Participatory Research

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    Participatory training for promotion of social development
    (1996) Acharya, Binoy; Verma, Shalini
    How can participatory training and learning be undertaken with disadvantaged groups? In this article, Binoy Acharya and Shalini Verma discuss approaches to training that move beyond the mere transfer of information and place people’s confidence, experience, and critical awareness at the center. They argue that many marginalised communities have long experienced the devaluation of their own knowledge and capacities, which weakens participation and self belief. Therefore, participatory training must begin by helping people analyse their own realities, articulate their experiences, and recognise what they need to learn further. The article highlights the important role of grassroots trainers in understanding why people do not participate- including fear, exclusion, low confidence, and past experiences of being ignored. Training is therefore presented as a process of creating safe spaces for dialogue, reflection, and collective learning. Drawing from training designs adopted by Gujarat based NGOs, the authors show how structured modules on facilitation, group dynamics, self development, and training methods can build local leadership. Participatory training is thus presented as a means of fostering critical thinking, restoring confidence, and strengthening people’s capacities for social change.
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    Participatory training and self development
    (0000) Acharya, Binoy; Verma, Shalini
    How should training be undertaken to encourage critical thinking and instill confidence in people? In this article, Binoy Acharya and Shalini Verma discuss the growing emphasis on training within the development sector while questioning approaches that reduce training to the mere transfer of information or techniques. They argue that many people, especially the poor and marginalised, experience the systematic devaluation of their own knowledge and capacities which weakens self confidence and participation. For this reason, simply providing more skills cannot by itself lead to empowerment, though external knowledge may still be useful. The focus of training, they argue, must be to foster critical thinking so that people can analyse their own realities, articulate their experiences, and identify what they need to learn further. Participatory training is highlighted as a process that breaks the culture of silence, restores faith in people’s own knowledge, and builds confidence for collective action. Social development, the authors emphasise, begins with the development of the self.
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    Involving communities in planning and assessing the impacts of development programmes: Report on a pacific NGO workshop on participatory approaches to development, Nadi, Fiji, 23–25 June
    (2023-06-23) Quinn, Marion; Clark, Kevin
    This report documents a Pacific NGO workshop on participatory approaches to development held in Fiji in 2003, aimed at strengthening the capacities of civil society organisations to use participatory impact assessment, stakeholder analysis, indicator setting, and community based monitoring in their own contexts. Its central concern is how development can move beyond expert driven models toward processes where primary stakeholders influence decisions, resources, and outcomes. The report covers practical sessions on identifying stakeholders, understanding gender relations, designing meaningful indicators, collecting and analysing data, and using participatory tools such as mapping, ranking, focus groups, seasonal calendars, and time use studies. Through examples from Pacific countries, it shows how communities can define priorities, generate knowledge, and evaluate change on their own terms. This report offers an important lesson that monitoring and evaluation are not merely technical exercises but democratic processes linked to power, voice, and accountability. It demonstrates that when communities participate from the beginning of a project cycle, development interventions become more relevant, more sustainable, and more responsive to local realities.
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    Participatory impact assessment. August 20- 25, 2001
    (Particiaptory Research in Asia (PRIA), 2001-08-25) Dwivedi, Anju
    How can development interventions be made more accountable to the people they are meant to serve? In this paper, Anju Dwivedi examines how participatory impact assessment can reframe conventional approaches to evaluation by placing communities at the center of the process. She begins by tracing shifts in development thinking from a focus on economic growth in the 1950s to an increasing emphasis on participation and human development by the 1990s, where people’s involvement became central. Dwivedi argues that social development is not a linear process that can be captured through simple output and outcome measures. Impact must instead be understood as change from a given starting point, including intended and unintended effects on people’s lives. Participatory impact assessment therefore becomes a continuous process across the project cycle, engaging communities and other stakeholders in defining indicators, collecting data, and interpreting findings. The paper also foregrounds the importance of integrating a gender lens to understand differentiated impacts. For practitioners and researchers, this paper offers a grounded way to rethink impact assessment as a political and learning process rather than a technical exercise.
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    Participatory research as a methodology of development
    (Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), 0000) Tandon, Rajesh
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    Training on participatory research methodologies. September 18-22, 2017
    (2017-09-22) Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA)
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    Report on training of master trainers' in CBPR 07–09 June, 2022
    (Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), 2022-06-09) Rakhyani, Nikita
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    Regionalizing the UNESCO knowledge for change consortium: K4C at the ESC!
    (UNESCO Chair, 2023-10-05) Mercy, Nkatha
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    Editorial: Knowledge democracy for a transforming world
    (UTS ePRESS, 2020-05-31) Hall, Budd L; Tandon, Rajesh
    The past five decades have seen enormous, worldwide growth in, and appreciation of, knowledge democracy the discourse which we have found best contains the various theoretical approaches, values and practices within which participatory research exists. This Introduction outlines our understanding of knowledge democracy, which can be expressed by a number of principles: (1) Recognition of a multiplicity of epistemologies and ways of knowing; (2) Openness to assembling, representing and sharing knowledge in multiple forms (including traditional academic formats and all manner of social and arts-based approaches); (3) Recognition that knowledge emerging from the daily lives of excluded persons is an essential tool for social movements and other transformational strategies; and the (4) Requirement to carefully balance the need to protect the ownership of communities' knowledge with the need to share knowledge in a free and open access manner. We are pleased to present five articles from around the world that broaden and deepen our understanding of knowledge democracy from a theoretical perspective, a practice perspective, an ontological perspective, and an action or political perspective.