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| Sunday, 10 March 2002 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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by ASOKA WEERASINGHE, One of the newest trends in the village development field in Asian countries such as Sri Lanka is the emergence of participatory development activities. This includes participatory data gathering and analysis of material and action by the villagers. This involves collection, analysis, presentation, and sharing of data by the village people. This is known as Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) Extractive data gathering of traditional research and action of the 'outside experts' was commonly known as Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA). Major differences between RRA and the more participatory type of development activity such as PRA is evident in the roles and behaviour and attitudes of the participants of the two different types of development activities. In PRA the outsiders dominate. In PRA in contrast, the development workers encourage and allow the village people to take the lead to determine much of the agenda to gather, express and analyse information and plan strategies and even implements the programs. The outsiders are facilitators, learners and co-ordiantors. Their activities include establishment of rapport, and catalyse inquiries and help in the use of methods and to encourage local people to choose, improvise methods for themselves. The outsiders have to watch, listen and learn. Metaphorically sometimes they actually hand over the stick of authority to the local people, then the local people do many of the things outsiders formerly believed only they themselves could do this. The insiders have become the experts. In the past fifteen years a sufficient body of experience and knowledge has emerged which has demonstrated that such participatory development activities can be implemented where the poor participated as subjects and not as objects. It was possible to generate growth, human development and equity for the poor in these models. An in-depth analysis made of the participatory process in many third world countries reflect that kind of social mobilisation taking place where the poor have contributed to growth and human development simultaneously under varying social and political circumstances. They also demonstrate that at relatively lower levels of income it is possible to achieve a high level of human development. There are many examples which have demonstrated this in sri Lanka. The Women's Development Federation of Hambantota is one such organisation which is run entirely by the poor. There are many other small village organisations ranging from death donation societies to the village farmer societies where the poor have taken over their own development. Another good example is the numerous credit and savings societies which are emerging in various parts of the country to address the economic needs of the poor people in the country. These credit and savings societies are in fact very indigenous in the way they run them and quite different to the famous Grameen Banks of Bangladesh. The Sri Lankan credit and savings societies seem to touch the poorest of the poor much more than the Grameen banks of Bangladesh. Another model that is developing in Sri Lanka is the identification and use of the village expert in the development work and this is sometimes known as Appreciative Inquiry. This model is quite well-known in Nepal and this model is gradually being accepted in Sri Lanka. The model simply involves the identification of village experts and if necessary introduce them to some of the newer practices and leave it to them to experiment and try out whether these activities are relevant and also to find out how best these activities could be applied to their environment. Therefore this means that the big city experts should not try to force development models to the village but work along with the villagers to see whether the activities are relevant to the village. For example various aspects of gardening and organic farming is a concept that the outside experts try to force down the throats of the villagers. A walk through any village shows that there are in fact experts on this field in the village itself who know more abort organic farming and who can practice organic farming according to the difficult conditions under which they live in the village. The development workers job would be perhaps to inform the villagers about some of the latest finding in this field in other countries as well as in this country so that the villagers could analyze the data and try out these new methods of find out whether these are practicable in the village. This shows that the role of a development worker has changed from an authoritative dominant figure to a person who would be sharing information and being involved in activities with village experts as equals. Therefore the development workers job should be to be more of an organiser such as helping people to gather together so that the knowledge of the village experts and others could be disseminated. The richness of the attitudes of the poor villagers was illustrated by the response made by the village leader and others in the village where almost every thing was given free to those who wished to learn. Indeed much development work can be done using the village experts with very little funds and the work done would be very significant to the other villagers. This shows that more and more outsiders must learn to step down from the pedestal that they occupy and hand over the stick to the village experts so that useful relevant sustainable and significant development could be done in the villages. Writer is Secretary Development Commission, National Christian Council of Sri Lanka |
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