Oregon Direct Action

Yesterday, I went in to Green Empowerment for a few hours to look though a rare, yet informative handbook. Participatory Rural Appraisal and Planning (PRAP), although I don’t remember whether that is the exact title, is a “methodology which helps to identify community problems and to plan solutions with the active participation of community members.” It focuses on the strategies of “participation, empowerment, and solidarity” to “strengthen the management capacities of community organizations and other development organizations.” The approach allows for rapid:

• description and analysis of the community and it’s context
• identification of problems and potential solutions
• project design and programming of activities for project implementation

In short, it’s a way of identifying the issues in a community, and determining some ways to overcome them, by a series of community workshops. Contrary to what I thought before, it’s not a method of surveying in the traditional sense. You can achieve some of the same results, but it’s largely a group-based method of collecting data.

Several advantages in PRAP I found to be interesting:

• Use of visual techniques: rural communities participate more effectively when they use visual techniques for gathering, analyzing, and presenting information. PRAP focuses heavily on getting the community to produce charts and diagrams in order to better understand their issues. A 21st century twist might be to get little Flip recorders and have the kids document the issues in the village!
• Participatory community analysis, identifying problems and potential solutions together
• Allows for the formulation of realistic proposals which can be presented to donors for financing. These proposals can be perceived to be more realistic because they’ve been developed by the community, not just development workers.
• Similarly, development workers have less of a tendency to design projects from their desks, lending to the potential for greater success.
• PRAP creates programs that are based on first hand information that is coming from the village or town.
• The material from a PRAP (including maps, diagrams, matrices, and sketches) can constitute a kind of living “encyclopedia for the community, development organizations, and donors. I think geo-tagging information could fit here too.

Of course, there are interesting disadvantages as well:

• False expectations of progress can be made. Community members sometimes think “after PRAP comes the money.”
• Some of the information obtained can be incorrect.
•  PRAP has largely been applied on the community level; there is very little experience in applying the methodology at the regional, provincial, or watershed levels.
• Sometimes the community isn’t interested in PRAP.

A typical PRAP lasts about 3 full days. They are usually initiated by either the community asking a development organization, an organization initiating the PRAP because of past studies and/or knowledge, or a joint decision between the community and the organization based on mutual needs. A preliminary visit to establish contact with the community and leaders is critical to establish clarity and transparency.

Going through the workbook also provided a list of things I think we want to learn, either through PRAP or surveying:

• Name of the community, parish, district, and province
• Number of inhabitants and families (including men, women, and children)
• Language(s) of the community
• Existing services (i.e. health, post office, schools, church, and large businesses)
• Migration patterns
• Ethnic and religious groups
• Means of communication available in the community (radio reception or transmitters? TV? internet? cell reception?)
• Community works
• Local crafts?
• Division of labor within the family
• What community work does everyone work on together, and how do they decide on splitting these up?
• Identify the areas with specific problems (soil erosion, lack of water, etc.). It might be interesting to do this by having the PRAP group build a mock of the town in a pile of dirt and video recording the process
• Learn about past NGO projects and whether they’ve “succeeded or failed”
• Trend analysis of harvests, population of the community, deforestation, quality of life, etc.

Of course, the research also left me with a few questions unanswered:

• Do we do a household survey in conjunction with PRAP, or does PRAP usually take the place of a survey?
• If we do a PRAP, are there farmers with past experience that can facilitate the program?
• Hypothetically, would it be beneficial to do PRAP before or after a household survey? I think PRAP could be an easier way to collect general community information than the method we’ve defined before.