methods were also drawn upon. Problems encountered in the survey were that indicators had not been agreed through a participatory process, the three-day training in PRA techniques was found to be insufficient, and structured questions left gaps and revealed bias. The bulk of the report is devoted to the survey findings