Principles
Robert Chambers, whom Fisher considered a leading icon of the movement, defines PRA according to the following principles;
- Handing over the stick (or pen or chalk)
- Facilitating investigation, analysis, presentation and learning by local people themselves, so they generate and own the outcomes and also learn.
- Self-critical awareness
- Facilitators continuously and critically examine their own behavior.
- Personal responsibility
- Taking responsibility for what is done, rather than, for instance, relying on the authority of manuals or on rigid rules.
- Sharing
- Involves the wide range of techniques now available, from chatting across the fence to photocopies and e-mail.
PRA and PLA methods and approaches include:
- Do-it-yourself: local people as experts and teachers, and outsiders as novices
- Local analysis of secondary sources
- Mapping and modeling
- Time lines and trend and change analysis
- Seasonal calendars
- Daily time-use analysis
- Institutional diagramming
- Matrix scoring and ranking
- Shared presentations and analysis, and
- Participatory planning, budgeting, implementation and monitoring.
Read more about this topic: Participatory Planning
Famous quotes containing the word principles:
“Though the ancients were ignorant of the principles of Christianity there were in them the germs of its spirit.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Every political system is an accumulation of habits, customs, prejudices, and principles that have survived a long process of trial and error and of ceaseless response to changing circumstances. If the system works well on the whole, it is a lucky accident—the luckiest, indeed, that can befall a society.”
—Edward C. Banfield (b. 1916)
“I suppose that one of the psychological principles of advertising is to so hammer the name of your product into the mind of the timid buyer that when he is confronted with a brusk demand for an order he can’t think of anything else to say, whether he wants it or not.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)