Saturday, December 7, 2013

The Ironies of Participatory Analysis and Facilitation


            Participatory research methods, similar to those of the Gender Analysis Matrix (GAM), outlined by Smyth (69-70) seem to be very popular in mainstream development organizations and processes. Other participatory information gathering activities for the purpose of gather information to base development projects off of include problems and needs matrixes, community maps, seasonal calendars and other activities. The idea of these activities seems to not only serve the immediate means of gathering the specific information necessary to make a community map or a seasonal calendar, but to allow for participants think collectively as a group hoping that the knowledge they share with each other could create a greater community consciousness and cohesion that may foster greater community participation and leadership in development projects and initiatives.
            The role in this type of activity for an outside agent (such as a member of a development organization) is ideally to serve as little more than a facilitator of dialogue and communication between community members by assuring a space for dialogue to occur, asking questions that would lead to relevant conversation and debate and assuring that various participants are able to speak and that the meeting achieves most of its objectives according to the set time that they have to work. Smyth (69) states that this role can be filled by development practitioners who do not have any specific training in research in gender or community issues but are just able to encourage conversation amongst community members that reveal answers to the questions at hand and be able to assure that the information is documented in a way that is useful to the community participants and the development agents as well. This process appears make community participants themselves in control of information and the development process while development practitioners are merely facilitators of their own development. Smyth states that some problems of this process are when gender inequalities and other community inequalities are reflected in the activity, but states that a good facilitator would try to assure that these marginalized participants speak and express themselves during the course of the meeting.
            While working as a Peace Corps volunteer, all of the volunteers were encouraged to implement Participatory Analyses for Community Action (PACA) tools in the communities we worked in at the beginning of our service in order to have a better understanding of the communities and to initiate or strengthen processes of community organization and development. I was initially skeptical of these tools, thinking of them as simply “fact-finding” activities to keep us busy and assure we did something in our first couple of months. However, in one activity I conducted a year into my service, a community mapping activity, I heard someone, where, after seeing all the identified resources and enterprises that they had labeled, stated that maybe they weren’t “as screwed” as he thought they were. This showed to me the importance such activities can have as a revelatory activity for community members as they see ideas, resources and opinions of the community identified in a group setting. However, having been part of such processes, and seen them performed by others, the idea of the facilitator being little more that that seems quite theoretical for in fact the “facilitators” often have a great impact on what is said, who speaks and what information is deemed important to document. The stated or assumed promises of action by a development organization following an activity like this could cause community members to assure the development agents are told what they want to hear. Also, the development agent as facilitator is often quite able to silence the opinions of one person or group of people, over emphasize others and ignore topics deemed important by the community through their questions and time management. An interesting, and humorous, analysis of the apparent oxymoron of development agents’ practices of “facipulation” can be read here: http://stuffexpataidworkerslike.com/2011/02/16/24-facipulation/

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