Participatory rice variety selection in Sri Lanka
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This article describes the exploratory and preparatory phase of a research project designed to use co-operative enquiry as a method for transformative and participatory action research into relations between donors and recipients in two developing countries, Bolivia and Bangladesh. It describes the origins of the idea, the conceptual challenges that the authors faced in seeking funding, and what they learned from this first phase. The authors analyse why the researchers, as well as the potential subjects of the research, were uncomfortable with the proposed methodology, including the challenges arising from their own positions and the highly sensitive nature of the topic. They explain why they decided to abandon the project, and they reach some tentative conclusions concerning the options for participatory action learning and research in development practice.
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The Listening to People Living in Poverty Study was undertaken by ActionAid Nepal in order to break away from traditional poverty analysis. It aimed to be an in-depth, wide-ranging investigation of all the details that are usually omitted from reports, and to document poverty from the eyes of poor men and women themselves. The study produced a number of outputs, one of which was the Nepal Country study which is divided into two volumes. This first volume is a collection of poor people’s stories: over 60 in total covering 10 districts across Nepal.
This newsletter is a special issue on trying to bridge the gap between donors' resources and their effective use in targeting the poor, through the use of community development funds. Community development funds function like banks, but can work more flexibly and at different levels. Several case studies are presented from countries in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and southern Africa, and a number of tips and advantages in setting up a community development fund are outlined. Some of these are that they: " Set new standards of transparency and accountability; " Make multiple, small-scale investments in many community-initiated urban development projects; " Support tangible outputs of value to the urban poor, in different sectors and areas; " Help establish and strengthen long-term partnerships between community organisations, municipal authorities and the private sector, while stimulating new working practices; " Provide poor communities and their organisations with opportunities to learn by doing.
This is a report on research undertaken with the objective of gauging real and perceived human insecurity among civilians affected by social violence in South Asia. The project drew on qualitative methodologies to measure æriskÆ and ævulnerabilityÆ in four communities in South Asia affected by small arms-related violence. In determining whether participatory research had any added value to uncover qualitative dimensions of arms related insecurity, it became clear that there is a strong case for expanding participatory action research in the security and disarmament fields, especially in relation to the monitoring and evaluation of violence reduction programmes and security sector reform. The main finding was that most communities felt threatened by the excesses committed by security forces and were particularly worried about being caught in the crossfire between armed forces. Almost without exception, they believed that a political solution to armed violence is the only workable option for redressing insecurity and that preventative and reactive military responses would yield few positive results.
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This report is a synthesis of outcomes and findings of a five-day workshop that was the initial activity for the project "Human Security and the Threat of Firearms: Perspectives from South Asia", co-ordinated by the Small Arms Survey and The Regional Centre for Strategic Studies. The project aims to measure how people themselves experience security and the relationship between small arms and human security, and to appraise the impacts of small arms on people and vulnerable groups in four communities via a combination of development tools and methodologies. Participatory research, particularly Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) and Participatory Urban Appraisal (PUA) are being used as a way of evaluating people-centred security where the focus is on the subjective experience of fear and insecurity, rather than on "objective" criteria and data on small arms related insecurity, which the literature is characterised by. Participants of the workshop in June 2001 were researchers from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. They came together to define and prioritise research objectives for pilot studies in these countries. The report defines PRA and links it to security and small arms, and to human security, outlines the pilot projects and concludes with the research agenda.
This document presents the proceedings from the three-day National Workshop on Network management organised by the Eastern Region Participatory Action Network (ERPAN) in collaboration with the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), under the Pathways to Participation project. The main objectives of the workshop were to exchange ideas and practices of network management existing in national and international contexts, and to formulate future strategies. A brief analysis is made of the lessons learned from the workshop procedure and structure, and the document goes on to present the daily proceedings of the workshop. The first two days of the workshop were focussed on sharing, concept, history, and present situation of the networks with experiences from Nepal, Bangladesh and Tanzania. On the third day the discussions of the previous two days were summarised by dividing the participants into four groups discussing monitoring, quality and linkages, membership issues, function, and sustainability of networks. The proceedings are followed by 14 annexes comprising some of the presentations made, including: evaluation and feedback; review of the workshop; notes on workshop facilitation; a letter from the ERPAN chairperson reflecting on the workshop; an overview of international participatory networks and their present status; experiences of ERPAN, ActionAid, NEPAN (Nepal Participatory Action Network), PANDA (Participatory Analysis of Needs and Development Action), PARENT (Participatory Resource Network Tanzania); promotion of peopleÆs participation in Bangladesh and the role of PPS (PRA promotion Society); an analysis of networking of civil society, development and capacity building, and challenges encountered by networks and future perspectives; a daily programme schedule; and a list of the participants
This paper discusses community exchange programmes as a powerful mechanism for increasing the capacity of community organisations to participate in urban development. By enabling communities to share and explore local knowledge created through livelihood struggles, a powerful process is triggered, whereby community exchanges transform development. Through a cumulative process of learning, sharing and collective action, strong sustained and mobilised networks of communities emerge. Central to this has been the sharing of experiences between communities, first at very local levels, then in the city, then nationally and internationally. The development of this methodology by the National Slum Dwellers Association, SPARC (an NGO) and Mahila Milan (a federation of women's cooperatives) in India is described. Exchanges are located within a broader approach to community learning and people's empowerment. Benefits of the exchange process are examined, and the paper reflects on why exchanges are an effective methodology for supporting a process of people-centred development. The necessary conditions for the exchange process to be fully effective are reviewed, which consequently point to the distinct characteristics of the exchange process vis-Ó-vis other participation methodology. It concludes by drawing together some of the wider implications of this approach.
Community to community exchanges, which enable poor people to plan, control and negotiate their own development strategies, are the focus of this paper, particularly in the context of squatters/slum dwellers. These exchanges, which spread to international exchanges amongst the urban poor, have birthed a people's movement of global proportions. The paper begins by summarising the urban context in which these organisations emerged, and the scale and nature of the development challenge they face. The emergence of Mahila Milan - a network of women's savings collectives formed by women pavement dwellers in India - is described as a precursor of the initiative, while the need for new models of urban development led to a search for ways of enhancing community learning and hence, exchanges. The ways in which the network can support its members through international exchanges are identified and discussed. A concluding section considers some of the wider implications of the work of Shack/ Slum Dwellers International for people-centred development
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Participatory methods are frequently extremely good at gathering huge amounts of information, but are often less helpful with the question of how to deal with the information. This article relates some methods that were used to deal with this issue in India, by SPEECH (Society for People's Education and Economic Change), a small field-based NGO, in examining sustainable agriculture. It describes a simplified example of the process, which includes narrowing down the information, interpreting the information, as well as making it relevant for a policy audience. Also crucial are explicit plans for an iterative process of discussion and feedback/ review of the emerging results, in order to validate the research results.