Principles and Techniques of Veterinary and AH Extension

Participatory Rural Appraisal

EXERCISE-17: PARTICIPATORY RURAL APPRAISAL (PRA)

• “An approach (and family of methodologies) for shared learning between local people and outsiders to enable development practitioners, government officials and local people to plan together appropriate interventions.”
• We could collect reliable data within a short time using this method. The farmers are also involved in various phases of the appraisal.

PRA: Key Principles

• Participation: Local people serve as partners in data collection and analysis.
• Flexibility: Not a standardized methodology, depends on purpose, resources, skill, time.
• Teamwork: Outsiders and insiders, men and women, mix of disciplines.
• Optimal Ignorance: Cost and time efficient, but ample opportunity for analysis and planning.
• Systematic: For validity and reliability, partly stratified sampling, cross-checking.
• Example: Participatory rural appraisals using various PRA tools and techniques are conducted to obtain information on the topography of the land, soil structure, water resource utilisation, seasonal crops, rainfall and cropping patterns, preference for trees and history of the area. The PRAs facilitate rapport building with the community and the entire community decides on common objectives (as shown in figure below).

Rapid report writing with self-correcting notes:

• It is essential to record, as a team the key finding before members disperse to their own organizations. Individuals can be encouraged to keep a private diary or series of notes to focus on things they would like to improve the next time.