Author: PRIA Blog
PIA presented a paper in an international workshop on ‘Participatory and collaborative action research to empower youth and adult literacy learners in multilingual and multicultural contexts’ organized by UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL), Hamburg, Germany. This workshop was held from March 24-26, 2015. The paper focused upon PRIA’s various ongoing projects that use principles of participatory action research (PAR).
From Lto R: Ngozi Amanze, National Programme Officer, UNESCO-Abuja; Christine Glanz, Programme Specialist, UIL; Arne Carlsen, Director UIL; Hassana Alidou, Director UNESCO-Abuja; Rokhaya Diawara, Programme Specialist, UNESCO-Abuja
Representatives from NGOs, academia and other UNESCO offices spread across Asia, Africa and Europe participated in this workshop.
The workshop offered participants an international platform for exchanging experiences of integrating participatory and collaborative action research (PAR) into initial and continuing training of adult educators to empower youth and adult literacy in multilingual and multicultural contexts. The workshop also provided opportunities to jointly develop a draft policy brief on creating an enabling environment for PAR for youth and adult literacy in multilingual and multicultural contexts.
The proceedings of the workshop focused upon what all needs to be done by participating organisations to strengthen the PAR approaches in their respective work/field.
A presentation was made from PRIA during the session on "how participatory action research (PAR) can be effectively integrated in the training of adult education personnel” for quality youth and adult literacy in multilingual and multicultural contexts: an experience from Asia.
The presentation was based on current PRIA projects and how these projects have tried to incorporate principles of participatory action research. It was emphasized how PRIA projects directly and/or indirectly are facilitating the learning of youth, learning by institutions and building capacities of stakeholders from the communities that PRIA works with. The projects mentioned in this presentation were PRIA International Academy, SLB Connect and Kadam Badao Andolan.
The experience sharing of PRIA’s work was received very well by all the participants. There were many questions that followed the presentation. These were related to applying principles of adult education in our interventions; synthesization of evidence based learning; how PRIA manages to work with government; how media was mobilized to write about our efforts; how do we make communities trust us; role of culture in bringing about attitudinal change; how do we mobilize resources; how we have use action research to educate adult learners; how does PRIA evaluate the impact of its efforts, to mention a few. One of the participants stated that the missing element in our presentation was how action research can be used in formal university setup.
One of the discussants for this session, George Openjuru, Deputy Vice Chancellor, Gulu University, Uganda has worked with PRIA on a journal and hence knew about our work. He drew attention of participants on PRIA’s work and its efforts in using participation action research principles in its projects.
One of the major achievements was that PRIA presentation was quoted on all three days of the workshop in different contexts.
Workshop participants
PRIA’s MobiliseHER team traveled to Bangalore during the week of June, 10 – 14, 2024. The aim of the visit was to gain relevant insights into the civil society ecosystem in Bangalore and meet different organisations to understand the city through a lens of gender and inclusive mobility.
Working at PRIA, often leads us to various cities across the country. Each trip is an opportunity to witness firsthand the challenges and triumphs of different communities.
Mr. Yedukrishnan V has recently joined PRIA after gaining valuable experience in the development sector. Drawing from his journey in the social sector and personal encounters in Kerala, he emphasises the importance of participatory governance and research in empowering marginalised communities.'
