PLA Notes CD-ROM 1988-2001 Learning from analysis Ensuring reflection in participatory processes

Document begins: PLA Notes CD-ROM 1988­2001 Learning from analysis Ensuring reflection in participatory processes Irene Guijt and Su Braden Introduction The articles in this issue discuss what happens when data are `collected', discussed, This special issue of the PLA Notes looks at summarised and shared, when priorities are the tricky process of `making sense of the made, and action points are agreed. Insights information'. While it is easy to generate much are shared from community-based analysis of interesting and unusual information through gender differences in Uganda, poverty assessment in the UK, and irrigation planning participatory processes, it is often very in Peru. Challenges are raised by experiences difficult to make sense of the mountain of with the analysis of rural views for policy `data' with which we are left. Where does participation in analysis begin and end? When audiences in India and Malawi, and with does it happen, and how and by whom is local municipal planning in Brazil. Facilitation- learning represented? Critics of participatory related questions are discussed by examining development often point out the superficial and well-being assessment in London and training manual development in El Salvador. descriptive nature of such work, asking how conclusions were reached and ...