Their voices have been heard…

“Go to people,
Live with them
Love them.
Start with what they knew.
Build with what they have.
But with the best leaders,
When the work is done,
The task accomplished,
The people will say,
“We have done this ourselves”

-Lao Tse

Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) is a family of approaches and methods to enable local people to share, enhance and analyze their knowledge of life and conditions, to plan, to act and that’s according to Robert Chambers. Thus, it is a community-oriented mutual learning process which aims to achieve common goals. It makes use of variety visualization tools to facilitate information exchange. Knowledge of local people is being valued as equally important as scientific expertise. Local people’s knowledge serves as the starting point for drafting plans of action.

SEA, Inc. has been using PRA in its partner communities. Recently, we conducted a PRA training in Barangay Salacay, one of the most progressive barangays in the municipality of Cabatuan. The team presented nine (9) PRA tools namely; Venn Diagram, Flow Diagram, Transect Map, Social Map, Spot Map, Seasonal Calendar, Timeline, 24-Hour Recall and Household Inventory, their functions and importance it can do to help their community.