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:
“It is not impossible, of course, after such an administration as Roosevelt’s and after the change in method that I could not but adapt in view of my different way of looking at things, that questions should arise as to whether I should go back on the principles of the Roosevelt administration.... I have a government of limited power under a Constitution, and we have got to work out our problems on the basis of law. Now, if that is reactionary, then I am a reactionary.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“The chief lesson of the Depression should never be forgotten. Even our liberty-loving American people will sacrifice their freedom and their democratic principles if their security and their very lives are threatened by another breakdown of our free enterprise system. We can no more afford another general depression than we can afford another total war, if democracy is to survive.”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)
“A bureaucracy is sure to think that its duty is to augment official power, official business, or official members, rather than to leave free the energies of mankind; it overdoes the quantity of government, as well as impairs its quality. The truth is, that a skilled bureaucracy ... is, though it boasts of an appearance of science, quite inconsistent with the true principles of the art of business.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)