Reconnecting with Our Roots: Celebrating 30 Years of PRIA

It has been three decades – 30 years – since PRIA (Society for Participatory Research in Asia) began its journey as a development organization committed to social change.

To celebrate 30 years of PRIA, teams of current PRIA staff have begun undertaking journeys to revisit and reconnect with our roots – the people we have touched, the project sites we have worked in, the partners who have helped us along our way, and ex-colleagues who contributed to building PRIA. We want to learn what we did, how we did it, what difference it has made – to help strengthen us as we re-commit ourselves to ‘empowering the poor and the excluded such that they can claim their rights and improve their lives’.

PRIA’s operating ‘mantra’ has been –‘KNOWLEDGE IS POWER’. What has been the impact of PRIA’s interventions in the lives of the poor and the marginalized? How did knowledge support from PRIA strengthen local and grassroots efforts? What different forms of interventions of knowledge—from knowledge sharing to dissemination to synthesis of practice—support our efforts? In what ways have capacity enhancement interventions of PRIA empowered the work of our partners? How did our partners sustain their own capacity enhancement to continue to deepen their own work? PRIA has used the twin processes of collectivization and learning for empowerment; did this approach support others’ efforts we worked with?

If you have been associated with PRIA in the past or are currently, and would like to share with us any stories, anecdotes, photos, documents—anything that demonstrates the nature of connections you and your work has had with PRIA over these three decades—please send them to rajeshtandon1@pria.org.

We look forward to your comments and feedback as we share with you our journey of reconnecting with our roots during the course of 2012.