This PRA based training workshop is the third in a series of workshops which have focused on Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) and Participatory Learning and Action (PLA). The aims of these workshops have been to provide tools, techniques and approaches for community-based fieldwork so as to improve local participation in the project. The first two workshops conducted by the same facilitation team (April and October 1997) focused on the introduction of PRA techniques and participatory fieldwork. This third workshop created the linkage between the application of techniques and the more process-oriented aspect of participation, which is the institutionalization of participation through local group formation and local capacity building. Unlike the first two workshops which focused on the transfer of particular skills to the project personnel, this workshop was more of a Training of Trainers (TOT) event. After an introductory review and recapitulation of the material and training provided in the first two workshops (PRA tools such as informal interviewing, social mapping, ranking and scoring, institutional diagramming as well as SWOT analysis), the workshop then focused on the process of group formation and maintenance, communications and leadership and conflict management. The workshop concentrated on tools and detailed participatory exercises which facilitated the process of local capacity and institution building. The workshop participants and the project staff regarded this workshop as the first step in further detailed and focused training in group formation - of local user groups - and conflict resolution within groups which would be required by the project in the coming three years before external funding ends.
