Document(s) 5 of 16

Led by Alioune Danfa of ADEF-Afrique, the Group A assignment was to consider the role of participatory development communication as a tool for nonformal basic education in the IDRC program in Africa. Initially, the group discussed the task, the context, and the time available for discussion. We wrestled with the dilemma that effective participatory development communication strategies are built in relation to specific contexts and that our understanding of the IDRC program in Africa was limited. Our compromise was to offer a distillation of ideas from our practice and theory in other localities, without assuming appropriateness for IDRC in Africa.

We reframed the topic by naming two foci for our discussions. The first focus was the identification of elements which are key components of our conceptions of participatory development communication. The second was the identification of the main questions and challenges requiring attention and resolution to maximize the benefits of participatory development communication in any program or project.

While our backgrounds and experience varied considerably, we were struck by the commonality of our views, rather than our differences, and this held true in discussions of both foci. Statements from individuals appeared to garner group consensus, although the group did not have time to establish this thoroughly and formally.

Elements Vital to Participatory Development Communication

A clear interest in empowerment as the primary reason for subscribing to and adopting participatory development communication. In brief, empowerment was the agency to name, analyze, and act on problems of significance by those at the grassroots of any situation (problem posing). Some would insist that empowerment is not complete unless skills of critical awareness acquired to understand the meaning of one problem have been applied to new problems and situations. Others would not assume empowerment without evidence that a critical consciousness of the root causes of social and economic imbalances had developed, along with problem-posing and problem-solving ability.

Element Two

A blurring of the distinction between audience and producers. Participatory development communication configured in the transportation paradigm made audiences and producers distinct and separate entities. In participatory development communication in a cultural model (to which the group subscribed), those who formerly were regarded as audience participate in defining the content, the choice or construction of media, the process itself, and evaluation of effectiveness and outcomes. By definition, a participatory model engages people who were formerly objects in communication — and in learning — as subjects.

Element Three

A range of communication activities, not confined to interpersonal and indigenous communication, but including communication which utilizes the "technologies of amplification."

Element Four

Circumstances in which people at the grassroots were equipped with communication tools and left free to decide, direct and structure communication activities or applications as they saw fit. (This statement makes the assumption that the tools are appropriate to local circumstances and maintenance of the tools has been assured).

Element Five

Application to issues and problems at the grassroots level which touch on structural issues in the lives of those affected.

Element Six

The presence of an intervenor, animator or change agent to spark the participatory communication process leading to a further exploration, undertaken in a spirit of mutual inquiry and exploration, where the intervenor has the same status as those with whom he or she is engaged. This does not imply that the intervenor plays the same role as all the others — only that the intervenor has no higher authority than the others in the collaborative search for understanding. The positioning of the animator in a nonauthoritarian role is common to both the theory of Paulo Freire and the practice of the Fogo Process.

Element Seven

A belief that the degree to which manipulation of people was eliminated or minimized would be an indicator of how authentically the participatory development communication process had been followed. This element was raised in acknowledgement of instances of pseudo-participation. Orchestrated participation rarely benefits those at the grassroots (or those most severely affected by the problem being addressed) but may instead benefit the intervenor or elites.

Element Eight

Extreme caution about positioning media professionals as central planners or decision-makers in implementing a participatory development communication process. This process loses its capacity for empowerment if the production values of media professionals are served at the expense of local people's ownership and sense of agency. Media tools must become the servants of the process; people must not become servants of media. Participatory development communication requires people who know development, community, and media — and in that order.

Element Nine

Intervenors who work without a preprogrammed agenda, either in terms of the ability to attend to problems given priority by local people, or use of any specific communication medium in implementing a program. (This caution is inserted in response to our knowledge of many development projects arising from a central planning perspective which do not take local priorities and local realities into account, and our experience of noting that some development communicators have predilections for one medium over another, quite independently from specifics of a problem).

Element Ten

A belief that participatory development communication is largely defined by a common philosophy of shared ideas and assumptions such as those named above, not by any particular medium or methodology. Rephrased, not all development projects using radio, for example, would be participatory development communication and not all programs reputedly participatory would be considered genuinely participatory communication by us. Philosophies, or fundamental assumptions about how the world works, define participatory development communication. That statement is vital to keep in mind when encountering new terminology and catchphrases, and in understanding how a process with a different name may have the same core belief structure. In this regard, we referred to popular education.

The elements named above are not an exhaustive list. Nor was there an opportunity later to fine-tune, pause over wording, check for internal contradictions or prioritize the elements (other than agreeing that empowerment was to be given priority over all others). Conscious of the passing time, we followed the chair's suggestion and directed our attention to the second focus.

Three questions set the agenda for the remainder of the afternoon:

• What are the main questions or challenges that must be addressed if participatory communication is to be an effective philosophy or tool in basic education and nonformal education?
• How are these challenges and questions related?
• What can we offer today about parameters or helpful directions for these challenges and questions?

Challenges in Participatory Communication

The vital role and need for training in participatory approaches to development, including development communication. Training is needed as much for policymakers, senior administrators, and development bureaucrats as for development communication planners, field staff, and community workers. A favourable climate for success of participatory development communications will not be possible through training of one group while neglecting others. In some instances, a radical change in understanding the nature of development and attitudes toward development communication will be necessary.

Challenge Two

A readiness to acknowledge that effective participatory development communication works toward, and ideally creates changes in the status quo, and as a result is inherently political, whether at the micro or macro level.

Challenge Three

Launching of an action research program to support three areas. The first is a better understanding related to differing decisions among any particular group to engage or participate in a process. This area of concern is generally referred to as motivation (although that phrasing is uncomfortably instrumentalist for some of us). The second issue for which research is needed is finding the best approaches to effective training in development communication. Evaluation is the third issue for which research is required.

Challenge Four

Substantially enlarging the resource base to support work and development with these participatory development communication strategies. Current resource allocations are too meagre to sustain the magnitude of effort required.

Challenge Five

Being on guard against too fundamentalist or purist a stand on indigenous knowledge. One specific challenge illustrating this concern was the need to validate both indigenous and expert knowledge, and find an effective means of blending the two. Our ideological commitment to validating indigenous knowledge (partially to balance the positivist's exclusive reliance on expert knowledge) has sometimes blinded us to an appreciation of when and how a blend of both is more useful. This challenge also extends to readiness to change local attitudes which are problematic for development — some superstitions and sexism being two examples. New ideas introduced by way of participatory development communication will, however, be most readily accepted if based on social and cultural compatibility.

Challenge Six

Use of the tools of participatory communication and nonformal education to create spaces and opportunities in which people can do their own work and undertake activities which are empowering without the ongoing involvement of an intervenor.

Challenge Seven

Designing and developing participatory communication approaches which maximize the possibility of their being self-renewing.

Challenge Eight

Supporting the development and adoption of a national language in colonized countries. Since participatory communication is futile if undertaken in a language alien to the people involved, literacy in a native language of the country is inevitably a concern of participatory communication.

Challenge Nine

Allocating time and resources for the recovery and experience of self-confidence by local people is even more fundamental than literacy within participatory communication. Some portion of participatory communication is reinforcing the strengths, talents, and worth of groups with whom we are engaged, so that their self-confidence emerges and is solidified.

Challenge Ten

Being prepared to respond to the regulatory aspects of communication policy that many governments are now putting in place.

Challenge Eleven

Learning measures of survival for development communication by being adroit and strategic in building effective relationships and good communication with those who control or influence the resources our activities require.

Challenge Twelve

The perennial question of ways to think about which media are most appropriate to different problems and different environments.

Challenge Thirteen

To think searchingly and creatively about the relationship between government and NGOs in sharing responsibility for basic education and nonformal education, given that formal education frequently excludes many people — women and girls, for example.

Challenge Fourteen

To inquire more searchingly into the issues of invitation or entry of development workers with a participatory communication approach and the relationship between this early phase and long-term sustainability.

Considering the constraints under which we worked and the magnitude of our task, I am impressed with what we accomplished. That we set out to create a conceptual map of the terrain of participatory communication by establishing essential signposts and prominent features, including hazards, was entirely natural. Each of us had a need to consult the others to see the extent to which our individual maps, however hazy or well-defined, corresponded to those of other "cartographers" of participatory development communication. Our report gives you the conceptual elements we share. Equally natural was our consideration of the work still do be done, individually and collectively, to assure and increase the utility of our working map for ourselves and those parts of the world's population with whom our work was allied — hence the fourteen challenges.

However, we did not have the opportunity to take the task to the next logical step — to define the key concepts separately, so that we could see each in relation to the others, and to delineate the overlap and interfaces. Indeed, we made no distinction between the key phrases, a tacit acknowledgment that all are inextricably fused in practice. I speculate too, that we tend to resist taking a scalpel to create surgical cuts, sensing the potential of such a process to negate practice, which is holistic, sometimes ephemeral, potentially powerful, and always complex. I could not take exception to how we proceeded; as a member of the group, I had the same responsibilities as my colleagues for our choices.

Document(s) 5 of 16