Resources

The widespread uptake of participatory approaches has created a need to assess more critically if the work is benefitting women and men equally. Community differences are simplified, power relationships poorly understood and conflicts avoided or ignored. The contributors to this book provide an overview of issues and lessons, theoretical reflections, practical experiences and examples of how organizations are attempting to integrate gender into the participatory process.

This article describes step by step the evaluation process used to examine the impact of three years of a WN project. The process involved villagers, village and inter-village leaders, technical WN stafff and external resource people. Villagers were involved in deciding the terms of reference, establishing the village sample using ranking, collection of data and analysis. Collection of data was carried out using both qualitative and quantitative methods, with an emphasis on triangulation of the data.

This chapter examines the view that the word participation is experienceing a renaissance in the 1990s. So widespread is its us that some talk of a paradigm shift to participatory development. Chambers argues here that reversing power relations is the key and the weak link in achieving participation.