Participatory Approaches in Project Management

Article by Shao Wen

In response to the training needs and requests of Heifer China's regional offices, the Training Department has assisted the regional offices to provide training workshops on Participatory Project Management, Village-Level Participatory Assessment and Planning and Community Institution Building during the first season of 2005.

The training workshops on Participatory Project Management were conducted for the project partners in Kangding, Sichuan and Kunming, Yunnan with the support of the Sichuan-Chongqing and Yunnan-Guizhou Regional Offices. The objectives of the two-day workshops were to understand the cycle of participatory project management and the steps, discuss the application of participatory tools of data collection and data analysis, enhance the understanding of participants regarding participatory approaches, and consequently reach a consensus on the importance of participatory approaches in project management.

The five-day training workshop on Participatory Assessment and Planning for the ethnically Miao village of Heinigou was held in the village of Majun, Yunnan. It aimed at building the capacity of participants in Participatory Assessment and Planning at village level, and outlining a Development Plan for Heinigou based on the analysis of current resource utilization through participatory approaches in data collection and data analysis. The participants consisted of 7 farmers from Heinigou, 2 project partners from Songming and Lijiang, 2 staff from the Yunnan-Guizhou Regional Office and 3 from Heifer International's China Office. The fieldwork group made up of the participants worked on data collection, data analysis and planning at village level.

The training workshop on Community Institution Building had been implemented in Bengbu, Anhui. During the three days, the project partners, learders from project communities, and recipients representatives from Anhui project sites, one from Sichuan and Chongqing Regional Office, one from Yunnan and Guizhou Regional Office, and two from Heifer International China Office regarding the key topics in terms of participatory approaches, community, project community, building community institutions and staffing, regulations of project community, and sustainability of community institutions. As a result, the participants got the common agreement on community institution building, discussed the differentiated role of the various stakeholders, and shared the action plan of community institution building by each project site.

The training workshops above have strengthened the capacity building of the key stakeholders in participatory approaches. The farmers realized that they are the key stakeholders and the main body of project, they are crucial to the success of project implementation, and thus the farmers' ownership awareness was improved. While the project partners and project staff agreed on penetrating participatory approaches in the whole process of project management and furthermore taking action.