1.2 Objectives of the workshop
- The Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) workshop was organised
in the village of Sodhi, in a lodge of the Punjab Forest Department.
Field work was carried out in the villages of Ucchali and Ugali,
near lake Ucchali, and in Dhadar, near lake Khabbaki.The field
work and overnight stays in villages provided a context for workshop
participants to live with and interact with villagers over a significant
period of time.
The primary objectives of this action oriented workshop were
to:
- Introduce the PRA approach to staff members of government
departments and WWF-Pakistan and train them in basic PRA concepts,
principles and methods. The classroom exercises and practical
fieldwork were designed to encourage experiential learning.
- Carry out PRAs in villages located near two lakes of
the Ucchali complex, assess local needs and opportunities with
the villagers and initiate a participatory planning process
for the management of the wetlands.
- Revise the existing management plan for the Ucchali complex
in the light of the interactive dialogue between outsiders and
villagers.
- Provide examples, material and training notes for future
Participatory Rural Appraisals which might be carried out by
conservation organisations in Pakistan.
In the last five years, similar workshops have been organised
in other parts of the world including South Asia, South East Asia,
East Africa, West Africa, South Africa, Latin America, the Middle
East, Western and Eastern Europe with governments, NGOs and academic
organisations. These have focussed on changing the behaviours
and attitudes of external professionals to enable them to learn
from the local people and to enable the local communities to participate
in analysing and planning their own conservation and development
programmes.
Participants
The workshop involved 22 participants from WWF Pakistan and various
Departments of the Government of Pakistan. They included foresters,
ecologists, protected area managers ornithologists and project
managers. The participants were a mix of 6 women and 16 men,
with different levels of experience in natural resource management
and conservation issues. A list of workshop participants is given
in Annex 1.
Over 300 village residents participated in the eleven day field
based workshop. Some of the villagers also worked as facilitators
for some of the exercises. A list of participants from Ucchali,
Ugali and Dhadar villages is given in Annex 2.
The four PRA trainers and workshop facilitators were from the
Kalam Integrated Development Project (Pakistan) and from WWF International
(Switzerland).
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