Basic Impact Assessment At Project Level Page 32
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36Participatory Approaches: PLA (Participatory Learning and Action)
In the last five years participatory approaches to development planning and management
have moved from being a fringe activity to centre stage. While many donor agencies,
have simply added a bit of PLA to their existing procedures, it can be argued that this is
inappropriate as conceptually participatory approaches challenge the validity and utility of
the scientific method as applied to developmental problems.
According to this line of argument the scientific/quantitative method fails as:
• it ignores the complexity, diversity and contingency of winning a livelihood;
• it reduces causality to simple unidirectional chains, rather than complex webs;
• it measures the irrelevant or pretends to measure the immeasurable; and,
• it empowers professionals, policymakers and elites, thus reinforcing the status quo and
directly retarding the achievement of development goals.
Supporters of participatory approaches do not believe that ultimately there is one objective
reality that must be understood.
Rather, there are multiple realities and before any
analysis or action is taken the individuals concerned must ask themselves, ‘whose reality
counts?’. Their answer is that the perceived reality of the poor must take pride of place as,
if development is about ‘empowering the poor’ or ‘empowering women’ (as virtually all
development agencies now say), then the first step towards empowerment is ensuring that
‘the poor’ or ‘women’ take the lead in problem identification and analysis and knowledge
creation.
For impact assessment the purist PLA line is damning: conventional baseline surveys are
virtually useless for impact assessments, and the question now is about how widely local
people can be enabled to identify their own indicators, establish their own participatory
baselines, monitor change, and evaluate causality. By this means two objectives may be
achieved:
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