A lesson from the experts

Last week our groups had just finished wiping the sleep from their eyes and getting used to saying namaskaara for hello or vice versa when they departed our fieldbase and joined up with project partners MYKAPS for two days of training in PRA. Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) refers to a range of techniques that can be employed to research about a specific community as the first step towards its development.

The key word is – participatory – the methods propagated by MYKAPS do not involve preaching or dictating, it is the community that generates the information. Our teams Charlie 1 and Charlie 2 plus their FB liaison Alex spent time with MYKAPS to understand how to facilitate these activities in their communities. This was the chance for everyone to hear about how a leading Indian NGO does grassroots community development before practising it for real. 

Both groups with Project Coordinator Mr Gupta (centre)

The first technique discussed was the timeline. Many areas in rural India have experienced rapid change in recent years and some such as Charlie 2’s Indranagar didn’t even exist until the final quarter of the 20th century. The timeline exercise could include villagers of any generation but should factor in the eldest members to get information that stretches back. Our groups will be asking their villages to remember significant events in their collective history so that patterns or trends can be established and studied. The theory being that knowing about a community and its past is essential when dealing with its present or future. 

Preparing the materials for the timeline

Another very practical method employed is social/resource mapping. Usually held in a school building or community centre, dozens of people can be involved in physically drawing the whole village using sand, paint and leaves. This should hopefully create a discussion about where the resources lie and what challenges are present simply by discussing the layout of the village. 

Getting a chance to practice social mapping using MYKAPS training centre as the 'village'

Abi talks everyone through the specifics of the map

The third method our teams learnt about is the so called ‘chapati diagram’. Similar to a Venn Diagram but without the circles interlacing this is way of mapping which services are available and their proximity to the people of a particular community.

For example our teams are looking at sanitation so the social mapping exercise may have revealed that the community has no latrines. A chapatti diagram could then be used to look into the ways a latrine might be sourced; Are government subsidies available? Would an NGO help? Are there prototype latrines in a nearby village and how did they get them?

In this way MYKAPS and our groups are not providing the answers to the sanitation problem that has been highlighted directly, they are building the capacity of villagers to realise what is already available to them.

Kishore and Abi presenting their chapatti diagram

Next time.... The first blog reports written by our teams on their first week in Uyyamballi and Indranagar, trying out these methods for real. See you then!