New FAO toolkit scales up innovative community-led participatory video technique in drylands

Rome - FAO has released its first practical guide to using participatory video, an innovative community-led technique that monitors change in development projects and programmes, with the aim of improving sustainability in dryland forests and agrosilvopastoral systems.

Applying MEV-CAM tools: participatory video provides a step-by-step guide on how to plan and deliver participatory video for a variety of purposes, including monitoring and knowledge sharing, for both new and existing projects.

Produced in collaboration with participatory video specialists and tested with 70 trainees across three regions, the toolkit draws on case studies from Malawi, Mozambique, the United Republic of Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

“Participatory video empowers beneficiary communities to film and use visual mediums to document and share their best practices, collect knowledge, and demonstrate changes in their landscapes,” said Fidaa F. Haddad, FAO Dryland Forestry Officer.

“It is a powerful tool that can help upscale and enhance development, landscape restoration and South-South cooperation, as communities can capture and share challenges with communities in other countries.”

Bottom-up development

Participatory video is an increasingly important development tool due to its bottom-up approach, which engages and empowers communities to document and share their best practices for restoration and natural resource management.

It challenges the traditional methods of project monitoring, which often include lengthy written reports that ignore community views and experiences.

Instead, participatory video encourages the communities themselves to work alongside project facilitators and organisations to capture, monitor and share the on-the-ground changes brought by projects, empowering communities to take ownership of development projects and document their lessons learned in a way that works for them.

The MEV-CAM approach

The toolkit has been developed by Making Every Voice –Count for Adaptive Management (MEV-CAM) initiative, which was launched in 2020 to alter the way South-South knowledge management is approached by using local and indigenous expertise to restore degraded drylands through the adoption of more sustainable practices.

MEV-CAM is currently working across 18 countries and three regions, using process documentation and participatory video to fulfil FAO’s mission of creating better production, better nutrition, a better environment, and a better life, leaving no one behind.