The document outlines a participatory approach to empower local communities by involving them in the design and evaluation of their own development processes. It emphasizes flexibility, openness, and a culture of sharing to support the gathering and legitimization of local knowledge and perspectives. Various participatory methodologies such as mapping, transect walks, and wealth ranking are highlighted as essential tools for understanding and addressing community needs.

1. Pankaj Kumar Ojha
Scholar
Department of Extension Education
Institute of Agricultural sciences
Banaras Hindu University
Varanasi-221005 (U.P) India
pankajojhabhu@gmail.com

6.  To develop local perspective by becoming more
responsive to local people and local situations
 To evolve a methodology which could provide timely and
cost effective information
To ‘break the silence’ of the poor and
disadvantaged sections, recognize the
value of popular collective knowledge
and wisdom and legitimize the
production of knowledge by the
people themselves.

7.  The right altitude:
 Openness
 Humility
 Curiosity
 Sensitivity
 Acceptance
 The right behaviours
 Showing respect
 Being, friendly
 Sharing
 Being patient
 Interacting, not lecturing

8.  Flexibility and innovation
Taking care not to get into the not of
rigid methods and fixed jargon
Allowing methods to evolve
continuously
 Seeking diversity
Looking for variability contradictions,
among & differences rather than
standardizations and averages
Facilitating -they do it

9. Principles and methods Benefits
From ‘they learn from us’ to ‘we learn from
them’.
. From ‘we let them participate’ to ‘they
take command of their own process’.
Empowering the poor and weak to assert
their priorities, make demands and
act.
From ‘we’ve done a PRA’ to ‘we admit
being corrected by people’.
From ‘we use instruments from our
toolbox’ to ‘they can map, model,
estimate, score, analyse, plan
themselves’.
Expression and harnessing of local
diversity.
From ‘we share our knowledge analysis
with them’ to ‘we enable them to
learn from each other and conduct
their own analysis’.
Offsetting biases: spatial, project,
gender/elite, seasonal calendar.
Community participatory appraisal,
planning, implementation, monitoring
and evaluation.
Rapid progressive learning, which is
flexible, exploratory, interactive and
inventive.
Triangulation: using different methods,
sources and disciplines, and a range
of informants in a range of places
and cross checking to get closer to
the truth through successive
approximations.
Identification of research priorities;
experts more receptive to the ability
of rural poor to design, implement
and evaluate.
Facilitation: to enable people to do more
or all of the investigation themselves
and own the outcome.
Insights gained from PRA leading to
policy change.
Sharing: a culture of sharing information,
methods, field experiences among
NGOs, government and villagers.
Behaviour and attitudes: critical self-
awareness in external facilitators,
learning from errors.
A culture of open learning among govt.,
NGOs and community.

10.  1.Partcipatory Mapping
 2.Transect Walk
 3.ITK(Indigenous Technical Knowledge)
 4.Time Line
 5.Matrix Ranking
 6.Seasonability
 7.Venn diagram
 8.Wealth Ranking

11.  Construction of Map by the villagers
Purpose
 Impression and understanding on
 social lay out
 Physical structure
 Natural resource environment
Application
 Identifying Pattern of land use
 Identifying beneficiaries
 Water resources
 Soil conservation and forestry

13.  Documentation Sheet Resource Map
 Name of location:
Kabele & Kushet
 Date:
 Name of note-taker:
 Total number of participants:
 Name of facilitator/s:
 Number of men: Number of women:
 Method used:
 What was good?
 What was difficult?
 Additional Information or special things you noticed or want
to point out:
PRA Workshop in ____________, Date: ____________
Name of note-taker ____________ _________________

14.  Exploratory by the team and villagers
Purpose
Farming practices, Cropping pattern, Physical lay out,
Agro Ecosystem and cross sectional view of the village
Application
 Mapping
 Zoning area
 Productivity Zoning
 Locating ITK
 Locating areas to be developed

16. Purpose
Learn, Identify, Preserve and propagate
Application
Agriculture and Health
How?
Rapport building
Identifying person( transect Walk ?)
Exchange experience
Ask reasons
Ask source
Samples?

17. Calander of historical events (person, community, village
,area etc
Who describes ?
Purpose
Find out sequence of Event
Changes
Impact with time
Application
Background of village
Evolution of activities
Occurrence of Flood droughts

19.  Rankin the preferences and attitudes, farmers
priorities on verities, crops, tree ,livestock
Purpose
Understand farmers decision making
Identify the criteria and select certain items
(Tree, Fodder,Cattele,Breed)

21.  Exercise to determine seasonal pattern of
rainfall, farming practices, employment, work,
health, food ,fodder, and fuel
 Application
 Indicate rainfall
 Milk yied
 Grazing etc

23.  To get villagers perspective on impact and
influence of local and outside institutions in
particular area

24.  Process by which members of community
determine the relative wealthiness of all members
by taking in to account of ,assets, resources,
income, diseased person etc
 Purpose
Asses and identify pattern of wealthines
Identify Resourceful and resource poor
Criteria of wealthiness