Resources

This paper describes how The Mazingira Institute in Nairobi created and used a series of illustrated learning packages on environmental issues to stimulate responses from school children. Annual competitions invited children to answer questions and submit essays and drawings on a variety of topics. The children's responses proved a valuable source of information on their perceptions of environmental issues, and traditional knowledge and action in their communities. The "information exchange with children" project helped children to link what they learned in school with what they heard from the elders in their community, and with what they could see and do themselves. The authors conclude that the distributed learning packages and responses gathered from children combine mass media with the education system, allowing the youth to address environment and development problems, and potentially linking with policy making.

The research was carried out using participatory qualitative rapid appraisal procedures (RAPs) in order to assess the health needs of women and their children. The study was quite large involving two hundred mothers of children under five years of age. Data was collected by volunteers from the Maternal and child welfare association (MCWA) and the Myanmar Red Cross (MRC). The assessment covers planning issues of communication between formal and informal Health Services, quality of care and training through the importance of the roles of midwives and traditional birth assistants (TBAs), as well as investigating local perceptions and practices. These concern reproductive health issues, ranging from pregnancy to post-natal care and long-term problems, family planning methods, contraception in the prevention of STDs and HIV/AIDS, and abortion. Other related issues such as health financing, drugs policies, and a broader socio-cultural gender analysis are also analysed. The methodology used for this assessment is innovative, participatory and appropriate, generating a considerable amount of new data in a short time. Of particular interest may be the techniques of body mapping used by the women to identify reproductive morbidity and the side effects of birth spacing and other contraceptive methods; sexuality life lines are also used to give an awareness over time of the trials and tribulations faced in the reproductive lives of the women.

Report of a participatory health needs assessment carried out on the Roundshaw Estate by a team of residents, health, housing and youth service workers, which focused specifically on residents views on well-being on the estate and their suggestions for improving the quality of life there. The report includes a section evaluating and reflecting on the process used, which examines amongst other aspects, reactions of the community members and also the Participatory Appraisal Team to the process.

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.