Manual de diagnóstico rural participativo con enfoque territorial: una guía para la elaboración de diagnósticos rurales

Abstract

When it is intended to develop projects with communities, one of the main challenges that must be faced is, without a doubt, to achieve the participation of people, making them get involved in an effective way, both in the search for information and in the subsequent implementation of the draft. However, this is not an easy task and requires stakeholders to find the most appropriate mechanisms to achieve this goal. Various experiences in social research and international cooperation projects have shown that the best way to achieve the effective participation of the community in the projects is when its members are linked in the different stages of the project through participatory strategies, because they promote greater dialogue, rapprochement and trust between the team and the community. In rural areas where there are limiting factors such as mobility, communications and the provision of adequate physical spaces for work, the implementation of participatory techniques becomes the best and most optimal strategy to carry out development projects that link the community. However, participation goes far beyond the type of strategies used to obtain information, it also implies linking the community in the identification of its problems and the search for effective solutions based on ingenuity and knowledge of the community's own reality. rather than the intervention and judgment of external experts, who should limit themselves to a role as facilitators and guides in this type of process. The purpose of this Manual is to describe the process of applying useful instruments in Rural Diagnostics to identify the socioeconomic, productive, environmental and organizational conditions of a particular community.