Date
05-Jul-2010 to 23-Jul-2010 		Location
India		 Format
Institutional

Description

 

Calgary Board of Education to Study
Participatory Research Approaches from PRIA,

5-23 July 2010

PRIA hosted a delegation from the Calgary Board of Education, Canada on an exposure visit to India from 5-23 July 2010 to learn Participatory Research approaches from PRIA’s experience on the theme. The objectives of the exposure visit were:

  • To learn about Participatory Research in an experiential learning environment.
  • To learn about the issues that Participatory Research addresses in Gender Mainstreaming.
  • To learn about the practice of Participatory Research in other fields such as civil society building and the environment.
  • To learn about India's culture and diversity since more than 25 per cent of the students in Calgary identify themselves as Indian-Canadians, Indo-Canadians, Canadians of Indian Heritage or Canadians of Indian origin.

The Exposure Programme aims to provide the participants with an international experience that will educate them in concepts of PR in the Indian context and hopefully help them build a more effective educational board in Canada.

CBE is the largest public school system in Western Canada and the second largest school board in Canada.  The CBE has 200 schools under it, with almost 100,000 students enrolled in public schools. The CBE Staff comprising the CBE Trustee, Director, Global Learning Staff, principals, vice principals and teachers, will be in India for a period of three weeks to gain an understanding on participatory research with a special focus on issues of gender mainstreaming and education.
 
Upon their arrival on 5 July, an inaugural ceremony was organised for the thirteen CBE staff members. The ceremony was followed by a session on expectation sharing by the CBE members. One of the members explained that the primary reason of their visit to India is to understand the high rate of dropouts and absenteeism also prevalent in the CBE among the marginalised students and PRIA’s work with the marginalised would enable them to learn and develop insights on initiating a change for marginalised students within their school system.
 
 
Sessions were also held on the concept of Participatory Research, on orienting the participants on PRIA’s work on Citizen’s Participation and Democratic Governance and India’s culture.
 
The following three days were dedicated to discussions on the themes of Participatory Research in Practice, Strengthening Citizen’s Participation in Local Self Governance, Participatory Urban Planning, Participatory Approaches to Development Programme, Strengthening Adolescence and Youth Leadership, Orientation on Gender, Gender Mainstreaming concerns in India and Canada and Participatory Approaches for Women’s Empowerment and Female Foeticide.

The participants are soon to leave for an exposure visit to two field sites - Haryana and Dharamshala. In Haryana, they will be exposed to PRIA’s work on Female Foeticide. The purpose of their visit to Dharamshala is to understand the issues of women’s livelihood, water and sanitation programmes and citizen participation in them.

Next, the participants would visit an NGO and a school in Delhi to understand the non-formal and formal modes of education in India.