Content

Key Concepts

Definition

History

Degree

Scope of Action

Project Cycle
Management

Methods

Approaches to
Participation

Rapid Rural
Appraisal

Participatory Rural
Appraisal

Participatory Action Research

Principles, Attitudes

Participatory
Project Cycle
Management

Type of Participatory
Projects

Application of participatory tools in the different project stages

Sector Specific Use
of Participatory Tools

List of Documents

Exercises

Strong or weak
participation

Stakeholder analysis

Scope of Project/Programme

Projects vary in scale, purpose and duration. They may be initiated within a community, requiring modest inputs and producing tangible outputs within a relatively short timeframe. At the other extreme, projects may require substantial financial resources and only generate benefits in the long term. For example, the former could be an adult literacy project in a village; the latter may be the provision of universal primary education for all children of school age in a country. Whilst the former needs one trainer and a few teaching materials, the latter requires numerous schools, teachers, equipment and administration. Projects may stand-alone or be integrated into a programme, with several projects contributing to one overall goal.

With the project approach, the key priority issue for participatory projects is how to ensure the participation of project beneficiaries in all stages of the project cycle. For example, in the case of community forestry projects, what methods can be used to ensure that the forest users are actively involved in forest-management? Or in the case of rural water supply projects, how can water users effectively participate in the design, implementation and long term management of water systems.

The adoption of the programme approach requires new participatory methods which allow national governments, donors and other stakeholders to work together in establishing national programmes. A much broader understanding of participation is required than was necessary for the traditional project approach to development, because the level of intervention is more focused on the macro level. This requires new types of participatory methods to those developed for sector-specific, discrete projects, which are most often focused on the micro or intermediate level. For example, while PRA may be the most appropriate method for a community forestry project it is not an appropriate method for promoting the involvement of senior officials from government ministries, donors and NGOs in policy dialogue meetings. Rather, such methods as roundtable's or national selection committees are more appropriate for facilitating participation at this level.

However, the planned scope of action should not be determined solely by the frame of the planned activity as a project or a programme; it should focus more on the particular problem being addressed by the development interaction. Development problems stem from different levels. A problem may be caused by constraints at the macro level imposed, for example, by the legal system or the policy environment. Constraints may arise at the intermediate level; for example, through regulations restricting certain people’s access to services. Alternatively, constraints may exist at the household and community level; cultural norms may prevent specific members of a household from participating in decision making. Therefore a problem cannot be dealt with outside its global context. It must be examined at all levels (macro, intermediate and field) and should show how interdependent these levels are in terms of the stakeholders involved.

The lack of food security in a village, for example, may result not only from crop and animal production problems at the household or community level, but also from barriers to district-level markets, as well as national pricing policies and international terms of trade. In other words, there are important linkages between field-level problems and intermediate- and macro-level institutions, programmes and policies.

The Participation Resource Section offers you the option to search for methods and approaches in the field tools section, as well as for documents in the library section and define the search results choosing the envisaged scope of action (level).