01/07/2026
*PSRA: PRA 2026 COMMUNITY REFLECTION DARSILAMI & TOROBA*
The Participatory Social Research Association - UTG, are pleased to share some reflection from the recently concluded PRA 2026 engagement process with the communities of Darsilami and Toroba villages. We are grateful for the high participation from community members from both villages; they participated wholeheartedly, spoke freely and demonstrated strong community leadership that enriched the entire exercise. During our engagement, our students used a number of the key PRA tools for co learning with the communities.
With the Venn Diagram, the participants were assisted to identify all social groups and associations within each community, particularly the Village Development Committees and their sub committees and reflect on their linkages and relationships.
Using the Seasonal Livelihood Calendar / Shock-Timeline, the participants were facilitated to reflect on specific years and seasons within which they had experienced significant constraints or had been unable to maintain their livelihoods patterns. Through the Village Resource Mapping, participants were guided to identified and describe the natural, man made and social resources which may be leveraged to facilitate local development and progress. For ground truthing, we carried out a Transect Walk of each community in the presence of selected community members. This exercise enabled students to get a first-hand look at the real life resources and the on the ground realities.
We followed up the walk with a Community Action Plan session whereby communities first identified some of their most critical development problems and through voting secret ballot ranked the problems and then were assisted to develop potential community level solutions.
In each activity, students acted as observers and note takers with the help of our trained student facilitators.
Overall the exercise demonstrated how communities possessed and were able to mobilise existing knowledge and resources to address challenges facing them. The participatory social research association leaves the communities of Darsilami and Toroba full of gratitude, motivated by the learning, the collaboration and the relationships forged in these communities and they will definitely influence the way we will facilitatePRA in the future.
*COMMUNICATION UNIT, PSRA*
