Participatory Rural Appraisal in developing countries
Objectives
 Learn about useful tools for working with low
literacy populations in rural areas (developing
countries) - Participatory Rural Appraisal
tools
 Stimulate your thinking and creativity for
engaging community members in doing
participatory needs assessment
“The best item to pack for any trip to the developing
world or not – is an open mind”
Challenges for “outside experts” &
students
 Expect the unexpected (rodents, mosquitoes, street hawking,
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
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open markets)
Expect poor road conditions
No electricity or power failures (your computer loses power…)
Lots of people may follow you around (no confidentiality!)
Time feels different
 So how are you going to get your work done?
Participatory Rural Appraisal(PRA)
 Participatory rural appraisal (PRA) An approach
(and family of methodologies) for shared learning
between local people and outsiders to enable
development practitioners, government officials, and
local people to plan together appropriate interventions
 Also known as Participatory Learning and Action
(PLA)
Key Principles
 Participation – local people serve as partners in data collection and analysis
 Flexibility- not a standardized methodology
 Off-setting biases – anti poverty biases are consciously avoided, more listening
less lecturing
 Teamwork – everyone is involved
 Diversity – attempts made to identify and analyse contradictions and exceptions
 “Optimal Ignorance” – leave out unessential details
 Systematic – to get correct details and conclusions, it is best to cross check
 Local materials - dirt, stones, sticks (or paper), not computers/electronic devices
PRA Techniques
 Interviewing – Not based on questionnaires but issues (households,
individuals, focus groups)
 Visualization
 Ranking – a means by which they can rank preferences, problems, wealth
 Mapping - Community members depicting the physical or social
characteristics of their community
 Social mapping
 Time lines
 Impact diagrams
Social mapping with rural, low literacy
participants
 Social Mapping
 A space-related PRA
 Used to depict the habitation pattern of a particular region
 Drawn by local people
 Not drawn to scale but reveals what is believed to be relevant and
important to them
Time lines with rural, low literacy
participants
 This is a time-related PRA method
 Allows people use their concept of time
 Captures the chronology of events as recalled by local
people
 Flexible in terms of the time scale
 One day, or a lifetime, or history of the community
Time
line
Impact diagrams with rural, low literacy
participants
 A flow diagram , commonly used to identify and
depict the image of an activity, intervention or event
 Takes into account types of changes as perceived by
the local people
 Helps to identify impacts of certain events - planned,
unplanned, negative or positive
Impact
diagram
References
 http://www.eldis.org/manuals/participation.htm
 http://info.worldbank.org/etools/docs/library/238582/
toolkit.pdf
 Kumar Somesh. Methods For Community
Participation: A Complete Guide for Practitioners.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6MVTCYDQRI
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEZpsYLqL6M&fe
ature=related
 Participatory mapping
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jqnm1vkbgx0&feat
ure=related (36 sec.)
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PW9TLDxWzM&
feature=related (31 sec.)