It’s important to not only address our communities’ needs but also to deeply engage community-led organisations as co-designers and partners. Beyond the ethics of doing this, a project designed in this way is also more likely to be sustainable and relevant. One transformative approach is Participatory Learning and Action (PLA), a methodology, tool, and process that can empower communities as true partners.

What is PLA?

Participatory Learning and Action is a multifaceted approach that meaningfully involves the community in all stages of a project, from planning and implementation to monitoring and evaluation.

The belief is that those directly affected by a project, strategy, etc should be partners in making that decision—a simple idea that no one can dispute, but this is clearly not the approach organisations take.

I value its approach of centring active participation and ensuring projects are aligned with the community’s needs and cultural contexts.

How To

There are several iterative steps: identifying issues, prioritizing problems, developing strategies, implementing actions, and evaluating outcomes. Each phase uses tools such as mappings, diagrams, ranking exercises, and seasonal calendars to draw out community knowledge and perspectives. This helps gather the most relevant data and promote community-level ownership.

When you use PLA, ensure to:

1. Credit your partner organisation as a co-partner
2. Compensate them financially for their work. Either by adding them as grant partners, subgranting, or other means. Pay people for their time and expertise
3. Work with them in the design, strategy, implementation, M&E, and all steps
4. Share decision making
5. Have a sense of humility because you, as an implementing organisation, are the power holder here
6. Step back when you need to, and ensure to reflect on your power and how you can better shift it throughout the project
7. Be humble
8. Keep an open mind and learn from all your project partners so your future work can also better reflect your communities’ needs

Why

1. Enhanced Project Relevance and Acceptance: By involving community members in the planning process, PLA ensures that the interventions are culturally relevant and widely accepted. That’s crucial for its success and sustainability – since people will support a project they helped create!
2. Greater Transparency and Accountability: PLA’s open discussions and collective decision-making processes create an environment where community members can hold each other and the implementing organisations accountable. This transparency is crucial for trust-building and restoring power where it belongs.
3. Learning. Often, the organisation implementing the project is limited in its knowledge of the community. PLA is an amazing tool for your organisation to learn and improve its capacity. Sadly, too often we talk about ‘building the capacity of local partners’. But I think one of PLA’s biggest benefits is filling that gap in knowledge. Community groups, organisations, and the people living in them have a wealth of knowledge that we don’t even think about, and we perceive our roles as implementers as working with them and helping them to grow – when actually, the growth and knowledge-sharing is the other way around.

Doing PLA right requires time, money, flexibility, and often a shift in organisation culture. As a co-partner, everyone needs to be skilled in community engagement, and that includes at the individual personal level, and sensitive to local and cultural power dynamics to ensure inclusive participation.