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Alternative perspectives on livelihoods, agriculture and air pollution: agriculture in urban and peri-urban areas in a developing country

This book is based on a synthesis of community perspectives from selected urban and peri-urban villages of Varanasi and Faridabad districts of the Indian states of Uttah Pradesh and Harayana. It approaches the topic of air pollution in a holistic manner considering local lives and livelihoods from the perspectives of local communities, in which impact of air pollution on agriculture has been viewed as part of a whole livelihood system.

Raising livestock in resource-poor communities of the North West Province of South Africa: a participatory rural appraisal study

This article traces a participatory research model used in six village communities in the Central Region of the North-West of South Africa in order to achieve the following broad objectives: to obtain information on the challenges owners face in raising livestock in these areas and to evaluate the livestock owners' level of knowledge of internal parasites in their animals. Participatory workshops revealed a need for improvements in water supply, schools, job creation, and health services; and that lack of pasture for grazing livestock was an important issue.

Learning for social change; sharing information and experience

This book is part of a process of sharing information and experience, which started when workers at the Oxford Development Education Centre (ODEC) found that they gained valuable insights and lessons from working with colleagues from Southern countries. Together with other organisations and networks that work on community development, an effort was made to cultivate better working relationships and to share lessons with each other. A survey and covering letter was devised, and distributed through various networks.

Participatory rapid assessment of local health traditions

In a great majority of the rural communities in India, illness is treated with home remedies and specialised folk healers. The Foundation for the Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions (FRLHT) has initiated a project to document and assess these health practices in four states in Southern India using participatory assessments. The selected practices are promoted to improve primary health care. Presently, the FRLHT-Compas programme is preparing an action plan to promote selected medicinal plants in one million kitchen home gardens.

Extracts from 'Forestry tactics: lessons from Malawi's National Forestry Programme'

This article provides extracts from an International Institute for Environment Development book entitled 'Forestry Tactics: Lessons from Malawi's National Forest Programme'. It gives examples of the process used to develop a national strategy for sustainable forestry, and some of the participatory approaches, used by the National Forestry Programme in Malawi.

Participatory methodologies and participatory practices: accessing PRA use in the Gambia

This research examines the conduct and consequences of the use of participatory rural appraisal techniques in four rural development projects in The Gambia. It includes a review of literature on PRA and the identification of a series of themes that allow for an assessment of PRAÆs usefulness. The fieldwork in The Gambia included reviews of project documentation, key informant interviews, and periods of village-based research using PRA methods.

Whose security counts?: participatory research on armed violence and human insecurity in Southeast Asia

This book considers the real and perceived impacts of small arms misuse on the lives of ordinary people in 5 communities in Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Aceh-Indonesia and the Philippines. It considers the role of small arms availability and misuse in a wide spectrum of contexts û from student fraternity violence to resource exploitation and dam-related development to state and insurgency-directed bloodshed. It collates the key findings of these localized studies and highlights, to the extent possible, the voice of the affected populations.

Participatory research development for sustainable agriculture and natural resource management: a sourcebook

This sourcebook forms part of a wider initiative to promote easy access to systematized information on field-tested participatory research and development concepts and practices. The sourcebook aims to identify and consolidate tested practices and concepts relevant to managing natural resources for agriculture and rural livelihood. The primary audience for the sourcebook are field-based research practitioners in developing countries. The sourcebook is divided into 3 volumes: Understanding, enabling and doing participatory research and development.

The assessment of household wealth in health studies in developing countries: a comparison of participatory wealth ranking and survey techniques from rural South Africa

Health researchers often wish to study the impact of wealth on health outcomes. To do this they must collect data on social and economic factors. However, the collection of detailed data on income and expenditure is rare in health studies in developing countries. Instead, researchers generally adopt more rapid procedures based on survey methodology. Increasingly this has included the use of Principal Components Analysis (PCA) to generate a number of separate indicators of welfare. An alternative approach is to utilise participatory wealth ranking to generate a measure of household wealth.

Children changing their world: understanding and evaluating children's participation in development

The report is the result of research into the impact of children's participation on development programmes and how such participation can be facilitated. The report also assesses how large international organisations with complex systems and hierarchical management structures can respond sensitively and flexibly to the challenges that will emerge when children are given a voice. It brings together the findings of a literature review of current thinking about children's participation and its evaluation with a field study undertaken in three different countries (Ecuador, India and Kenya).

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