Participatory Rural Appraisal

By Sara

One of the things that World Renew has recently done to help some of their partner organizations improve the work that they do, is to train them in Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA).  This is a technique for meeting with and hearing from a community itself about programming to work there, rather than designing a project and then imposing it on the community.

The facilitators for PRA guide the community members to divide themselves into groups (like younger women, older women, younger men, older men, community leaders) and then guide them through various activities that give everyone a better picture of what is going on in the community and what resources are there.  For example, a group may walk in a straight line through the community, taking note of anything that relates to a topic, like food security, then draw a map of that section of the community.  Or they might brainstorm the changes throughout the year and make a calendar that shows how much work, how much food, how much rain, etc. at different times of year.

In one particular training, I sat with the group of younger women and observed the activities that they did.  The first one was to create a map of the places they go to most commonly in the village, looking at which ones they visit the most.  They made a map on the ground and used various items to symbolize each location.  For example, a water bottle represented the well.  They also used different sized sticks to show how often they go there - the twigs meant they went there maybe once a week and the big logs were for places they went to at least once a day.  So you can see below that they go to the well frequently.

Then, they transferred the map onto a piece of paper.  This little kid was very interested in the process.

Then, they made a daily calendar.  This showed the different things they do every day, when they do those things, and for how long.  They organized their daily tasks in a circle, from morning to evening.  Below you can see all the items that symbolize the activities.  For example, they used a hoe to represent garden work, three stones to represent cooking, and a handkerchief for washing clothes.

The next day, the community got back together so each group could share what they had discussed the day before and think about what important issues they need to address in their community.  It was very interesting to compare the daily schedules of the younger men and the younger women.  (note that most of them were married and had children).  You might not be able to see the chart below very well, but this is the daily calendar for the younger men.  They made separate charts for the rainy season and the dry season.  They are busier in the rainy season working in the garden, so they wanted a different chart for that.  Nevertheless, even during the rainy season, they are eating or resting from 11:30am-3pm (during the dry season they can rest from 10am-the end of the day)

The younger women, on the other hand, said that they sometimes have time to rest from 1-1:30pm, but other than that, were busy for the rest of the day.  This difference in workload was definitely an important issue to them and it brought up a lot of discussion among the community.

Below are two activities done by the older men.  The one on the left is a resource map of the community.  It shows where different resources can be found in the community.  The one on the right is the seasonal calendar I talked about before.  It shows things like the amount of rainfall and the amount of work available throughout the different months of the year.

At the end of the presentations, the community seemed satisfied that they had come up with important issues that they face and had some discussion about a few ideas for addressing those issues.  This is a great way, also, for the development organizations to know how to plan their programs to address the needs that actually matter to the community, rather than needs perceived by the organization.