Resources

This ten-minute video was made by Manor Street Community Group in North Belfast, Northern Ireland with the help of students from King Alfred's College. Manor Street is situated in the heart of an area divided by religious and political conflict. The film focuses on efforts by the Community Group to get support from the community and funding for a new Community Centre. After a 3-year public consultation period plans for the centre were drawn up and the City Council was approached for funding to build and run it (00). There was a great need for the centre. Since a wall had been built between the warring catholic and protestant communities shops had closed and buses stopped running (01). There was nothing for young people to do and vandalism was common (02). The problems had been exacerbated by the loss of the old centre and its youth club. All community spirit had gone from the area and the lack of opportunity for protestants and catholics to meet meant the two communities were even more divided (04). The Community Group made contact with various bodies to obtain support and funding. Discussions with residents made it clear that people wanted a centre which would provide something for all ages (05). One person suggested that keep fit classes for women could help deal with stress. The Centre would help put the heart back into the area by providing the community with a focal point and a morale booster (06). The plans provided space for a creche as well as rooms for meetings and classes for the unemployed (08.30). Volunteers from the community were sought to fundraise, run activities and join the management committee (09). The aim was to encourage the whole community to join in.

This article explores constraints encountered when using PRA on an ODA-funded natural resources project in a tribal area of Western India. It was particularly evident that women's participation in the PRAs was minimal. The reasons for this were practical (women were not available collectively for long periods of time & there were few women fieldworkers as the project had just begun), social (PRA activities tended to take place in public places where women felt awkward) and methodological (women respond to PRA activities in different ways, sometimes feeling bored and "communicating by singing instead"). The author argues that an organised PRA "gives privilege to certain kinds of knowledge and representation and suppresses others" : the emphasis given to formal knowledge and activities tends to "reinforce the invisibility of women's roles". However, once the formal and public nature of PRA is perceived as a problem, it can become a means by which "women's knowledge and activities.. can be transferred from the informal to the formal arena of project planning", thereby increasing women's profile. Suggestions for encouraging women's participation in PRA include: making non-public contexts (since women are more used to the "private sphere"), using women's knowledge and ways of communicating (songs, sayings, proverbs). There are constraints: the "production of observable outputs (maps, diagrams of PRA) have more status for fieldworkers" than scribbled songs or informal interview notes and women's expressed needs (eg a flour mill) "don't fit easily into established categories of natural resource development".

This video draws on the experience of an Australian funded participatory rural development project in the Philippines, to examine the challenges, risks and benefits of adopting a participatory approach. It takes the form of interviews with project staff, including foreign project consultants, provincial and local project staff, community development workers and agricultural extension workers. A range of issues is discussed, include potential factors causing conflict or distrust, the need for and obstacles to empowering farmers, the need for and resistance to a very slow learning process, transparency and agendas of various stakeholders, and the need to recognise and share constraints and strengths. These issues are discussed from the perspective of bilateral agency staff, NGOs, local government and community partners.

This paper analyses the different approaches taken by three NGOs working in Bhutanese refugee camps in Nepal, to incorporate women and refugees into their organizational structures. The impacts the different strategies had on both programme activities and women are examined.

Guide to participatory research that provides information regarding strategies, methods and resources used by practicing participatory researchers to mobilise communities around gathering and producing popular knowledge. The report begins with a presentation of case studies from around the USA of various participatory research projects.
Following this are do's, don'ts and maybe's regarding amongst other issues, power relations, building community and group alliances and diversity, getting information out, starting and sustaining groups and dealing with conflict and funding.

This book includes a wide ranging collection of papers which have been divided into sections dealing with communicating with children, gender empowerment, community interactive processes, approaches and insights, ethics and values of community participation and organizational capacity building.

This literature review is intended to complement the English and Spanish literature reviews carried out as part of the Global Study. Many of the issues and points of discussion raised in the English review were also noted or confirmed in the French literature. There are inevitable influences and overlaps between the various literatures, such that to make a clear distinction between the French, Spanish and English literature is, to a certain extent, artificial. However, it cannot be denied that there are some differences in approaches and emphasis, due to the predominance of certain schools of thought or institutional cultures. This paper emphasizes the differences by focusing on elements that were not yet necessarily covered by the other views, or that are addressed from a different angle. The objectives of the review are to clarify the concepts and definitions of terms related to participation and consultation in the French literature on development and humanitarian aid; present and analyse key debates around the concept and practice of participation; review lessons learned, recommendations, and manuals that can be useful for the elaboration of the Global Study Practitioner's Handbook and overview book; and illustrate the issues raised through case studies that are relevant to humanitarian action.