Download available
Contents: PRA in Nepal: Talking, Doing, Being; Participation in a Big Words' World; Start, Stumble, Self-Correct, Share; PRA and Children.
Local people can generate their own numbers – and the statistics that result are powerful for them and can influence policy. Since the early 1990’s there has been a quiet tide of innovation in generating statistics using participatory methods. Across all sectors from local to national, participatory statistics are being generated in the design, monitoring and evaluation, and impact assessment of development interventions. This book, by describing policy, programme and project research, aims to provide impetus for the adoption and mainstreaming of participatory statistics within international development practice. It lays down the challenge of institutional change that allows a win-win outcome in which statistics are part of an empowering process for local people and a valuable information flow for those open to it in aid agencies and government departments.
This book brings together writings on the discourses, politics and practice of participation in development. It explores the conceptual and methodological dimensions of participatory research and the politics and practice of participation in development. It brings together classic and contemporary writings from a literature that spans a century and in doing so offers a unique perspective on the possibilities and dilemmas that face those seeking to empower people affected by development projects, programmes and policies.
Download available
Between 2008 and 2010 the Carnegie UK Trust and the Joseph Rountree Foundation jointly funded a programme of work on power, participation and social change. Over two years the project worked with 20 different organisations to explore ways in which the analysis of power could support them to achieve the social change they were working towards. The work revealed that a good understanding of power is a missing link between how people envisage the change they want, and how they go about achieving that in practice. This handbook – which supports the programmes report “Power and Making Change Happen” – is about taking action. It is a practical guide drawing on the methods and tools used to build the capacity of others and achieve social change. It is designed for people within organisations, networks or community groups who want to explore power as part of the process of change in their communities. As such it provides background information on power and facilitation, and looks at how to explore power through workshops, one-to-one mentoring and self reflection.
Concepts and methods of ‘participation’ are used increasingly to shape policy and deliver services. Such approaches throw new light on complex interactions within and between society and state institutions at all levels. They lead to questions about how different kinds of knowledge and values shape policy choices. What are the societal and political processes through which power operates that inform whose voice is heard and whose is excluded? What is power? Is it about making people act against their best interests; or is it the glue that keeps society together? What are the connections between power and social change? These questions are at the core of research and teaching by the Participation, Power and Social Change Team at IDS, and this IDS Bulletin presents current work on the practice of power in development and the entry points for change. Contributions to this issue, and ways in which power is interrogated, are very varied – despite a shared commitment to exploring its meaning for social change. In categorising power in the way the team has, the intention has not been to offer a comprehensive or exclusive framework for analysis. Rather, a positive spiral between reflection and transformation is constructed, concluding that the role of the action researcher/teacher is to explore with others how power can be harnessed for change, and to work alongside them in tracing and learning from the myriad of micro-level efforts, successes and failures.