Report on South-south workshop on PRA : attitudes and behaviour

Worldwide, PRA practitioners and trainers have been finding that personal behaviour and attitudes are fundamental for true participation. Behaviour and attitudes matter more than methods, powerful though PRA methods have proved. At the personal level, practitioners and trainers have found that the major problem in development is not 'them' - local people, the poor and marginalised, but 'us' -the outsider professionals. Again and again, we have rushed and dominated, imposing our reality, and denying that of the weak and vulnerable. For the poor to be empowered requires us to change, to interact in new ways, to become not controllers, teachers and transferers of technology, but convenors, facilitators and supporters, enabling those who are weak and marginalised to express and analyse their realities, to plan and to act. For this, it is we who have to behave differently; it is our attitudes that have to change.