TRAINING MODULES

by Phil Bartle, PhD

Training modules contain basic texts, model forms, short handouts for workshops, and
notes for trainers. Each module has a single topic, with different documents in it for
different actors or purposes.

The first five modules contain short handouts to be used in an introductory workshop. Except for
trainers' notes, all are included in one document, Mobilisers' Handbook.

Introductory Modules (short handouts):

Getting Prepared, what you need to be a mobilizer;

Getting Started, preparing the community for action;

Organizing the Community, combining action and training;

Into Action, community movement;

Sustaining the Intervention, beyond a single mobilizer;

Intermediate Modules:

Principles of Community Empowerment, reasons behind fighting communal poverty;

Mobilization, skills in moving and organizing a community to act;

Participatory Appraisal, stimulating the community to assess itself;

Management Training, training as a method of (re)organizing for effectiveness;

The Brainstorm, a training process for obtaining group decisions;

Participatory Management, running an NGO, a project, or a firm;

Gender, strategies for awareness raising and gender balance;

Community Project Design, participatory methods to design a community project;

Community Resources, identify and release sometimes hidden resources;

 Principles of Income Generation, what lies behind a programme to fight poverty;

Building a Credit Organization, a community organization for channelling credit;

Micro Enterprise Training, skills needed by small scale business people;

Measuring the Strengthening of Communities, how to monitor capacity development;

Monitoring and Evaluation, observing and analysing progress;

Report Writing, how, why, for whom, to write reports;

Training Methods, using the material.

Stories, short anecdotes from the field.

PARTICIPATION IN APPRAISAL

Module Introduction
Documents Included in this PAR/PRA Module

Participatory Appraisal, PRA, PAR and community inventory;

Methods of Participatory Appraisal, a review of methods and techniques;

Map and Inventory, notes for community members;

Facilitating Participation in Appraisal, notes for facilitators;

Defending the Methodology, notes on advocacy for managers;

Training Facilitators in Appraisal, notes for trainers and co-ordinators.

Other Related Documents:

Participation, by Ben Fleming;

Benefits of PAR, by Doreen Boyd;

Sharing Pra, by Kamal Phuyal;

How to stimulate the community to participate in making a village or neighbourhood

appraisal survey: a map and an inventory of needs, resources, assets and liabilities

As with most of the training documents on this web site, this module is aimed at the community
worker in the field, as well as to their trainers, co-ordinators, managers and supervisors.

There are many available documents about PRA, PAR and participatory appraisal in general.
This site does not aim to duplicate or add to them: research findings, case studies, conference
papers, theoretical debates and academic analyses. Here, the emphasis is on needed skills and
techniques, plus a little about the principles that lie behind the methodology.

An overview of and introduction to the methodology of community participation in appraisal is

provided in the core document of this module, Participatory Appraisal. You should read it and
keep it as a reference for the role of participatory appraisal in the process of community
empowerment.

Satellite documents in this module which complement that core include: Map and Inventory, a
handout aimed at community members. Facilitating Participation in Appraisal, notes for the
community facilitator or mobilizer, Defending the Methodology, which is of particular use to
managers and co-ordinators (as well as field workers) because advocacy for the method is
needed to counteract incorrect assumptions and inaccuracies, Training the Facilitator includes
notes to co-ordinators and trainers of community workers in the field.
The module focuses on a phase of the community mobilization cycle, and logically links with
many other training documents and modules in that cycle. Ultimately all the training modules on
this site constitute an integrated package for empowering low income communities.

Closely related to this set of documents in the module are a few guest papers on topics within the
category. These include: Participation, by Ben Fleming, Sharing Pra, by Kamal Phuyal, and
Notes on PAR, by Doreen Boyd.

You can download a free a PRA training manual on site http://pcs.aed.org or browse
www.eldis.org

Preparing a Community Inventory:

PARTICIPATORY ASSESSMENT AND RESEARCH

Guiding and Stimulating the Community to Look at Itself

by Phil Bartle, PhD

Core Document in the Module

How to encourage participation in the assessment, appraisal and evaluation of a
community by community members

Participatory Appraisal:

A very important responsibility that you have as a community mobilizer is to ensure that the
community members objectively and accurately assess and appraise their own community,
cataloguing its various problems, and evaluating the differences in community priorities for
solving those problems.
Without an objective and collective community evaluation, different community members will
have different ideas of what is more important and what is less important, and many myths and
inaccurate assumptions will continue to be held by different members of the community. This
contributes to disunity, and it hinders making transparent and effective actions to improve self
reliance and reduce poverty. This means that you, as a mobilizer, need to learn techniques of
encouraging and stimulating participation, and that you must train community members to
understand the principles and learn the skills of participation in evaluation, assessment and
appraisal.

When you reach a later stage in the mobilization cycle, designing a community project, you must
determine what is the priority problem to be solved. There must be agreement and consensus
among community members that the chosen problem to be solved is the one with the highest
priority. Without unity organizing, and an objective community evaluation, there will be no
needed agreement about which task to undertake first. Without this community participation in
evaluation, different factions will choose different priorities.

Educated members will see different problems than uneducated. Men will see different ones than
women. Landowners will see different problems than tenants or squatters.

People of different age groups, ethnic groups, language groups, or religious groups will not
automatically agree what are the priority problems, as they each see the universe from different
perspectives, and have different value systems.

Map Making:

A good way to start the community appraisal process is to arrange a map making session.

Set a day or afternoon for preparing the map. Ask that as many community members attend as
possible. With everybody in attendance, walk through the village or neighbourhood. Do not
simply walk around the perimeters of the area, but traverse it, with enough lines of traverse that
everyone can see everything between them. As you walk, you observe things, discuss them, and
mark them on the map.

As the mobilizer, you need to keep the discussion going whenever it does not continue
spontaneously. The making of the map, as a group process, including the discussion and the
choices of what to mark down, is as important, if not more important, than the map itself.

On the map you include the major buildings, roads and installations (latrines, water points,
playgrounds, shrines, garbage dumps). You also include observations about installations that are
in a state of disrepair, have fallen down, or are not working. Ensure that you discuss each of
these as you mark them on the map. This will help to limit opposition and contradictions later in
the appraisal; it contributes to "transparency" in the process.

At the end of the walk through the neighbourhood or village, everyone should meet (perhaps at a
convenient school building) to discuss the walk, and to finalize the map. This debriefing is
important, because it supports the transparency you wish to promote, and which was started by
discussing every problem as it was marked down on the map.

The map can then be used in the next phase of the appraisal, making a village or neighbourhood
inventory.

Community Inventory:

On the day of making the map, or as soon as possible after that, it is time to make a community
inventory. It is important that the inventory be done in a participatory manner; the community
members participate in constructing the inventory. Do not, as a mobilizer, make the inventory for
the community; that defeats its purpose. It would be useful here, in your role of mobilizing and
training, to renew the principles and techniques used in the brainstorm.

Discourage cross talk and feedback; mark down all contributions on the board; shuffle and sort
the contributions later as a group exercise. Ensure that individual contributions are given at arms
length (do not focus in on individual contributors), allow apparently contradictory contributions
(write every suggestion on the board), and reassert at the end that this is a group product, not the
product of any one or more factions or individuals.

Be aware that different groups or factions in the whole community will have different concerns.
The local headmaster might see the need for a new school as most important. Men might see a
need for access to fertilizers while women might see a need for available potable water as the
highest priority. The local imam might see the need for a new mosque as highest priority, while
other individuals and factions will see other needs as highest priority. That is why it would be
misleading to consult only with a few community leaders in determining communal priorities. A
group process, involving as many members of the community as possible, is more transparent,
and will result in a more accurate assessment of whole community needs.

To encourage objectivity, suggest that the community inventory include both assets and
problems. If a clean and well used latrine is a positive asset, include it, not only the latrines that
are broken. Refer to the map. Post it on the wall. Ask what assets and liabilities were observed in
the map making process.

What's in a Name?

You may see the acronym PRA, or sometimes PAR, used in reference to this participatory
method of making an assessment of community resources and problems. There are several
interpretations and definitions of these.

Once upon a time, there was a method called RRA, Rapid Rural Assessment. In essence this was
used when an aid agency called in a high priced foreign specialist, who parachuted in and stayed
a few days in the closest five star hotel for the duration, and wrote up a needs assessment that the
agency could use to justify its project. At most, the specialist might consult with a few of the
community leaders before writing his final report.
In opposition to this "top down" approach, it became apparent (especially to community
workers) that such an appraisal would be more accurate if it were more participatory and less
rapid.

Furthermore, sociologists noted that if the community members were involved in decision-
making from the start, they would more likely take responsibility for the project, and therefore
contribute to its maintenance and sustaining its installation. When the whole community were
involved, the project would be more valid than if only a few representatives or leaders of the
community were consulted.

A new acronym was coined, PRA. This acronym was more consistent than what the letters
represented: Participatory Rural Appraisal, Participatory Research and Assessment. What was
common among these was that the process should be participatory. Some people tried to bypass
the plethora of interpretations of PRA, and coined the new acronym, PAR.

This too, however, has sprouted several interpretations, including Participatory Action Research,
but the consistent feature is still that they both (PRA, PAR) emphasize participation. What is
essential here is that the assessment process should be participatory, and that participation should
involve the whole community, not merely a few factions, that the assessment of needs and
potentials reflect the community as a whole.

Information for Whom?

You might hear, especially from non community-oriented project managers (eg engineers, central
planners) that community appraisal is unnecessary. "We already have a social sector base study,
why should we duplicate it with a village inventory?" is a typical lament. You may be called
upon to defend this part of your work, especially if you are part of a sector specific project (eg
water supply). Managers are in a hurry to get physical results (building the water point) and this
participatory assessment takes up time.

The information collected by the map making and inventory by the community may or may not
duplicate information resulting from other sources. It is an incorrect assumption that the
information is primarily for the project or agency to make plans. The purpose of the assessment
process is to involve the whole community in decision making, and to encourage community
members to take responsibility for any facility or service that may be installed in the future.

That said, the information produced is very useful in adding to other sources of information (base
line survey, census data, other reports) in getting an accurate picture of the current situation. As a
mobilizer, you will contribute to the process of poverty reduction and community empowerment
if you make the information available to your agency or project, to local authorities, district and
central government officials, especially those in planning, community development and
management.

Training the Community Members:

Where communities are characterized by having much poverty and have many marginalised
persons, it is more likely that many members will be unfamiliar with participating in making
community decisions. Furthermore, many will be unfamiliar with map-making and making an
inventory, and many will not be able to read and write. These are skills they need in order to have
them participate in decision making that leads to community empowerment. Formal training is
not the answer here.

You as a mobilizer will familiarize community members in all these simply by your carrying
them out. Even more important, your encouraging them to participate supports their self
confidence and motivates them in contributing to their community development.

In the process of carrying them out, remember that community members are learning new skills,
and ensure that you are transparent in your work. The skills needed by community members to
carry out an appraisal are not sophisticated and difficult. Community members are normally and
usually willing to engage in the process and will easily learn the skills in the process. Your job is
to facilitate that learning.

The participation of community members in making a community appraisal, goes farther beyond
laying the groundwork for community action. The result of their assessments can be used as a
base line or data for measuring progress, and therefore as an element of community based
monitoring and evaluation.

Where From Here?

This document shows you how to encourage participation in the assessment, appraisal or
evaluation of a community by community members. Throughout your work, participation of
community members, all members rather than only some factions or individuals, should be
stimulated and encouraged.

In all training activities, while a participatory approach is generally best, where the trainer is a
facilitator rather than a lecturer, the PAR/PRA methodology, however, should not be blindly
applied in all areas.

Where specific skills, for example are needed, especially if they have already been identified by
the participants, it may be appropriate to employ other methods, such as demonstration,
presentation, and dialogue. Given this, allowing trainees to learn by doing should be emphasized.

See Kamal Phuyal's essay on the "Why of PRA," and Doreen Boyd's "List of Benefits of PAR."

For more discussion on this approach, see the Robert Chambers files.

Making a Community Map:

METHODS OF PARTICIPATORY APPRAISAL

A review of PAR/PRA methods and techniques

by Phil Bartle, PhD

Co-ordinators' Reference
A review of PAR/PRA methods and techniques

The acronym, PRA (Participatory Rural Appraisal/Assessment), may look misleading

at first because it includes "Rural" although it can be applied to urban
neighbourhoods as well as rural villages, and because it implies "Appraisal" or
"Assessment" even though it can be carried past the assessment stage on to action
planning and project design.

What is consistent is that the process is characterized by "Participatory." This may be the
participation of community members (rural or urban), or the participation of members of an
organization.

You emphasize the giving of a voice to those members who are not usually heard. As facilitator,
you provide some structure and stimulation, but the content must be the choice of the
membership as a whole. Data collection and analysis are undertaken by participants, with you
acting to facilitate rather than to control these processes.

Techniques of Participatory Appraisal:

There are many methods and approaches to participatory appraisal. Over your career, you will
develop various approaches of your own, modifying and selecting as you go along.
These are provided here to get you started. Change them and mould them to fit the size of the
client group, location, time and other characteristics of the participants and their situation.

Mapping:

Making a community map is probably the best approach for you to get started, and for a
community to get started. Take a group on a walk through the community, and let them draw a
map of the area. Let the map include communal facilities, personal and family buildings, assets
and liabilities. Do not draw the map for them.

One method is for individuals or small groups to each make a separate map, then, as a group
exercise later, all the small groups of individuals prepare a large map (eg using newsprint or flip
chart paper) combining and synthesizing what is included on all the maps.

Valuable information over and above that shown on scientifically produced maps can be obtained
from maps drawn by local people. These maps show the perspective of the drawer and reveal
much about local knowledge of resources, land use and settlement patterns, or household
characteristics.

Between maps and the models which are described next, you can encourage community
members to draw their map on the ground, using sticks to draw lines. Drawing the map on the
ground, like drawing a large map on the wall, gives you and the participants a chance to easily
make the drawing process a group process.

Models:

If the community members add sticks and stones to a map scratched onto the ground, they are
making a simple model: a three dimensional map.

Do not draw the map or construct the model for the participants; encourage them to all
contribute. As you watch them, note if some facilities are made before others, if some are larger
in proportion than others. This will give you some insight into what issues may be more
important than others to the participants.

Make notes; these will contribute to your sociological understanding of the community. Make a
copy on paper of the map or model as a permanent record. Maps and models can later lead to
transect walks, in which greater detail is recorded

Creating a Community Inventory:

The inventory, and especially the process of making it, is the most important and central element
of participatory appraisal.

The process of making the community inventory is sometimes called semi structured
interviewing. If it were perfectly unstructured, then it would be a loose conversation that goes no
where. A "Brainstorm" session, in contrast, is highly structured. (The brainstorm has its uses,
especially in the project design phase of community empowering). Making the inventory is
somewhere in between these two. You also allow the discussion to be a little bit free, especially
in allowing participants to analyse their contributions to making the inventory.

You do not work with a set of specific questions, but you might best prepare a check list of topics
to cover and work from that so that you cover all topics. When you prepare your check list,
remember that you should include both assets and liabilities in the community. Include available
facilities, including how well they are working, or not working. Include potentials and
opportunities as well as threats and hindrances, both possible and current. Remember that this is
an assessment.

Aim for an inventory that assess the strengths and weaknesses of the community. Your job is not
to create the inventory, but to guide the community members to construct it as a group.

Focus Group Discussions:

There may be a range of experiences and opinions among members of the community or there
may be sensitivity in divulging information to outsiders or to others within the community. This
is where a focus group discussion can be useful. It is best here if you do not work alone, but as a
facilitation team of two or three facilitators, one leading the discussion and another making a
record.

The discussion topics chosen should be fewer than for the general community inventory. First
conduct separate sessions for the different interest groups, record their contributions carefully,
then bring them together to share as groups their special concerns. It is important to be careful
here. While you recognize the different interest groups in the community, you do not want to
increase the differences between the groups - to widen the schism.

See the training document, Unity Organizing.

You are not trying to make all the different groups the same as each other, but to increase the
tolerance, understanding and co-operation between them. Special focus groups gives you the
opportunity to work separately with different groups that may find it difficult at first to work
together; but you must work towards bringing them together.

Preference Ranking:

When you are working with a community with different interest groups, you may wish to list
preference rankings of the different groups, then look at them together with the groups together.

Preference ranking is a good ice-breaker at the beginning of a group interview, and helps focus
the discussion.

Wealth Ranking:
This is a particularly useful method of (1) discovering how the community members define
poverty, (2) to find who the really poor people are, and (3) to stratify samples of wealth. This is
best done once you have built up some rapport with the community members.

A good method here is to make a card the name of each of the households in the community on
it. Select some members of the community. Ask them to put these cards into groups according to
various measures of wealth and to give their rationale (reasons) for the groupings. How they
categorize members of the community, and the reasons they give for making those categories and
for putting different households into each category, are very revealing about the socio-economic
makeup of the community.

Seasonal and Historical Diagramming:

Seasonal and historical variations and trends can be easy to miss during a short visit to the field.

You can attempt various diagramming techniques can help explore changes in: rainfall, labour
demand, farming (fishing, hunting, herding) activities, wood supply for fuel, disease incidence,
migration for employment, food stocks and many other elements that change over time. The
diagrams you produce can be used as a basis for discussions for the reasons behind changes and
implications for the people involved.

Institutional Mapping:

Elsewhere, you were told that a community mobilizer needs to be a social scientist, a practising
social scientist. Information about the social organization of the community and the nature of
social groups is difficult to get in a short visit. Complex relationships between rich and poor
segments of the community, family ties and feuds, and political groups can not be untangled in a
few weeks. Using participatory appraisal methods can be useful here.

One way to understand the less sensitive aspects of social interaction in a community is to ask
key informants to construct a Venn diagram. This technique is simply a collection of circles, each
of which represents a different group or organization active in the community. The size of each
circle reflects the relative importance of the group represented-the smaller the circle, the less
influential the group. The amount of overlap between two circles represents the amount of
collaboration or joint decision making between two groups.

Know When to Use These Methods:

The PRA/PAR methods are most appropriate for making assessments and appraisals when you
want the community to participate in the assessment. They are not the most appropriate approach
to all stages of the empowerment process.

They are not the best way, for example when some skill transfer has been identified as a need.
Training (for skill transfer) may be participatory, in that the trainees learn by doing, but not
necessarily by using PRA/PAR techniques.
We use metaphors, stories and proverbs when getting a point across to community members. One
such proverb is, "Do not ask a chicken to give you milk and do not ask a cow to give you
eggs." ..

What you ask the PRA/PAR methodology to give you is participatory assessment, not something
else.

MAP AND INVENTORY

Participating in Community Appraisal

by Phil Bartle, PhD

Community Members' Handout

Notes for Community Members making an assessment

Map and Inventory:

Before you and your fellow community members can develop in the way the whole community
wants, it is necessary to take an inventory, to find out all its resources and liabilities, and to
determine what is needed by the community. A good starting point is to make a map of the
community. Linked to and following that is to make a comprehensive community inventory.

It is important that the map and inventory be done by everyone in the community; not only by
the local leaders and officials, not only by literate members, not only by adult males, not only by
the ethnic or religious majority - everyone.

Your community mobilizer or facilitator will help organize the walk through the village or
neighbourhood to make the map, and a community meeting to make the inventory. Your help in
enabling the facilitator to make this a community effort is much needed and requested.

What to Do?

What is needed from you to make this a success?

When making the map, show up on time and encourage all community members to attend. Walk
with the rest of the group. Point out community assets such as latrines that are clean and used,
water points that are providing clean water (without water spilled all over the ground) , schools
that are dry, clean, well lit and well used, playgrounds and ball fields that are tidy and enjoyable,
good roads that have no dangerous pot holes, hygienic markets, and any assets that you can
identify. Also point out facilities that are broken down, in need of repair, expansion or
replacement, and ensure they are recorded on the map.

Your most important goal in this session is to ensure that the map is accurate and complete. Your
needed contribution for making your community inventory is similar to the above.
Show up at the meeting and encourage all community members to do so also. Co-operate with
the facilitator or mobilizer(s). List all resources and needs. Do not contradict or dispute with
other community members. Ensure that you are heard and your contributions recorded, and that
all other community members are heard and recorded. Especially encourage members who are
not usually heard, for whatever reasons. Let them be heard.

Voice of the Whole Community:

Now is the time to find out: "What does your community need in order to develop?" This is not
the time to insist on what you as an individual need most. It is also not the time to assert what
you and your friends, family and/or colleagues need most. This is a time for team work, where
the team is the whole community everybody.

If you can read (and you can if you are reading this), then try to get out of seeing community
needs only through the eyes of literate members. Imagine how the community looks to those who
can not read and write.

If you can not read (and this is being read to you), consider how important literacy is to the
whole community. Do not use this occasion to argue for benefits to your religious group,
language group, ethnic group, family and clan, working group or your group of friends. Use it to
benefit the whole community.

The Desired Product of this Appraisal:

When the map-making and community inventory sessions are completed, what should be the
output; what should have been produced?

The map will be complete and accurate, and it will include all facilities, their positive and
negative aspects.

The inventory will be complete and accurate, will include all facilities, resources and constraints
(potential and current), all needs and opportunities, for the community to develop.

Both the map and inventory will reflect full participation and input from all community
members, not only representative, not only factions or outspoken individuals all community
members.

Making a Community Map:

 FACILITATING
PARTICIPATION IN
APPRAISAL

Stimulating
Community
Self Assessment
by Phil Bartle, PhD

Facilitators' Notes
What do you, the community mobilizer or facilitator, do to stimulate and encourage
community participation in the assessment and appraisal of community resources
and needs?

The Importance of Community Participation:

The participation of all community members in the systematic observation, recording and
assessment of their own communities is a central element in the process of empowering
communities. Your role in encouraging and facilitating that is therefore crucial.

Without community members all having an objective and accurate understanding of their own
communal needs, problems, assets and resources, there can be no unified choice of priority
solutions and concerted actions in problem solving, development and poverty reduction. See
Unity Organizing.

Your work as a mobilizer then, is important in the development of the community, and your
facilitation of community participation in its own appraisal is essential for the community to
move forward.

See the Participatory Assessment and Research document (the core document in this module) for
further explanation of the role this process is within in the overall cycle of problem solving,
mobilization or empowerment of the community.

The Skills You Need:

Your best teacher is experience. If you can get an opportunity to work along with an experienced
practitioner of PRA or PAR, then that apprenticeship will serve you well.

If not, or to enhance that, read as much as you can, attempt facilitation on your own, then meet
with fellow practitioners to share experiences and compare results. A good facilitator never stops
learning. What to read in this self study? On this site are several documents that will help you to
grasp the principles and, most importantly, the personal skills and techniques you can use.

See, for example, the guest essay by Kamal Phuyal in Nepal, Sharing happiness, Sharing PRA, to
examine some of the questions of the "Why" as well as the "How" of PRA.

See the presentation by Ben Fleming, Participation, for a well thought out list of methods and
approaches you can employ.

See also To Be a Mobilizer, scrolling down to the list of needed characteristics.

See also the Brainstorm module, as many of the methods described in it will be useful already at
this assessment phase.

If you have more access to the internet, you can go to the Links and Misc pages of this site to
start you off in your research for further material. Browse through some of the many other web
sites that have material about this topic. A series of papers are available through the IDS
(Institute of Development Studies) in Sussex, UK, including those of Robert Chambers,
recognized as the main champion of participatory methodologies. There are many other sources
of training material available on the Internet, if yo do not have access to university libraries; you
need to research them. Essentially, however, your best approach is do, share, and do.

That means you should just jump in to the work, and try to carry out the enablement described in
this module, then share your experiences with other community workers doing similar things,
then go out and do some more. Attending workshops and seminars with other field workers is
something to do wherever and whenever possible.

While you must demonstrate leadership, especially when organizing the community walk to
make the map, and organizing a meeting to prepare the inventory, it is important that you
encourage everyone to participate. Do not impose your own ideas about their needs and
resources.

Carefully work towards consensus and unity (see Unity Mobilizing) and ensure that your work is
transparent and honest. Demonstrate to the community that the output of their work (the map and
inventory) is a community or communal product, not merely the vested interests of some
individuals or factions.

In your quest for training material to help you learn how to do the work, or learn how to improve
your techniques, do not overlook the Mobilizer's Handbook, an electronic copy of which is on
this site. See the chapters on preparing yourself to be a mobilizer.

In summary, useful training material documents available on this site (outside this module)
include: the Brainstorm, Participation, Sharing PRA, Unity Organizing, To be a Mobilizer and
the Mobilizer Handbook.


Appraising Community Assets and Needs:

DEFENDING THE METHODOLOGY

Managers' Notes
Advocating participation by the community in appraising itself

Assumptions and Ignorance:

There are many people who mainly want to see the physical construction of a community
facility. Among those who have an impact on your work are many politicians, journalists, project
managers and engineers. The facility (eg water point, latrine, school, clinic) is visible, easy to
photograph (next to a politician) and concrete. It is easily verified as proof of achievement.
Taking time to have community members participate in appraisal (along with other capacity
development: training in planning, management, accounting, monitoring, reporting, repair,
maintenance) is not so visible. How do you photograph a capacity development?

(I once had an embassy secretary get very angry when a visiting donor agency official was flying
into a country for three days the following week, and there were no community participation
events available to visit).

Project managers know that, no matter what the written objectives are on the project document,
they will be judged publicly according to the construction of physical facilities. Not everyone
assumes that physical construction is paramount. There are also those who are open minded
enough to be willing to be convinced that the capacity development aspect is as important.

You may be called upon to defend of explain the need and benefit of taking time for community
participation. "Should we build a water well and pump, just to watch it fall into disuse then
disrepair, because no one in the community takes responsibility to repair and maintain it?" you
might ask.

Why Take the Time?

Taking the time to start with community participation (in appraisal, choosing projects,
management, monitoring, and capacity development) helps to encourage community members to
develop a communal sense of "ownership" of a facility.

That promotes increased responsibility for its protection (eg against vandalism and stray
livestock), maintenance and repair. It makes the community more conducive to increased
effective use of the facility and more receptive to complementary training (such as hygiene
principles and practices).

To encourage the sustainability of physical facilities, the community participation approach,

while time consuming, is more effective and positive in the long run, than mere rapid
construction of the facility.

Why Collect Information Twice?

Another aspect that you may need to defend, is the purpose of information collected during the
map making and inventory production.

Some detractors may ask why a community made map and inventory are necessary, especially
when a comprehensive base line survey has already been conducted.

You may need to explain that the participatory collection of community information is primarily
for the community. It is for promoting sustainability and responsibility. Any benefit to the project
or agency is secondary, as planning data. The information collected through the community
process, however, can complement, fine tune, amplify and correct data collected on a survey.

How Should You Engage in the Advocacy?

A key event which allows you to make these important pointsto those willing to listen, is any
public event related to the community construction of a facility. This may be a "cheque handing
over ceremony," where major donors are recognized, a "laying a foundation stone," where a VIP
officially starts the construction, or a "completion ceremony and celebration," where local and
national dignitaries cut a ribbon, declare the faculty complete, or kick off the first official use of
the facility.

During a key event, you may hand out copies of a one-page pamphlet, emphasizing that not only
is this a construction project, but is also a community capacity development project, sketching
the participation of the whole community in all phases (appraisal, choosing priorities,
management training, monitoring maintenance and reporting).
A slightly longer, perhaps two-page press release, can be provided to journalists (TV, radio,
newspaper, government public information officer). If any understanding and sympathetic
journalist also does free lance work, you may hire one to write a press release that explains the
participatory approach and its benefits that outweigh the time consumed. If you have extended
access to journalists (as, for example, during a visit to a remote community, sharing
transportation), you can explain the methodology, and why it needs more time, in greater detail.

To be effective in your advocacy, you need to understand the approach very well, and be
convinced yourself of its benefits. It is not sufficient to be prepared to defend or explain
participatory approaches. Because so many assumptions are made, and often not stated, it is
necessary to take a pro-active approach.

Know what kinds of people whose opinions are important to your purpose (including politicians,
senior civil servants, journalists and engineers). Identify particular individuals who potentially
can change from being (uninformed) hindrances to (understanding) allies. Ensure that they get
copies of your pamphlets and press releases. Raise the question and introduce the subject during
informal conversations wherever you get the chance.

In general, it is a fairly simple equation: participation slows down construction but promotes
sustainability.

You need to be albe to explain this in more detail with specific reference to current community
projects. Write your arguments in simple language to get your point across. In some ways this is
the opposite of facilitating participation among community members; you identify your goal
first, then get your message to your chosen recipients. It is up to you.

Taking Time to Get Community Input:

TRAINING THE FACILITATOR
FOR PARTICIPATORY APPRAISAL

Effective Approaches to Imparting Skills

by Phil Bartle, PhD

Trainers Notes
How to train community mobilizers and facilitators in stimulating community
participation in appraisal

If you have the task of training and/or co-ordinating mobilizers in techniques of

promoting the participation of community members in evaluating and assessing the
needs, priorities, problems and constraints of their own communities, then there are
several principles and methods to consider.

Learning by Doing; (A) In a Training Session:

You may, of course use the common methods of getting PRA/PAR principles across to trainees:
lectures, audio visual presentations (slides, overhead transparencies, videos films), seminars,
debates, and small group discussions. Here we recommend that such traditional approaches be
used for supplementary training, and that "Learning by Doing" be central to your methods.

You and your trainees will be well rewarded if you focus on several contexts where the trainee
facilitators can engage in some "doing." These contexts can include: (1) structured role playing,
(2) simulation games, and (3) a group process.

The group of trainees can become the target community, and they can be facilitated to identify
group needs, resources, constraints and priorities. This latter is not just a hollow exercise, but
should lead to producing an inventory that will contribute to the further training and operations
of the group. Trainees can take turns to lead such processes.
When you compare learning by doing in a training session, which is a controlled context, with
learning by doing in the field, which is less controlled, you will see pluses and minuses in both.
In the controlled situation, best used for beginners, you have more structure and more "safe"
environment to unsure trainees. In the field situation you may have less control over what
happens, but the experience is more real and realistic for the trainees.

Learning by Doing; (B) In the Field:

Practice in the field is a less safe but more intense learning context for facilitator trainees. Field
training comes in different sizes and shapes.

Examples include:

1. where the trainee helps an experienced facilitator,

2. where the trainee organizes and co-ordinates a session in the community

while the trainer assists (and is available to step in if needed),

3. where the trainee is given responsibility for everything, and the trainer
merely sits in and monitors.

In each case, a debriefing session after the session is valuable. That makes it more of a learning
experience for the trainee.

It gives the trainee a chance: (1) to record and analyse the process that went on, (2) to consider
the steps of the process based on a real experience, (3) to ask detailed and specific questions of
the trainee, and (4) to formulate principles and practices for future work.

It gives the trainer a forum (1) to provide feedback based on her or his observations, (2) to make
recommendations based on concrete events, and (3) to guide the trainee on observing, analysing,
making records and writing reports.

Learning from Written Material:

Written material is not as immediately effective as "doing" in encouraging and teaching a trainee
to learn skills. It is, however, useful as a review and reference, and it helps by confirming what
the trainee learns by doing. Trainees tend to relate more to written material, and are able to read
and comprehend more of it, if they have recently experienced a "doing" session on the same
topic.

Written material (like different kinds of "doing") can be used at different levels as a trainee
learns to be a mobilizer or facilitator. At the introductory level, it can be simplified, illustrated,
and provided directly by the trainer to the trainee. .. All of the handouts and most of the other
training material on this web site belong to this kind of simple training material. It should be
presented in simple, un-convoluted language (local language where appropriate), in a clear,
unambiguous matter. Illustrations are valuable supplements to this level of written training
material.

Trainees that have had some field experience need a higher level of written training material. It
can be more sophisticated. The caveats and exceptions can be noted, and the uncertainties
pointed out (these may discourage newcomers). More importantly, however, the intermediate and
advanced written material (digested or not) should not be freely given to the trainee. As with the
empowerment methodology, if the trainees struggle or sacrifice a bit to obtain it, they value it
more. Give the trainee some pointers, point her or him in the right direction, and instruct the
trainee to do his or her own (literature) research.

Learning by Teaching:

While "doing" is perhaps the best way to learn a skill, the process of handing skills on to others
can itself be higher level learning experience. Faced with the prospect of having to pass on skills
to trainees, even mock trainees at the same level of experience, a trainee will find herself or
himself more intense in ensuring that those skills are understood.

Encourage your trainees to attempt modest "How To" handouts and guidelines. (Preparing
training material is another form of teaching). Let them use these handouts in practising on each
other. After each session, ask if the skills and principles were understood. Did the recipients
understand the presenter? Discuss each presentation and written exercise with all your trainees.

Teaching can be practised by trainees in several ways, including the giving of presentation and
the preparing of written material. Encourage both (ands other ways) among your trainee
facilitators or mobilizers. Ask your trainees to prepare written material in as simple language as
possible, using simple grammar and common vocabulary. Encourage your trainees to also
prepare training material in local languages wherever possible. To provide more encouragement,
copy and publish the trainee's training material, circulate it in local or group newsletters, local
papers, professional magazines and journals wherever possible. This will acknowledge and
recognize the efforts of the trainees, and encourage them.

Keep On Learning:

Always remind your trainees that learning about this profession should be a life time calling or
vocation. "When you stop learning, you are dead."

Training Community Facilitators: