The document discusses rich pictures, which are drawings that illustrate the complexity and relationships within a situation in a holistic way. Rich pictures use pictures, text, symbols and icons to show multiple perspectives on an issue. Developing a rich picture can help identify challenges and opportunities for improvement through group discussion. As an exercise, participants are asked to create rich pictures of their country cases involving key stakeholders in multi-stakeholder processes and identify 5 challenges arising from the relationships and context depicted.

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MeTA Multi Stakeholder Processes
Workshop for MeTA pilot Countries
Ghana, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Peru, Philippines, Uganda, Zambia
3. Issues and challenges
Rich picture
Simone van Vugt/ Karen Verhoosel
Wageningen UR Centre for Development Innovation
January 2010
Rich picture
A drawing of a situation that illustrates the main elements
and relationships that need to be considered in trying to
intervene to create some improvement.
A rich picture helps us to understand the complexity of an
entire situation. It is a way of thinking holistically. A rich
picture helps us to see relationships and connections that
we may otherwise miss.
It is called a rich picture because it illustrates the richness
and complexity of a situation.
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Rich picture
Pictures, text, symbols and icons should all be used to
graphically illustrate the situation.
‘A picture tells a thousand words’.
Developing a rich picture is also a good group exercise as
everyone can add to it and use it to explain their particular
interests or perspectives.
A rich picture can also be a non threatening and humorous
way of illustrating different perspectives and conflicts.
Rich picture example
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Rich picture – group assignment per country
Take your country case as a starting point for
developing the rich picture:
Draw the key problematic
Who are the stakeholders and how do they relate to the problematic?
What are their relations to each other?
Context description: causes and effects
Any other relevant social, economic, political, environmental features
or issues
How does this all relate to the wider context of MeTA?
Write down on cards the 5 main challenges in the
MSP process arising from your rich picture.
The end result
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