Report of the workshop on Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) - Department of Social Work

The Department of Social Work organized a 2 day workshop on Participatory Rural Appraisal for MSW 2nd Semester students on 22 and 23 November 2013. The resource person for the programme was Mr.

On the first day the students were divided into 4 groups namely Smurfs, mission mark, toilers and plan-B. The resource person discussed the theoretical aspects of PRA with the group. He explained the definition and principles that form the basis of PRA, the principles i.e. participation, flexibility, teamwork, optimal ignorance and systematic approach.

 
Ranjeet Kumar Singh, Programme Manager, Centre for Social Action. The objectives of the workshop were to familiarize the students with the basic concepts of PRA and its importance, usage and application in community-need analysis process, to introduce the different tools used in PRA and to develop skills in conducting PRA exercise with communities.

The second part of the discussion on the first day was on the tools of PRA namely social mapping, wealth ranking, transect walk, resource mapping, seasonality analysis, time line and trend analysis, Venn diagram, matrix scoring and skill mapping. Day one of the workshop was used to make the students familiar with the concepts of PRA and its usages.

On the Second day the teams were given specific techniques to be implemented in PRA to find out the issues and understand the process of PRA by its application. The students were taken to Hoskote Village for the practical application. The Toilers were given the responsibility to implement seasonality analysis and resource mapping, Plan-B was given Wenn diagram and social mapping to implement, Smurfs had to implement transect walk and Mission mark to implement wealth ranking and matrix ranking.

The students after the hands on experience had an evaluation session where each team presented their learnings and challenges. The mistakes and shortcomings in conducting PRA were discussed by the resource person. Overall it was good learning experience for the students.

Mathew CP
Faculty in charge