TRAINING WORKSHOP (C/MADP)

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THE WaDImena RESEARCH PROPOSAL WORKSHOP Amman Jan
23-28 2006
METHODOLOGICAL NOTES
ON
PARTICIPATION
Ziad Moussa Environment Sustainable Development
Unit American University of Beirut
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NO COMMENT
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Inspirational Text

•   Most professionals assume they know what
  farmers want and need but are often wrong.
• Not knowing farmers priorities and not
  putting farmers agendas first mean that
  professionals are likely to address the wrong
  problems in their research.
• Conversely, identifying farmers priorities
  and helping farmers meet them leads to
  innovations which are adopted

Algeria, April 2004 there is an evident
CHEMISTRY with the local population
Syria, February 2004 Do THEY seem to care?
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Why Participation?

• Independent studies (which were conducted
  simultaneously) by five International Development
  Agencies demonstrated that while Participatory
  Methodologies may require greater up front
  investment in staff training and operations
  expenditures (up to 15, on average, according to
  the World Bank study), throughout the life of
  programs overall costs average IS ACTUALLY LOWER
  than in programs that do not rely on local
  capacities.
• Participatory development programs are invariably
  more relevant and effective at addressing local
  needs .
• the gains made during an intervention are more
  often sustained using participatory methods and
  chances are higher that the engagement of local
  women and youth in the intervention process will
  improve their status as well

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Participatory Methodologies
Participatory Methodologies are a growing family
of approaches, tools, attitudes and behaviors to
enable people to share, analyze, and enhance
their knowledge about life and conditions and to
plan, act, monitor and reflect There is a wealth
of terms that are used interchangeably when
speaking of Participatory Methodologies. Some of
these terms - Rapid Rural Appraisals (RRA)
- Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA)
- Participatory Learning and Action
(PLA) often used
interchangeably with PRA -
Participatory Action Research (PAR) -
ZOPP from German "Zielorientierte
Projektplanung"), etc The word Participatory
Approach is best understood from a
methodological pluralism perspective, and
embraces the principles that are shared by all of
the above mentioned methods.
PRA
RRA
PAR
ZOPP
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Agreeing on a Definition
Out of the many complex definitions of PRA, I
would retain the simplest, where PRA is defined
a semi-structured process of learning from, with
and by rural people about rural conditions. It
is referred to as process because it is iterative
and sustained over time, NOT a one time activity.
Algeria 2004 women learning from women
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Indicators of Participation
A good indicator of participation is when people
take responsibility for carrying out a
development initiative or a research
project. This means that people are not only
taking part in the different activities, but also
in the decision-making process and the planning
of development and/or research initiatives.
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Participating for CHANGE

• Various driving forces usually initiate change
• People feel the need for change
• People might be led through an analysis that
  indicates the need for change
• Circumstances and clients may demand change.

Change is most successful when the effort is
driven by commitment, and where the
initiative is driven by
the interest in learning. Participation
unleashes the synergies and
potentials behind the commitment and
how this commitment can be translated
into a meaningful action.
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Participating for CHANGE
Exercise 1 What was the driving force behind
your choice of the research topic, the target
area and the target group? Discuss in group for

10 minutes then

come back to the

plenary on a flip chart
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Good Participation Empowers

• Some underlying principles behind the widespread
  of Participatory Approaches in general are
• Communities participate genuinely if they will
  derive benefits aimed at satisfying
  their real felt needs as
  they define them themselves.
• The innovative dimension of PRA is this
  combination of attitudes,
  behavior and methods and the synergies in between
  them (it is not a new scientific or
  anthropological invention, but rather a new way
  of looking at things)

• Participation is fostered by putting communities
  "in the driving seat" with researchers/facilitator
  s taking the passenger seats. Practically, this
  means the ownership and control of the technical,
  financial, socio-cultural, and institutional
  components of a development program should be
  vested in villagers themselves

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Good Participation Empowers

• Participation is not normally spontaneous it
  must be organized and sustained. This implies
  that researchers who pursue participatory
  approaches to community development require
  skills in communication, management and conflict
  resolution that are not regarded as essential for
  performing conventional research.
• It is becoming increasingly acknowledged that
  participatory research need not only to be
  directed at and with the poor, but also at and
  with policymakers

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Understanding the Research Context

• In trying to understand the general research
  context, five key factors were found to affect
  the research approach
• The nature of the research question(s) the
  problematic behind water pricing is significantly
  different than that behind the use of greywater.
• Researchers views on participation, learning and
  the role of science. (functionality and/or
  empowerment) in most instances, researchers
  privilege extractive empirical data which can
  be compiled in a research report or a scientific
  paper. Participation is introduced as a
  complimentary add-in, most of the time under the
  influence of the donor
• The social aspects of the system who are the
  stakeholders, what are their perceptions,
  preferences, vested interests, what is their
  relationship structure, tribal and
  socio-political composition, who monopolizes
  visibility and who is marginalized,

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Understanding the Research Context
4. Experience and capacity of the stakeholders.
Do they have a history of working together before
assuming that the water user association which
will be created by the project will be functional
within months? Do they need specific capacity
development, training, facilitation? 5.
External contextual factors which enable or
constrain participation in MENA, experience
showed that local authorities become suspicious
as soon as we tackle the institutional dimension.
They often see participation as a Trojan horse to
promote westernized agendas when dealing with
transparency, inclusion, mutual learning,
influencing boundary spheres
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Participation Mobilizes
Participatory Learning and privileges that
researchers learn from local people (technically
called reversal of learning) and the local people
taking a lead role in facilitation,
investigation, analysis and learning (technically
called handing over the stick, much like in a
relay race)
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Participation Mobilizes
Exercise 2 In your teams, try to reflect on how
your research proposal intends to put the local
community in the drivers seat and how will the
local population will play a leading role in the
in facilitation, investigation, analysis and
learning
Think mainly on who takes and controls the
decisions in the process
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The 3 Pillars of Participation
Participation is first and foremost a STATE
OF MIND that relies on 3 pillars

• Sharing, through which communities themselves
  share their knowledge, experiences among each
  other and with the facilitators working with
  them, internal or external
• Methods through which the communities can
  interview, map, model, rank, score, analyze,
  diagram, present and plan their development
• Behavior attitudes of the practitioners
  listening, learning, observing, embracing ones
  errors, facilitating exchange and assisting
  people in learning while doing..

Practitioners have to believe that big outcomes
may be born of small inputs
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Some Limitations related to Participation

• Believing that participation is a ready-made
  recipe by Betty Crocker in association with
  Chambers et al (situation specific)
• Applying participatory approaches in a mechanical
  way, just to say/write/report/document that we
  did it
• Taking the means as an end, by stressing on the
  processes and the techniques which are nothing
  but tools and forgetting that the main
  objective is to generate information and
  knowledge and assist in making choices and
  decisions.
• To embrace participation simply because it is a
  fashion and a requirement by the donors (dont
  forget, it is a STATE OF MIND before anything
  else)
• Different stakeholders groups within a community
  can have different interests and different
  strategies, which might influence the results (cf
  the SAGA segment of the training)

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Offsetting Biases

• Spatial Bias the most easily accessible
  locations are visited, dropping out the remote
  off the beaten track - ones
• Seasonal Bias the life in a rural village, but
  also an urban community can be significantly
  different between spring and winter there are
  many participatory techniques to map it through
• Socio-economic bias Across the world but also
  in MENA, we tend to limit our investigations to
  the wealthy, politically connected and well
  established stakeholders what about the rest
  (and vice-versa)
• Gender Bias Women AND men (P.S can a team of
  all male researchers claim to overcome the Gender
  bias in a rural conservative MENA context
• Politeness Bias in MENA, we find it difficult to
  criticize the choices of the (unique) ruling
  party, or the Imam of the mosque

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What is NOT Participation
Participation can range from passive to active,
but also interactive Participatory research
focuses mainly on interactive participation,
which is situated in the bottom steps of the
participation ladder
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The Participation Ladder
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The Participation Ladder
The closer we get to this part of ladder, the
higher are the chances of sustainability and
impact on beneficiaries
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What is NOT Participation?

• We cannot really refer to a participatory
  approach when researchers and development
  practitioners use participatory techniques in a
  context where they have already decided on the
  issue and where they use the information
  generated for the purposes of the research or
  development project itself, rather than for the
  purposes of a community-owned initiative.
• We cannot speak of  participation  if the
  interface with the local population is used to
  confirm the integrity of a preconceived idea
  This would rather refer to manipulation (level
  1)
• We cannot refer to  participation  if we only
  aim at convincing the community about the
  wisdom behind a research program in which they
  have no say, regardless of the technical quality
  and the appropriateness of this program (in fact
  who can better tell if the program is appropriate
  or not? Applicable? Sustainable over time??)
•  participation  is by no means limited to a
  kickoff workshop in the beginning and a
  validation workshop towards the end.