Participatory Baseline Exercise

We are facilitating a participatory baseline exercise in Karatu rural communities to develop our new food security program. Using participatory tools like community mapping, transect walks, seasonal calendars, wealth ranking, resource ownership and control, activity profiles and focus group discussions, we have the opportunity to spend time with women and men farmers to get to really understand their situation, and to assess and make plans together to implement a food security program that will get their desired results.


Transect walks are taken through designated areas of the community to observe people, topography, use of natural resources, cropping patterns, water points, etc. to identify problems and opportunities. It's a chance for community members together with a facilitator to observe and analyze stuff going on in their communities from a fresh perspective. And, there are always surprises like stumbling upon children who should be in school...


The Seasonal Calendar lays out weather patterns and activities that occur on the farm during the 12 months of the year. As a partner of rural communities, it is important for us to understand the challenges, responsibilities and pressures farmers face at particular times of the year. Timing is everything in agriculture so CPAR Tz and farmers need to be clear on when, for example, farmers need access to improved seeds and other agricultural inputs, and which times of the year they may have time to participate in training sessions.

Women and men are separated for various activities in order to capture the unique and often very disparate perspectives of both sexes. One of the more interesting exercises is the "Activity Profile" whereby women and men work in separate groups to lay out a day in the life of a woman or a man. When the profiles are presented to the larger group, much laughter ensues when the women need several sheets of flip chart paper to present their day, and the men can usually stretch their daily activities to 1/3 of one sheet. After the initial laughter comes reflection and analysis as to why their days and hence their lives are so unequal...