Resources

At a time of organisational and financial hardship, the Uganda CBHC Association is aiming to re-think its direction and objectives. This is a report of the Association's Annual General Meeting of November 1995. It provides an overview of the challenges and issues faced by the UCBHCA, focusing particularly on self-financing, and also makes recommendations for action.

This video records the process of an exploratory PRA which was conducted by World Neighbours in Kenya. Previous projects in the area had adopted a top-down approach with no participation by local people. Using a PRA approach outsiders such as extensionists or government officers acted as facilitators to initiate the process which the villagers then continued. Through this process people were able to develop an understanding of their situation and themselves, and to realise the potential they had to deal with their problems (02). Initially the facilitators discussed the need for the PRA with the villagers (06). Meetings were arranged so that women were able to participate throughout (07). Information unfolded visually through small group activities and the information which had been gathered was presented to the whole group for discussion and correction (14). The discussion led on to identifying needs and problems as well as suggestions of how to deal with them (14). Key issues were then prioritised through a ranking process (17). Women's and men's daily work and rest patterns were recorded on daily activity charts. Households and village amenities were drawn on a social map (21), and trees and other natural resources used by the village were indicated on a resource map (21.50). Pairwise scoring was then used to determine locational needs (22). In the last stage of the PRA an action plan was designed on the basis of the needs which had been identified (22).

"Investing in education for girls is the single most important thing a country can do...it leads to faster economic growth, higher family incomes, lower infant deaths and in many, many ways a better life for this generation and the next." Yet in most parts of the developing world girls receive much less education than boys. The film shows a PRA exercise which was carried out in a village in Gambia to investigate the constraints to female education and what might be done to improve access to education for girls. The methods used during the PRA included village mapping to establish which households had children attending or not attending school (06); pi-charts to show village income and expenditure (08.30); matrix ranking of problems and solutions (09); and card sorting to identify rich and poor households (12). Information from the ranking and the map were then compared and checked for discrepancies (13). However, it was only discovered by accident that 25% of girls did not appear on the map. These were girls who had never been to school or were about to get married (15). It was found that two of the major constraints to educating girls were the expense and demands for their labour at home. Cost was an important deterrent, particularly as the largest school expenses occurred just before harvest when people had no money. In addition, the demand for girls' labour in the fields was heaviest at the busiest time of the school year, while the demand for boys labour at that time was light (16). All the problems the villagers had identified were then ranked in pairs by different age-groups of women and men (18). An inventory of village associations was also made using venn diagrams to show the relationship between them (20). Having identified the problems and the resources available within the village, in the last phase of the PRA the villagers met to decide what action to take (23). The video concludes by discussing some of the wider applications of PRA (25) as well as some of the dangers (26).

This DVD is meant as a visual aid to the participatory tools and techniques as used by the Rural Domestic Water Supply and Sanitation Programme (RDWSSP II) in Nyanza Province, Kenya. It focuses on some of the techniques that were used during a one-week PRA with the project community. The objectives of the programme are to provide safe and accessible drinking water, safe and low cost disposal of human waste, and to ensure user participation and responsibility for facilities. PRA assists the community with collecting and analysing data, identifying problems and developing an action plan (04). The basics of PRA are the techniques, the team and on the spot analysis (05). A variety of techniques were used during the PRA. The film focuses on a few of them: community mapping (07), transect walk (08), semi-structured interview (09), do-it-yourself (outsiders trying village activities) (10), seasonal calendar (11), village institutions (12), wealth ranking (13), gender discussions (14), women's daily activities (15) and men's daily activities (16). The community selected team members who took part in review meetings to analyse the information and discuss the findings. The findings were subsequently presented to the community for verification (17). Having identified the problems a ranking exercise was carried out by different groups to elicit the priorities of women and men (18). This formed the basis for drawing up a community action plan (19). The week concluded with a final presentation to the community (20).

Shot on a small-holder farm in Malawi, this short video presents the process of pictorial modelling. This is a method for researchers or extensionists and farmers to visualise farming systems, by diagramming input-output flows. The example given here is of resource flows between aquaculture and other farming activities, but the method can be applied to other integrated farming systems. The DVD can be used in training workshops, as it divides the process into 3 stages, with pauses in between to allow for discussion. In phase 1 (01) farmers are encouraged to draw a fish pond using locally available resources. In phase 2 (03) they elaborate on inputs into the fish pond, and in phase 3 (05) they draw the outputs. The values of the method (07) include eliciting indigenous knowledge, encouraging a joint learning process between farmers and researchers, building farmersÆ confidence, and allowing farmers to discuss new ideas introduced by extensionists within the context of the farming system.