Challenges while applying Participatory Methodologies: Too much classroom training or too many villages carpet-bombed…

As many of you know might know, the Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) was found in the early 90s and it was found to be very empowering and it spread all over the world. The core of it was for 'geographical information systems' people making maps or diagrams on the ground and analyzing them.

There have been millions of participatory mappings made in the world by people in communities and people usually thoroughly enjoy it.   

However, part of the difficulty that arises when using participatory methodologies is the conflict between professional and personal values, orientation and what makes a participatory methodology really effective. There are many examples where there has been conflict between well meaning, well trained, highly educated, powerful professionals and participatory approaches and methodologies. You must be nice to people when visiting a community, polite, respect their customs, understand their taboos etc.

Furthermore, there has been a lot of classroom training void of field work which led to an exploitative practice that took people's time and didn't lead to anything. Some villages in Malawi were carpet-bombed with PRA because of the many visits by researchers and scholars. In one case, a researcher went to one village and before he could enter into the village, a man came out with a piece of paper and started drawing a map. When he asked the man "if he had done it before?" The man replied "at least 100 times". They knew visitors wanted maps so he anticipated it. Clearly this points to abuse with the use of the methodologies.

Building Self-Confidence of Communities

When entering into a community, one advisedly needs to apply an Appreciative Inquiry Approach. Instead of asking the people what are your problems, you could ask: "What are you proud of? What would you like to show me? What is really significant for you?"
Some practitioners of this approach say it has quite transformed the nature of relationships and people's self-confidence.

There is first a dependency syndrome where people feel "I can't do it, you know it, you teach me…" When people begin to have self-confidence, they may feel that they can do something for themselves. The issue of self-confidence is very important, especially in South Africa, among many others, where the country faces so many challenges.

A good example of engaging with a community: Community-Led Toilet Sanitation

A facilitator goes into a community after some preliminaries and says: "I have come here to learn. I haven't brought anything and I am not going to teach you anything. I am here to learn, please teach me. What do you do about shit?"

We have a glossary of 80 words in different languages for shit. The point is he didn't use the polite word. He just said shit and then facilitated a process with mapping. Then asked "When do you go to shit?". There is embarrassment but laughter. The facilitator carries on: "How much do you produce in a day? How much does this household produce? Which household produces the most?"

He walked with the people, picked some of it up and brought it back to where he had the meeting and put it down together with some cooked rice or pap and there are flies all over the place. After some time someone said "We cannot go on doing this."This person made an analysis that they are eating one another's shit. The facilitator asked other members of the community if they agree with the analysis. The facilitator said "Its entirely up to you, if you want to go on eating one another's shit that's your choice. It´s not for us, as I said, we are not going to teach you."

This is not conventional social anthropological behaviour but it works. There are no subsidies, no fixed design at all. It is all local design innovated by people and there are no targets. The main thing is a community becoming open-defecation free.

Despite huge institutional and personal resistance to this approach as donors prefer to give subsidies, this example illustrates an important process of behavioural change . As long as there are subsidies one cannot have a participatory approach. It is certain that millions of people have benefited from this approach and it is spreading very rapidly to Zambia, Malawi, Kenya, West Africa, Sierra Leone. Some countries such as South Africa are losing out on the gains of this approach because of the dominating subsidy model.

Read the 3rd conversation 'Opportunities for Institutional change - New space for Participatory methodologies, technology and innovation'

Khanya-aicdd acknowledges the contributions of their volunteers - Rachel Ombeva, Lizzie Valdivieso and Tlhabi Sehume in producing, editing and compiling these articles.

About Professor Robert Chambers

(Participation, power and Social Change, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK)

Undisciplined with background in biology, history and public administration. Current concerns and interests include professionalism, power, the personal dimension in development, participatory methodologies, teaching and learning with large numbers, agriculture and science, Seasonality Revisited, and community-led total sanitation.