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35 young people benefit from Participatory Research Training

4 August 2008

Thirty five young people representing a number of youth groups benefited from a five-day training workshop on Participatory Learning Techniques as part of a collaborative effort between the Commonwealth Youth Programme Caribbean Centre (CYPCC) and the Ministry of Youth Affairs of Barbados

The sessions which were held at the Savannah Hotel in Hastings, Barbados from July 21 to 25, sought to equip participants with the necessary skills and competencies to engage their peers in various communities about issues affecting them in preparation for a six-week National Youth Consultation exercise which starts this week.

During the opening ceremony of the training workshop, Mr. Hally Haynes commended the young people for their voluntary participation and encouraged them to continue supporting the national youth consultations process.

The five-day session was facilitated by Dr Heather Ricketts and Mr. Sean Ffrench lecturers at the faculty of Social Sciences of the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica.

Dr Ricketts introduced participants to the Social Assessment (SA) Methodology and the meaning of and steps of social assessment. She also discussed Setting the Development Agenda for Participation and The critique of economic analysis.

While Mr Ffrench walked the group through the Participatory Learning and Action Tools such as the Listing and Ranking, Pair-wise Ranking, Objective Tree, Problem Tree and the Venn diagram tool, more commonly called “Roti” Diagram because it resembles the popular food.

On Thursday July 24, the young people converged on the community of Haynesville in groups to test the knowledge gained and to apply the learning and action tools to the issues affecting young people in Haynesville.

On the following day the workshop concluded with a debriefing session which allowed participants in each group to present their findings for feedback and discussion.

The consensus building and airing of youth concerns at community levels during the six weeks national consultations will inform the formulation of a new National Youth Policy for Barbados.

According to CYPCC Programme Manager, Dwynette Eversley, who initiated the partnership with UWI, Mona for capacity strengthening on PLA, the intervention in Barbados is part of a CYP’s overall objective to train young people in applied and participatory research methods in order to contribute over time to the development of a credible evidenced-based framework for youth development. Recalling the level of enthusiasm for the training, Ms Eversley added,” The PLA is engaging and readily embraced by young people. A lot of credit must go to Heather and Sean for making the experience so alive and exciting and relevant. By 2012, we expect to have young people in all member countries trained in applied and participatory and we also expect to see a significant amount of returns in the informed youth research projects being generated as a result of the work in community, especially in grass roots and other communities that are sometimes left out of planning because of fear, stereotyping or other misconceptions. This is really going to be a major catalyst for the type of young-driven development that we have always advocated’.