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This is a newsletter which describes the formation of the Midnet PRA group and includes a number of very short articles and thoughts on practitioners experiences with PRA in Southern Africa. Experiences shared include working with young people, in education, with periurban communities, for catchment management and for land reform. The methods used are discussed with details of venn diagrammes for community organisation, historical time lines. There are reports from trainings in Namaqualand and Namibia. The thoughts that emerged from evaluation/ reflection and planning meetings included the ideas of rapid learning and sharing and the need for more training. The final article summarises the PRA and gender workshop held at IIED in December 1993.

The use of RAP in evaluation in UNICEF is briefly outlined in this paper. In UNICEF, a Rapid Assessment Procedure [RAP] exercise "includes as a central base, the use of techniques derived from the field of anthropology such as focus group discussions, observation, and unstructured one-on-one interviews, that form a body of mainly qualitative data". Normally the qualitative information derived from RAP will be used in conjunction with quantitative data, which might already be available, or which might be collected as part of a RAP investigation itself. Although the report includes an admission that "RAP is not a particularly useful type of method to use for evaluations of a participatory nature..", the author does point out that RAP evaluations do have an important role in encouraging participatory development processes in projects, and that RAP style evaluation "can be used, if so desired, as a way of instilling a sense that more peoples participation may be more desirable in a development project".

The paper discusses the use and usefulness of participatory approaches in the work of Save the Children Fund (SCF). It asks how PRA can be used effectively by SCF when the nature of its work means it is unlikely to be involved purely as a facilitator in a community development process. Areas where PRA has proved useful are research, training and awareness, and participatory monitoring and evaluation. It is suggested that the awareness and skills of a growing number of staff members will gradually increase SCFs capacity to use PRA. Participatory methods are also seen as having a useful role to play in turning SCF into a more child-focused agency, and in helping to develop partnerships between SCF, local communities and partner organisations.

Conventional studies of child feeding practices are difficult and time-consuming, since family food use is a sensitive topic since it hinges on economic status and power relationships. The author argues that since "this information can only be obtained by workers trusted by the community, after both sides have understood and become concerned with the object of the investigation". The roles of an RRA facilitator in providing, collecting, interpreting and discussing information are outlined. Section 2 discusses 8 questions relating to feeding practices, covering problems with conventional food consumption surveys, trust between researchers and researched, the importance of relating reported to actual practices, evaluating 'satisfactory' feeding practices, understanding mothers' perceptions of practices, problems and obstacles to change, and the importance of sharing information for mutual learning between the interviewer and the community.

This paper begins by tracing the development of RRA and later PRA. PRA is defined and its origins discussed. Eight steps involved in undertaking a PRA are outlined. Some assumptions or principles of PRA are outlined and its advantages are discussed. The next section discusses applications of PRA in Kenya. These have included water and soil conservation, child health, water and sanitation, natural resource conservation, irrigation and monitoring and evaluation. The paper then discusses problems and constraints of PRA, and challenges facing PRA. Training and institutionalisation are explored and the conclusion examines the role of the African Centre for Technology in PRA.

This interesting article describes how the author sought to show how an appreciative inquiry technique can be used to embed a self evaluation process in an organisation that caters for the needs of street children in Africa. The paper describes using a narrative style the findings of a three day workshop using this methodology. Appreciative Inquiry works by highlighting the organisations best practice which is then used as a bench mark for all the practitioners to assess their own performance. Several problems existed within the specific context in which this workshop was held which would influence the evaluation. These problems were promptly identified by the author and listed as being as follows; i) the contrast between the rhetoric of democracy and participation on the one hand and the reality of an authoritarian style leadership on the other, ii) the great diversity in the formal education and training levels of the participants, iii) the bias that existed in the organisation which favoured the caring/counselling role but left a gap in the administrative and finance functions and iv) what was described by the author as a kind of 'corporate introspection' where the organisation and it's participants felt undervalued by the donor communities because of the nature of their work. The key technique utilised by the appreciative inquiry methodology was that of story telling and PRA style mapping. The events of the workshop are clearly described in this paper which is generally refreshingly simple in it's style.