Resources

The Asian Coalition for Housing Rights has had great success with community-to-community exchange programmes across Asia. Video supplements this process and allows more communities to actually 'see' what's happening with other poor communities in Asia. Groups have found this type of documentation and presentation easier and more productive than writing reports, particularly for confidence building. This story tells about the use of video for urban poor solutions in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. In December 1999 and January 2000, the largest slum community was facing eviction threats from government under pressure to redevelop the land. While having support from the local Municipality for land-sharing alternatives, they needed to influence government at a higher level as the Municipality had little control - the plans for eviction were directed from above, by people in national government. A short 10-minute video was made of the work ACHR was doing involving partnerships with government organisations and slum communities, offering an alternative process to forced evictions. The message was conveyed to the Prime Minister via video, whose response was very positive. The author concludes by reflecting on the potential for using video in even more participatory ways.

Outlines the process of preparing a village resource management plan in Sri Lanka. The villagers used mapping, seasonal calendars, matrix ranking and chapati diagramming to analyze their situation and identify problems and solutions. The exercise was part of a PRA training programme for civil servants from five government departments, many of whom found it very rewarding and demonstrated a strong commitment to the participatory planning approach.

This report provides an overview of communication and rural women, and is structured around five the key themes: communication in a changing world, invisible partners, giving a voice to rural women, communication approaches and looking towards the future. The report also features short case studies about womenÆs indigenous knowledge and communication; international conferences and the role of communication; participatory rural communication appraisal; Mayan women learning communication skills; participatory communication to assess the role of women in natural resource management in Pakistan; grassroots artists and popular communication in Malawi; developing agricultural technologies with rural women in Jamaica; access to the internet, village pay phones and a womenÆs networking support programme. The report concludes by looking at the potential of communication to be a powerful force for fostering learning, positive change and empowerment in the process of rural development: ôwithout communication the voices of rural women for change will not be heard.ö

It starts by introducing the idea behind the Farmers' Innovation and Technology Testing (FITT), initiated by the Gambian government. Of the eight NGOs that participated in the FITT programme, two villages with farmers' groups that ActionAid The Gambia has worked with were investigated, namely, Boiram and Yonna. The wealth ranking exercise described here is part of the wider PRA exercise to evaluate the value of the FITT programme. Three key themes emerged from the wealth ranking exercise carried out in Boiram and Yonna. First, results of a differing nature were obtained from similar exercises. Second, the FITT programme did not reach the poorest in both cases. Lastly, the need to be flexible became apparent from the experience gained in both villages.

The Aarhus Convention is an agreement which was signed by 35 European and Central Asian countries in June 1998. It relates to the public disclosure of documents relating to environmental matters. The convention guarantees the right to information, the right to participate, and recognises the right to a safe environment. It also guarantees citizens that they will have a way to enforce these rights. This booklet is basically an "every thing you need to know" about the convention. It covers the background and main areas of influence of the convention. It is arranged using short questions and answers to a variety of topics centred on a persons "right to know" and "right to justice". Underlying the concept is the theme of participation and citizenship.

This study examines the development and impact of participatory methodologies (PMs) in Mexico, and forms part of the wider research programme Pathways to Participation. The material for this paper was gathered from interviews and workshops with practitioners of PMs across Mexico, and includes three case studies drawn from contrasting initiatives promoted by organisations as disparate as research institutes, state and federal government, and the World Bank. Generally, PMs and particularly PRA are found to have theoretical and methodological weaknesses in the Mexican context, in relation to knowledge and respect for rural reality and practices, and recognition of opportunities for its transformation. The study suggests a need to adapt these methods to the political context of conflict and socio-cultural diversity, and to address the challenge of developing an ethical code for implementing participatory processes, and of how to scale up and deepen the achievements of each intervention in the countryside. PRA has been adopted and modified by many practitioners to suit the local context, but the challenge of this modified PRA continues to be finding a balance between respect for the practice, knowledge and institutions of a community, and the use of educational methods that question and challenge injustices in the established order.