Workshop with the Grameen Development Services (GDS) on Participatory Rural Appraisal

Date: March 24-26, 2011

Grameen Development Services (GDS) in collaboration with the CMF conducted a training program on Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) in order to enhance their knowledge of qualitative research methodologies. The workshop was held at Beawar, Rajasthan on March 24-26, 2011.

On the first day of the training, participants were introduced to different techniques of  PRA tools such as transect walk, social mapping, well being ranking, seasonal mapping, venn diagram and matrix mapping.  Several practical exercises were  conducted where participants were divided into groups and asked to  to carry out different PRA techniques in the field.  In order to practice the PRA tools, each group of participants was assigned different villages where they implemented PRA tools with the local villagers.  They started off by talking to the villagers and creating a relaxed rapport with the villagers, followed by implementation of several PRA tools such as  social mapping,  seasonal mapping, paired ranking, score matrix and so on.