PLA Notes CD-ROM 1988-2001 3 Participatory modelling in North Omo, Ethiopia: Investigating the perceptions of different groups through models

Document begins: PLA Notes CD-ROM 1988­2001 3 Participatory modelling in North Omo, Ethiopia: Investigating the perceptions of different groups through models Ejigu Jonfa, Haile Mariam Tebeje, Tadesse Dessalegn, Hailu Halala and Andrea Cornwall Participatory modelling in RRA is based on The team asked the women and children to the idea that when a group come together to make their own models on spaces of ground create a model of their area, the representation adjacent to the area used by the men. The that emerges can serve as an indication of the children quickly gathered sticks, leaves and aspects of the area which are of importance to stones and, under the direction of a ten year the people who live there. Yet `participation' old boy, built an extensive model, which often means, in practice, that the finished included features which the men had left out product tends to reflect the picture that the and, more relevantly, had excluded from their dominant group wish to portray. A `group of model. For example, the men's model showed villagers' may include old and young, men, the whole area as a patchwork of farm lands women and children, but how successfully can and discussions centred ...