Resources

This article is extracted from a report outlining the experiences of a partnership between the 'People's Dialogue', a national network linking representatives from illegal and informal settlements in South Africa, and a group of three organisations in India. These are SPARC, an NGO working broadly in the area of housing and community development; the National Slum Dwellers Federation; and Mahila Milan, a federation of women's collectives. The article describes several of the participatory methods and techniques which are used in community-based shelter training programmes, and explains why the training process is important to community development. It argues that experiential learning is a more useful approach than those offered by conventional training.

Experience of living and working in Zambia led the author to reflect on the differences in understanding and communication. This wide-ranging account looks at concepts such as "time" as expressed in Swahili and English, and how a "magic" world view affects the concept of causal relations. Concerned particularly with pictures as "the link between written and oral lifestyles", the author goes on to analyse his Zambian friends' perspective. Though he draws on studies of visual literacy, such as George McBean's, and lists the visual "cues" (eg perspective, superimposition) which people lack, his starting point is less ethnocentric. When a woman states that there is more Fanta in a high glass than a short glass (though it has been shown to be the same quantity), he questions "why should we consider it 'less logical' to attribute 'moreness' to something visually dominant like width or height than to attribute 'sameness' to something invisible like weight?" In oral societies people appear to be more used to verbalising "what they do not what they see" and they expect pictures to "contain what they know about objects, not just what they see". "Memory pictures" which, for example, show all four wheels of a car through twisting the picture in space, are one way of meeting peoples' visual expectations. There are many observations in this book besides those on visual literacy (eg on "greetings" in different cultures and ways of learning) which would interest PRA practitioners.

Filmed in the Gambia, this video shows what was found out about girl's education as a result of using PRA.

This report provides an assessment of the extent of and changes in poverty in Kenya during the '80s and early '90s. It uses data from different sources and of different kinds, including was a Participatory Poverty Assessment (PPA) and a Welfare Monitoring Survey (WMS). Interestingly, in three out of five districts the results yielded by the two approaches were almost identical. The PPA provided critical insights on a number of issues - people's perceptions of the extent and causes of poverty, the status of women, the extent of and reasons for low school enrolment, the reasons for not using public health facilities and the ways in which poor people cope with food insecurity and drought. Methods used included social mapping and wealth ranking, interviews and focus groups discussions. The different chapters present the findings of the study, focusing on economic development and poverty; revitalising the rural economy; structural transformation in agriculture; social sector spending (education and health); food security and nutrition; and targeted programmes and institutional factors. A strategy of programmes and policies for poverty reduction is suggested.

This author reflects on the rising popularity of mobile telephony for development purposes. Across the world, the mobile phone is becoming a more accessible, affordable and convenient means of communication than the Internet and computers. Particularly in Africa, as the cost of services and handsets continue to reduce, mobile phones are increasingly becoming the preferred tool for accessing and sharing information. As the impacts of this new ôrevolutionö are starting to be assessed, the author argues that mobile phones have the potential to become the first universally accessible information communications technology.