Blog Participatory Approaches for Inclusive Development
“Participatory approaches allow researchers to develop more empathetic and targeted actions that go beyond simple recommendations, creating more meaningful engagement.” - Melissa Bonilla, Alliance researcher on human-centered design
How can a board game improve nutrition in rural communities, and how can home-made videos offer valuable insights into farmers’ priorities? With participatory approaches, researchers can put end users at the center of their work, co-designing projects with communities who support in identifying the unique interests in their region and co-implementing the chosen activities in the benefit of sustainable farming practices, nutrition, and healthy landscapes. Exploring Alliance experiences of multiple participatory methods to increase projects’ inclusivity and legacy, this article draws from the experiences of researchers to evaluate these strategies that move from ‘top-down’ project planning – where external organizations choose, plan and implement projects developed in isolation – to participatory models that empower participants to lead the change in their region.
Farmers participate in a focus group discussion in Vietnam. Credit: CIAT/Georgina Smith
What are participatory approaches?
As affirmed by Céline Termote – Alliance Researcher on food environments and consumer behavior – “stakeholders know their context much better than us, so co-design makes sure that action plans are context-adapted and respond to the needs of the community”, focusing on the interests and involvement of those people affected by the core challenge to be addressed. Instead of researchers developing an action plan alone, participatory approaches provide space for communities to work hand in hand with project leaders in analyzing, developing and implementing activities that align with their interests.
Céline Termote explains how participatory approaches can be implemented in various formats and to varying degrees: “Some project developers hold a ‘focus group discussion’ with participants to extract information, and they already call that participatory. Other projects have already chosen their interventions and just call the community to co-design ‘how’ the interventions should be implemented. However, to me it only becomes interesting when project leaders involve communities throughout the process, starting with the decision on ‘what’ to implement in the first place, depending on their interests. At this level, project organizers can also involve the community in implementing and even evaluating project results.”
Participants testing the Happy Family Board Game in Busia County, Kenya. Credit: Save the Children, Bungoma office
Participatory approaches in action
Participatory video
Participatory video is a unique approach to understand the daily reality of project participants, using insights (gathered through homemade videos a starting point to develop new programs for agriculture, conservation, nutrition, or any other topic that may emerge from the activity. Participatory video reverses the top-down model as participants – in this case, farmers – lead the exploration of challenges to be addressed, while the researchers simply receive the information shared: “the power dynamics are changed, and the videos become a tool to facilitate the conversation”.
Alliance research teams have tested participatory video techniques in Rwanda; they first offered a simple training to farmers, gave them the cameras, and offered a few prompts on videos to record. The objective was to gather participants’ authentic experiences, ensuring that the project under development addresses their unique interests. One video can be seen here:
Through the video above, researchers gathered valuable information to frame future projects: The recording shows how Florid and her husband manage their farmland together and collaborate with other farmers, they learnt the farming practices that they use from their older generations, production for home consumption is important, and family well-being is a driver of choices. From the video commentary researchers can also identify that bananas are the narrating farmer’s priority crop, and that weather patterns had created challenges for potato production; all these insights allow project developers to prioritize farmers’ interests and leverage the social environment in which they work. Facilitators observed: “Their videos allowed us to see the world through their eyes and understand their context beyond a simple question-and-answer format”.
By engaging people, these projects can also have ripple effects on the community. As observed by Irmgard Jordan – Alliance Researcher on consumer behavior – “the videos are not only a data source for us but also an instrument to facilitate reflection of the participants’ own situation which is a basis for co-creation.”
Human-centered design
Another methodology within participatory approaches is ‘human-centered design’. Berta Ortiz – Alliance Researcher on digital agriculture – explains: “we spend time with the users of the solutions being developed... With the insights we gather we ideate possible solutions, and showcase them using prototypes, which we further test with those users. Testing allows us to see if our solutions meet users’ needs.” Specifically, Berta Ortiz works on Artemis, a project that applies artificial intelligence and imaging technology to crop breeding in the form of a mobile app, allowing anyone anywhere to collect accurate agricultural data: “We have visited different breeding teams in Tanzania, Uganda and Nigeria; we have explored how they currently phenotype, and identified the main challenges they face. These insights have directly shaped the Artemis app: for example, due to the limited budget for capacity development the app will have an onboarding component. Another insight we gathered is that a lot of data is lost for analysis because anomalies are not identified, though we cannot know if this is due to wrong data entries (e.g. typos) or to a change of crop performance on the field. Therefore, the app will allow for real-time monitoring of data, avoiding losses. These insights are likely to positively impact the uptake of the tool once it is developed.” By putting end users at the center of the testing of the solution, human-centered design is allowing the Artemis team to make the most appropriate adjustments to the final version.
Learning and sharing through a board game
“The board game is a tool for participatory research but also for participatory activities to trigger behavior change.” - Imgrid Jordan
The Alliance is a partner of ‘EaTSANE’, an international research project using a “participatory action learning approach” to promote sustainable farming practices and healthier household diets in Kenya and Uganda. The project’s main product is the ‘Happy Family Board Game’, which has been held in multiple communities in these countries to highlight the connections between households’ farming decisions, nutrition and food value chains, in a playful way. Rather than simply ‘explaining’ findings to participants, researchers found that the board game increased interpersonal interactions, increasing motivation to share their experiences and adopt new behaviors, thereby providing more meaningful insights for facilitating researchers, and more impactful experiences for participants.
Focus group discussion on inclusive business models in Vietnam. Credit: CIAT/Georgina Smith
Challenges of implementing participatory approaches
While the benefit of participatory methodologies for more inclusive solutions is clear, implementing these approaches also has its challenges. First and foremost, as these approaches are an ‘alternative’ to top-down design and implementation, Céline Termote noted that “co-design with communities can be seen as ‘strange’, as people are not used to having a say in their own development projects.” However, although this approach was initially surprising to participants, this didn’t block positive outcomes. Termote continued: “But, once they got used to it, people really go for it, organize their own side meetings, discuss, and are proud to come up with their own community action plan.” In fact, it seems that although perceptions may create an initial blockage, overcoming these adds further momentum to the projects: “Subsequently, when it comes to implementing their own plans, they take pride and do not want to fail, as they know that these are their own plans.”
A second challenge could be proving to other research and development organizations that participatory approaches empower communities, boost inclusivity and increase impact. When asked how we can know whether a participatory project has had more positive results than a ‘top-down’ project with the same objective, Termote conceded: “I believe that co-design increases impact; however, proving this with statistics is very hard. The activities are context-specific and have many variables, making it hard to ‘control’ in scientific terms.” As a result, it may be hard to increase the uptake of these practices at a large scale: As for the attitude and behavior of researchers regarding participation, the literature indicates a widespread lack of awareness, interest, time, incentives, and recognition by the current research system. To increase interest – and therefore, funding – in participatory projects, methods to show evidence of its impact must be identified.
Researchers and farmers in the field discussing pest prevention. Credit: CIAT/Georgina Smith
Steps towards mainstreaming participatory approaches
“Inclusive facilitation is an art that can be nurtured and developed.” - Haley Zaremba and Marlène Elias
The conviction of all interviewed researchers that participatory approaches lead to more inclusive and lasting change proves the importance of mainstreaming these practices – thus normalizing the approach for participants – and, by upscaling its use, finding ways to prove their value, thus increasing belief in these practices. Alliance researchers are committed to increasing awareness and accessibility of these approaches, sharing lessons learnt for other research and development actors to test these methods. For example, in 2021 the researchers quoted above contributed to an open-access manual titled ‘Inclusive participatory approaches: A facilitator’s guide’ sharing insights on how to ensure that all participants’ voices are heard, build trust between participants and researchers, and sharing strategies to translate participants’ inputs into actions.
The Team
Melissa Bonilla
Investigadora Asociada - Human Centered Design
Berta Ortiz Crespo
User Experience Design Specialist
Céline Termote
Senior Scientist - Africa Regional Team leader Food Environment and Consumer Behavior
Irmgard Jordan
Human Nutrition and Home Economic Scientist - CIM Expert
Haley Zaremba
Consultant
