Resources

In October 1992, IIED conducted a PRA Training session for PATECORE and its partners, whose approach to land use management is widely known for its innovation and success. They operate in the Bam Province, Burkina Faso. This paper is a brief note, concerning the introduction of certain elements of PRA into their activities, notably network mapping and venn diagrams.

As part of the UNICEF relief programme to Angola, a technical team carried out a ranking exercise upon which this paper reports. It took place between December 1991 and June 1992. Ranking is defined here as a process of priority ordering, in this case administrative areas in relation to the need for assistance. It used the knowledge that informants possessed from the country, at a national level, as well as from the provinces. No quantitative data were used. The ranking technique was expected to provide a rational framework to deal with time and resource constraints. The paper looks at the ranking process at a central and provincial level, as well as looking at the limitations and potential of the approach. It concludes that ranking was useful with regards to outlining the humanitarian issues in Angola; however, its efficiency depends very much on the choice of information source.

This article summarises the perceptions of staff of a rural development NGO in southern India, on the impacts of PRA on their project planning, implementation , management and evaluation.

A game of juggling with oranges was used to demonstrate how PRA allows the roles of farmer and scientist to be reversed. This glimpse of the actual event at a livestock seminar in Indonesia shows how the role play "energised" the proceedings.

This three day PRA workshop for nine 'Southern' health workers included a field visit to a poor area of Birmingham. Teaching methods (cartoons, slides, role play) in the theoretical sessions are described in detail, together with the trainees' responses. The concluding section makes suggestions on practical aspects of organising a workshop for PRA trainers and reflects on the different experience of doing PRA activities in the 'Northern' and urban context.

This short list of numbered steps explains how to organise the "fruit salad" game in order to "get the group active and awake" and as a way of forming sub-groups.

A three week PRA course was run for Redd Barna, a Norwegian NGO, with twenty participants from Ethiopia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. These extracts describe the trainer's preparation, her emphasis on "approach" before introducing methods and organisation of groups for fieldwork. A day-by-day schedule lists the themes covered in theory sessions - certain activities (Chairs Game, Mapping for Mars) are described fully in the participants' words. The fieldwork activities are not described here, but available in a full report from Redd Barna, Zimbabwe.