Resources

This ten-minute video was made by Manor Street Community Group in North Belfast, Northern Ireland with the help of students from King Alfred's College. Manor Street is situated in the heart of an area divided by religious and political conflict. The film focuses on efforts by the Community Group to get support from the community and funding for a new Community Centre. After a 3-year public consultation period plans for the centre were drawn up and the City Council was approached for funding to build and run it (00). There was a great need for the centre. Since a wall had been built between the warring catholic and protestant communities shops had closed and buses stopped running (01). There was nothing for young people to do and vandalism was common (02). The problems had been exacerbated by the loss of the old centre and its youth club. All community spirit had gone from the area and the lack of opportunity for protestants and catholics to meet meant the two communities were even more divided (04). The Community Group made contact with various bodies to obtain support and funding. Discussions with residents made it clear that people wanted a centre which would provide something for all ages (05). One person suggested that keep fit classes for women could help deal with stress. The Centre would help put the heart back into the area by providing the community with a focal point and a morale booster (06). The plans provided space for a creche as well as rooms for meetings and classes for the unemployed (08.30). Volunteers from the community were sought to fundraise, run activities and join the management committee (09). The aim was to encourage the whole community to join in.

This article explores constraints encountered when using PRA on an ODA-funded natural resources project in a tribal area of Western India. It was particularly evident that women's participation in the PRAs was minimal. The reasons for this were practical (women were not available collectively for long periods of time & there were few women fieldworkers as the project had just begun), social (PRA activities tended to take place in public places where women felt awkward) and methodological (women respond to PRA activities in different ways, sometimes feeling bored and "communicating by singing instead"). The author argues that an organised PRA "gives privilege to certain kinds of knowledge and representation and suppresses others" : the emphasis given to formal knowledge and activities tends to "reinforce the invisibility of women's roles". However, once the formal and public nature of PRA is perceived as a problem, it can become a means by which "women's knowledge and activities.. can be transferred from the informal to the formal arena of project planning", thereby increasing women's profile. Suggestions for encouraging women's participation in PRA include: making non-public contexts (since women are more used to the "private sphere"), using women's knowledge and ways of communicating (songs, sayings, proverbs). There are constraints: the "production of observable outputs (maps, diagrams of PRA) have more status for fieldworkers" than scribbled songs or informal interview notes and women's expressed needs (eg a flour mill) "don't fit easily into established categories of natural resource development".

Guide to participatory research that provides information regarding strategies, methods and resources used by practicing participatory researchers to mobilise communities around gathering and producing popular knowledge. The report begins with a presentation of case studies from around the USA of various participatory research projects.
Following this are do's, don'ts and maybe's regarding amongst other issues, power relations, building community and group alliances and diversity, getting information out, starting and sustaining groups and dealing with conflict and funding.

This paper analyses the different approaches taken by three NGOs working in Bhutanese refugee camps in Nepal, to incorporate women and refugees into their organizational structures. The impacts the different strategies had on both programme activities and women are examined.

'Voices of the Poor' is a series of three books that collates the experiences, views and aspirations of over 60,000 poor women and men. This second book of the series draws material from a 23-country comparative study, which used open-ended participatory methods, bringing together the voices and realities of 20,000 poor women, men, youth and children. Despite very different political, social and economic contexts, there are striking similarities in poor people's experiences. The common underlying theme is one of powerlessness, which consists of multiple and interlocking dimensions of illbeing or poverty. The book starts by describing the origins of the study, the methodology and some of the challenges faced. This is followed by an exploration of the multidimensional nature of wellbeing and illbeing. Most of the book comprises the core findings - the 10 dimensions of powerlessness and illbeing that emerge from the study - and is organised around these themes. These include livelihoods and assets; the places where poor people live and work; the body and related to this, accessing health services; gender roles and gender relations within the household; social exclusion; insecurity and related fears and anxieties; the behaviour and character of institutions; and poor people's ratings of the most important institutions in their lives. These dimensions are brought together into a many-stranded web of powerlessness, which is compounded by the lack of capability, including lack of information, education, skills and confidence. The final chapter is a call to action and dwells on the challenge of change.