PRA-Manual Embracing Participitation tools-only.pdf - PACA

3.70 EMBRACING PARTICIPATION IN DEVELOPMENT: Wisdom from the Field
2.16 Case studies, stories and portraits
Anecdotes, individual life histories or the description of a significant event in a
person’s life that may come up during discussions provide a valuable insight on
the issues being discussed. Most visual methods of analysis provide a group’s or
an individual’s perception on an issue. Individual experiences and testimonies
can be used to support the results from group analysis. Usually these experiences
are heard but not recorded by the facilitators.
The boys in the school frequently ask the girls in the same grade for
sexual favors. "Sometimes they only want to touch some parts of
our body and sometimes they also pinch us. They also ask us to
have sex", explained a group of 9-15 year old schoolgirls, and
added, "When they ask us to have sex, we have to agree."
"Why do you have to agree?" we wanted to know.
"Because if the girl refuses, the boy will not help her with homework,
and may refuse to lend her a pencil when she wants one."
Source: Field notes of Meera Kaul Shah, Chawama Compound, Lusaka
We were discussing the use of condoms with a group of boys.
Since some of them had mentioned that they do use condoms, we
wanted to know where they obtained the condoms from and
whether they purchased them. There was some laughter as the
boys replied, "No, we don’t buy them. We make them ourselves!"
Naturally we were curious to know how they did that.
Part 3
"It is simple. We take the empty plastic covers of ice-blocks [icecandy]
and use them like a condom. They have to be tied with a
string on the penis".
Source: Field notes of Mary Simasiku, George Compound, Lusaka
Christine, a member of the
Neighborhood Health
Committee, has a one-to-one
discussion with a boy from the
compound. Zambia