Participatory Research projects

Knowledge has always been a major source of power and control .It has functioned as a factor reinforcing division of society into ‘haves ‘and have nots’, or the powerful and the powerless. Monopoly of knowledge has been accorded as one of the reasons for continual subjugation of the poor wherein production of knowledge, its certification and dissemination are controlled by intellectual elites. The struggle to break this monopoly requires new tools which challenges the myth of elite control over production and use of knowledge.

Participatory research is a method of inquiry, learning and change wherein realizing and learning about the reality is believed to be an act of changing that reality. This exercise thus involves the community in the entire research project, from the formulation of the problem and interpretation of the findings to planning corrective action based upon them.

PRIA’s work is focused on promoting participation of the poor and the marginalized in planning, implementing and monitoring their own development projects. In so doing, PRIA has developed a wide variety of methods, approaches and tools that promote participation in research, planning, monitoring and evaluation. Facilitating participatory learning for collectives of the poor and the marginalized, such that they could utilize their own knowledge and appropriate other knowledge to work towards claiming their developmental rights is a unique feature of PRIA’s work with a wide variety of protagonists—women, tribals, rural poor, workers in the formal and informal sectors of the economy.