Participatory Rural Appraisal

Participatory rural appraisal is a growing family of approaches and methods that enable local people to share, enhance, and analyze their own knowledge of their lives and conditions, and to plan and act on it. Associated above all with Robert Chambers, PRA reverses the conventional research relationship: outside facilitators hand over the stick, and community members themselves do the mapping, ranking, diagramming, and analysis that drive planning and action.