Using Participatory Action Research Methodologies for Engaging and Researching with Religious Minorities in Contexts of Intersecting Inequalities
Download available
Download available
Download available
Sharing of experiences and thoughts on addressing climate change impacts on sanitation at a local level are critical to evolving the sanitation sector.
Please note, there is a French translation and a Portuguese translation available.
SDG 6.2 calls for sustainable sanitation for all before 2030. Yet over 2 billion people still lack access to basic sanitation facilities. Ensuring good sanitation and hygiene practices for everybody means ending open defecation, tackling existing challenges with access and use, and ensuring all sanitation facilities are safely managed.
Climate change is an added complexity in an already challenging landscape – it exacerbates these challenges and has cascading effects on health and livelihoods. Climate change impacts disproportionately affect already disadvantaged and marginalised groups, jeopardising efforts to Leave No One Behind in the drive for sanitation and hygiene for all. There is a real risk that progress made in improving rural sanitation access and coverage will slow, or even reverse.
The global sanitation sector has taken initial steps to incorporate responses to climate change into rural sanitation programming and services. However, much of the discussion has focused on technological improvements.
There is limited actionable guidance on how the rural sanitation and hygiene sector can make systemic changes through planning and implementing project delivery, enabling demand, changing behaviour, addressing social norms, monitoring and evaluation, and more at the local level. Furthermore, the voices of vulnerable people, households, and communities who are at the forefront of experiencing climate change impacts on sanitation are largely absent in existing discussions.
This publication aims to address these gaps in rural sanitation and hygiene thinking through:
Rural sanitation practitioners already consider many types of risk in the design and implementation of programmes. This publication supports rural practitioners in civil society and government to add a climate lens to existing programmes. It provides the sector with a menu of options and ideas from a climate change perspective. It is not a prescriptive list or a ‘one size fits all’ approach.
Practitioners can draw on various ideas and parts of this guidance and modify them to suit specific programmatic and regional contexts. The quotes included are from interviews with sanitation and hygiene practitioners. They describe their experience with programming in contexts increasingly challenged by climate related concerns.
The Sanitation Learning Hub's Frontiers of Sanitation series provides practical, evidence-based guidance and recommendations on essential emerging issues and approaches to programming and learning.
Download available
Community-Leave No One Behind (CLNOB) is a new participatory approach to identify both challenges and solutions in communities’ journeys towards ODF-S.
It has been designed to be integrated into Phase II of the Swachh Bharat Mission-Grameen (SBM-G). The government of India has issued the guidelines for Phase II of SBM-G, of which one of the guiding principles is ensuring that no one is left behind. CLNOB demonstrates a way to achieve this goal. It encourages communities to identify gaps in sanitation coverage and use and promote actions they can take themselves.
CLNOB builds on experiences with Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) and with the Swachh Bharat Mission-Gramin (SBM-G)’s ‘Community Approaches to Sanitation (CAS)’. These approaches have helped communities towards achieving open defecation free (ODF) environments; however, it has been acknowledged that ODF status has deficiencies.
The purposes of this handbook are two-fold: first to inform policymakers and stakeholders at all levels about this new initiative, and second to provide guidance to facilitators and practitioners for CLNOB implementation. This handbook is a living document and will be updated and refined after more field experiences are conducted. It is based on limited experience from a small pilot carried out between June and October 2020 during the challenging environment of the COVID-19 pandemic.
For Annexes on suggested talking points, a sustainability register, case studies and information on informed consent and data protection, click here to download (PDF).
Download available
Accountability is a complex issue in South Africa. The country has high levels of inequality, and marginalised groups – as in many countries – struggle to make themselves heard by those in power. Yet the issue is further complicated by an interacting set of factors, including the legacy of apartheid, gender and religious issues, and the lack of access to those in power.
Through a six-year research project, the Sustainable Livelihoods Foundation (SLF) used a range of technology-enabled participatory processes to unpack this lack of government accountability. This report focuses on four case studies, which examined the lived realities of marginalised groups and the activists that campaign on their behalf: activists against gender-based violence and for community safety; community care workers and health committee members working for public health; informal traders and the informal economy; and traditional medicine, Rastafarian bossie doktors and indigenous rights.
Using a multi-method research process, SLF supported these groups to work together and identify the accountability issues that they felt were important, and then consider how they could raise their voice collectively to those in power and those who shape and implement policy. As well as providing valuable findings, which SLF fed into the policy dialogue, this process also strengthened the capacity of these groups to speak out – not least through the use of different participatory technologies including digital storytelling, filmmaking, PhotoVoice, geospatial mapping and infographics.
This report reflects on the different tools used, considering not just the effectiveness of the outputs generated but also how these tools can empower citizens and bring marginalised groups together. Lastly, the report reflects on SLF’s role as an intermediary organisation, and how this role can influence the path that marginalised groups take in their efforts to make government more responsive to their needs.
Download available
Despite great strides in improving sanitation in developing countries, some 2.4 billion people worldwide lack access to adequate sanitation facilities and the poorest and most vulnerable members of society are often not reached. Sustainability is one of the key challenges in CLTS and the wider WASH sector. Whether sanitation improvements endure depend on issues of equity and inclusion, social norms, physical infrastructure, sanitation marketing, monitoring and verification, post-ODF follow-up and the roles and responsibilities of governments, NGOs and donors. The achievement of “open defecation-free” status is now recognised as only the first stage in a long process of change and sanitation improvement.
This book, edited by the Sanitation Learning Hub, examines these challenges, asking questions such as how we ensure that people access sanitation and sustain related behaviours, and how we reach the poorest with toilets that are suitable for their needs. It develops key themes by exploring current experience, innovations and insights, as well as identifying a future research agenda and gaps in current knowledge, and making recommendations and practical suggestions.
Download available
Time to Listen: A Discussion Guide was developed to stimulate discussion and reflection among practitioners working in international, national and local aid organizations, governments and donors. For those already familiar with Time to Listen, this guide serves as a useful review and as a means to introduce colleagues and partners to the voices and ideas presented in the book on how to improve the effectiveness of international aid efforts. For readers with no prior exposure to the Listening Project or Time to Listen, the Discussion Guide aims to spark an interest in and a desire to further explore the findings of the Listening Project and the implications for their work.
The format of the guide closely follows the structure of Time to Listen, briefly summarizing each chapter and presenting the reader with a series of thought-provoking discussion questions. These questions are intentionally open-ended, allowing users to tailor the discussion to fit their organizational needs. For practitioners, the questions can be used to encourage reflection on their personal approaches and practices. Supervisors can use the questions to encourage reflection and inspire changes among their team members. The questions can also be used in a class setting, allowing educators and students to discuss the implications for future policies and practices.
Download available
This IDS Bulletin is entirely based on the global action-research project Valuing Volunteering, commissioned by Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), a UK-based international volunteer cooperation organisation, and conducted by researchers at IDS in partnership with VSO. The project explored how and why volunteering contributes to poverty reduction and sustainable positive change, and the factors that prevent it from doing so.
The research took a participatory and action-research approach and aimed to inform the learning and practice of both VSO and the volunteer for development sectors on how to work effectively through volunteers to achieve sustainable change. It produced 12 rich and detailed case studies, which cover a diverse range of expressions of volunteering: from international volunteers of different kinds – from the global North and South, short-term and long-term, young adults and professionals – through to community members engaged in informal self-help and community volunteering initiatives and national volunteering schemes. This research was carried out by four international volunteer researchers who spent two years in Kenya, Mozambique, Nepal and the Philippines.
While the data reflect the views of people in communities, the voice and analysis is that of the international volunteer. The perspectives expressed here are about volunteers’ contributions and their motivation to identify what kind of approaches to working as a volunteer make a difference. The Valuing Volunteering project goes beyond the immediate issues or concerns in the setting, and enables a deeper reflection on how people, processes and the environment that they are situated within influence one another.
Download available
As change accelerates, development professionals fine themselves more than ever explorers of an unknown and unknowable future. This brings opportunities, excitement and surprises, and demands continuous critical reflection and learning. In the opening part of this book, Robert Chambers reviews his own life, including his early career, participation in the World Bank’s Voice of the Poor project and research and engagement in South Asia on canal irrigation. These experiences led him to examine personal biases and predispositions, and to recognize the pervasive significance of power in forming and framing knowledge.
The book then reflects on a journey of learning, and encourages readers to learn from observation, curiosity, critical feedback, plan and fun. Participatory workshops have been the source of much enjoyable exploration and have evolved in unexpected directions. Participatory rural appraisal (PRA) and community-led total sanitation (CLTS) are two movements that have benefitted from sharing practices and innovations through participatory workshops. Experience-based practical tips for facilitating such workshop are presented – 21 for learning, for managing large groups and for co-generating knowledge to influence policy and practice. Finally, the author argues that the new dual realities – virtual and physical – are getting out of balance, and encourages readers to enjoy exploring through experiential learning in the physical and social world.
Download available
Tackling extreme poverty and marginalisation alongside rising and intersecting inequalities must be a priority for the post-2015 agenda. As country representatives at the United Nations undertake the difficult task of agreeing the next steps towards a final framework, a focus on the three key areas including improving livelihoods and pro-poor infrastructure development; increasing opportunities for participation and citizen action and tackling discriminatory social norms is critical if the final targets are to be transformative for the poorest and most marginalised people. This Policy Briefing examines these focus areas and provides some policy recommendations.
Download available
Like other agencies involved in international development cooperation, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) is committed to enhancing its results orientation, learning and effectiveness through more responsive and accountable programming. Encouraging a culture in which citizens participate in the planning, monitoring and evaluation of programmes and country strategies is essential for achieving these aims. This note is about SDC’s experience with beneficiary assessment (BA), an evaluation approach used to increase its responsiveness and accountability to the citizens who are the intended direct and indirect beneficiaries of its work. It aims to both raise awareness of the potential advantages of using Beneficiary Assessment to enhance learning, responsiveness, accountability and effectiveness, and to contribute to enhancing capacity and confidence to use BA in the evaluation of projects, programmes and country strategies by providing practical orientation and support.
Download available
Download available
Listen deeply. Tell stories. This is the mantra of the Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS) in California, USA who have recently updated this popular guide. Detailing the history and methods of digital storytelling practice, it uses the “7 Steps” approach to encompass everything from seeing the story to assembling and sharing it. This new edition also includes explorations of the applications of digital storytelling as well as updated appendices that provide resources for storytellers. More information is available at the CDS website.
Do we use obscure words to impress our colleagues – or fashionable ones to win research proposals? How do poor people define their poverty? How can we use aid budgets most effectively? Are many of our actions against poverty simple, direct... and wrong? This book is an entertaining and unsettling collection of writings that questions concepts, conventions and practices in development. It is made up of short and accessible writings by Robert Chambers, many from the last ten years and some from earlier, reflecting on the evolution of concepts like participation and of organisations like the World Bank. Besides provocations, there is mischief, verse and serious fun. The book is organised into four sections: Word Play, Poverty and Participation, Aid and For Our Future.
Download available
Download available