PEOPLE-EMPOWERED PLANNING

Participatory Planning
PEOPLE-EMPOWERED PLANNING
Participatory Planning
Participatory planning –
stressing Franco’s principle that
“ the real change agent is the
beneficiary or learner and NOT
THE UNIVERSITY OR THE
GOVERNMENT AGENCY”’ which
are essentially enabling agents
or facilitator.
CONTENTS
 Community Participation in
Educational Planning
Different degrees and levels of community participation
(Ernesto Franco)
- Some countries have a strong cultural tradition in which rural
communities contribute land labor and volunteer services in village
schools.
- Others depend entirely on government.
- Still others had a strong community involvement in the past, but
due to different problems and pressure over time, such community
involvement has died down, and government and the private sector
have become more dominant in education.
- A few encourage government organizations (NGO) such as
educational foundations to fill the gaps still not yet breached by
government or local communities.
• Ernesto Franco Emphasizes,
- the community leaders are the key in educational
planning.

Through :
- Proper orientation
- Training and well motivated programs
- Encourage the local leaders to do the things they must do
- Encourage the best people to do in their particular environment
• Local leaders should, and can, analyze their needs and resources
carefully – asking themselves whether they really do want a school
or do they really want expansion, and whether it can be properly
supported;
• appoint an active and working committee, with a really committed
chairman-leader, not a ceremonial group to fill a person's egoism or
political goals;
• liaise carefully and sensitively with the local government and
central government offices;
• liaise with the church, potential donors, and GO’s;
• liaise with other schools in the area, with their principals and head
masters;
• Keep careful accounts, have them properly audited and
documented;
• And pay constant attention to quality, and not alone quantity.
People-Empowered Planning

Franco also advises;

Committed and competent educational planners, whether

from government or the private sector, when working in rural
areas, should seek every means possible to involve local community
leaders.
This can be achieved through a variety of steps, each step to
be taken after careful study and appreciation for:
local customs
local practices
local strengths
Franco and Melvyn Viray suggest the following steps;
• proper briefing of planned activities and events with the local
leaders first
• conducting orientation sessions with local leaders and local
residents
• promoting the concept of working together because
whatever results are obtained accrue to the benefit of the
community and their children
• forming a planning committee
• preparing a very simple, 2 to 3 page manual or instructions,
using the local language or dialect if possible, with simple
illustrations and flow charts
 People-Empowered Planning

• preparing a weekly or monthly status sheet for each

committee member on their activities, their achievements,
their problems, and how to solve tem properly and quickly
• formulating a simple format of a school or community
education plan and program, including what topics to cover,
how to present the issues and problems, what alternative
solutions or options are open, defining the criteria to make a
hard decision, and finally making the decision and its
justification
• preparing a management implementation scheme to ensure
that the proposed plan can be executed – according to
defined objectives and targets, desired outputs or results, in
scheduled time frames, using specific budget and resources,
and by way of proper management procedures
• a simple scheme to monitor and evaluate the planning of the
plan, and when finished, the implementation of the plan to its
last activities and steps.
CONTENTS
Participatory Planning
Categories of People

1 Students: the clients served by a school

2 Teachers: the major element of the professional staff

3 School Admin.: principals, supervisors and superintendent

4 Decision makers: Chiefs, Directors, Ministers

5 National Board of Education and other policy-making bodies

6 Para-Profs. & Personnel of other agencies: supporting svcs.

 Consultative
• Affords educational planners and decision-
makers a broader basis for planning
• Group of parents, professionals, industrial
representatives, ordinary citizens or whatever
the specific membership may be are consulted
by the official planning machinery but are NOT
given a final decision-making power.
 Through representation
• Induces improvement of the delegation of
authority.
• The advantage of relevant planning is done
without undue loss of time
• Direct participation in planning may emanate
from representatives of industry, national
youth association, labor group, parent-
teachers’ association and from other sectors
of society in the grassroots level.
PROS

ISSUES

CONS
 EFFICIENCY
The gains in Distracts educational
relevance and institutions from
quality, the their primary
additional resources business
mobilized for
education, the
costly
enhanced
employability for uneconomical
students
 CONFLICT
Provides an
“institutionalized
mechanism”
Conflict is present
everywhere
Through consultation
conflict and polarization
may be avoided by
reserving final decision in
the hands of the planners
Involves many
people with
divergent points of
view, conflicting
values and rival
interest; thus,
educational decision-
making will be
strangled.
 LOCALISM
Leads education Foster varied whims
out of its present and ideologies true
emphasis through to one setting or
a variety of locality
innovative
educational
experiments,
decided upon in
different places.
 MEDIOCRITY
Encourages
Involves many
creativity, ideas people who are not
and first-hand formally qualified,
experience of particularly the
local people students themselves

Provides competence
through technical Planners’ expertise
assistance group will be subjected to
majority rule and
unsatisfactory
compromises
 AUTHORITY AND CONTROL
Holds control
over the planning
process Represent a lost of
teachers’ authority

Does not aim to control

over other people’s
behavior Dissolves necessary
control in education
Participatory planning
in education will
For a plan to be truly participatory
place the educational and reflective of the aspirations
and needs of the people, it must
planners in a nucleus initially involve in its formulation
persons/institutions especially
of action those in the local level that are
more directly concerned with the
people’s welfare.
CONTENTS
Beneficiary as

CHANGE Agent

Beneficiary
as
CHANGE AGEN
T
Back in the 1930s, Counts indicated that schools may change
in response to external forces and pressures or schools may
lead not only in changing themselves but also in altering
their larger environment. Regardless of the source of change,
it is a fact that schools do change. The school administrator
has a key role in the process, if not as the initiator of change ,
then surely as the facilitator.
A change theorist, Guba, felt that one must
understand the process of innovation, the nature of the
adapting system, and the nature of the agency carrying out
the innovation before a change can be successfully
institutionalized.
ELEMENTS OF CHANGE
Information-sharing tools: News and
updates on a participatory planning
process can be transmitted via
traditional media such as newspaper,
radio, and television or electronic
media such as websites and emails or
via meetings and presentations with
the communities in a given
geographical area.
 Consultation tools: Stakeholders who
are either interested in or likely to be
affected by the development decisions
can be consulted through discussion
forums such as round tables, public
hearings, town meetings, community
debates, focus groups, or electronic
conferencing, surveys, opinion polls etc.
 Collaborative planning tools: These
include: structural mechanisms such as
stakeholder representation on decision-
making bodies, establishment of local-
level planning committees, participatory
budgeting, or finance schemes to fund
community-managed
development; technology-based tools
Types of BENEFICIARY PARTICIPATION
 Beneficiary Consultation

Beneficiary groups are given the

opportunity to contribute
information or advise to the
planning design, implementation
and management processes of the
project. Ultimately, this process
encourages and enables
beneficiaries to take over a project
when it stabilizes and when
government withdraws.
 Beneficiary Collaboration

Beneficiary groups share, either

physically (such as through labor)
and/ or financially, in project
implementation, operation and
maintenance.
 Beneficiary Enterprise

Beneficiary groups take

accountability for the
implementation, operation, and
maintenance of the project.
Government moves into an
enabling agent role-- motivating,
facilitating and providing technical
assistance. However, it is the
beneficiaries themselves who take
over eventually, become the real
agents for change even as they
benefit from the change
 BENEFITS
• Strengthened voice: Participatory planning
processes can give people, particularly the poor
and marginalized sectors of the population, more
voice and influence over development decisions;
• Better informed plans: By consulting those
whose needs the plans are meant to fulfill, the
resultant development interventions are more
likely to be relevant and appropriate to those
needs;
 BENEFITS
• Strengthened capacity of citizens: Through
their involvement in participatory planning
activities, local people can learn more about
the decision-making processes of government
bodies and can acquire valuable skills for
identifying, analyzing and prioritizing
development issues, and for articulating their
needs and concerns to the relevant
authorities;
 BENEFITS
• Strengthened capacity of
governments: Government staff involved in
participatory development planning can not
only learn about the use of participatory
methods and approaches but can also benefit
from a ‘reality-check’ by seeing for themselves
the conditions of the local people and the
relevance of existing or planned development
interventions;
 BENEFITS
• Better understanding: By working together, different
stakeholder groups can develop mutual understanding
and trust among themselves and can learn how to
collaborate on any follow-up activities and any future
joint initiatives;
• Enhanced transparency and accountability:
Participatory planning processes open up the
operations of government and development agencies
to public scrutiny and help set up mechanisms
whereby these agencies are held accountable for the
implementation of the plans; and
 BENEFITS
• Strengthened democracy: Participatory
development planning can create processes
that are more democratic and equitable,
enabling the citizens to share decision-making
power with their locally elected
representatives and other external agencies.
 Challenges and Lessons
• Time and money: participatory techniques themselves
are as such inexpensive to use. However,  the overall
planning process can require a considerable staff time
and resources on the part of the government or
development agency, especially if it involves extensive
preparatory activities like information campaigns and
training of facilitators, and the convening of large
multi-stakeholder meetings. For local stakeholders,
their participation can have significant costs in terms
of their time and effort, particularly if they need to
forego any wages or sacrifice time spent on
subsistence activities.
 Challenges and Lessons
• Resistance and manipulation: Some groups or
individuals involved in the participatory
planning process may find it difficult to accept
the collaborative decision-making approach.
For example the government decision-makers
may feel threatened that their responsibilities
and power are being undermined and may
become obstacles to the process . Other
stakeholders may try and manipulate the
process to push their own agendas.
 Challenges and Lessons
• Bypassing existing planning structures:
participatory approaches are not carefully
integrated into formal planning frameworks,
they can undermine these existing structures
thereby risking conflict and a poor receptivity
of the outputs of the participatory planning on
the part of public authorities.
 Challenges and Lessons
• Scaling–up risks: success of participatory
approaches relies on their adaptability to
different situations. Therefore, when
governments or development agencies
attempt to replicate and standardize the use
of such approaches on a large scale, there is a
risk that the participatory element will
become negligible or even meaningless.
Tips for effective participatory development

Provide extra
Involve Respect Follow-up with
Plan for micro- support to
decision-makers differences of local
macro linkages marginalized
from the start: opinion: stakeholders:
groups
Involve decision-makers
from the start:

This is essential to foster a

sense of ownership for the
outcomes of the participatory
planning process, and
will also help in enabling
these key stakeholders to
learn the value of involving local
people in decision-making;
Plan for micro-macro
linkages
Before starting a
participatory planning
process, thought needs to
be given as to how it
will link with the
larger-level planning
processes of the
government or the
concerned development
agency;
 Special efforts need to be made to
enable disadvantaged groups to
participate in the planning process.
These efforts may include for
Provide extra support
example: arranging special focus
to marginalized groups
group meetings with different social
groups; employing female
facilitators to work with w omen’s
groups; providing transport for
poorer groups to attend meetings
outside the community; and
compensating day laborers for
wages lost due to their participation
in planning sessions. At the same
time, it should be borne in mind that
participation is not obligatory.
Everyone should have the right to
participate but not everyone may
have the time or interest to do so;
 Different stakeholders will have
different, and sometimes
conflicting, values and interests
and it will be impossible to satisfy
Respect differences all the needs expressed.
of opinion: Rather than seeking an
artificial or forced consensus,
it is important to strengthen the
capacity of weaker groups to
articulate their needs and
concerns.
 One of the most common
complaints of communities
involved in participatory planning
processes is the failure of those
organizing such activities to
report back on the
outcomes of the process.
The commitment to
Follow-up with inform the communities should be
local stakeholders: followed up as soon as possible
after the conclusion of
community-based activities.
Thank You
for
listening!
Aris Sanhez
Have
Katrina You
Thank Bala
a
Cielito
for A.
Nice
Pedregal
listening!
Day!
Mary Ann
Solomon
Clarinda
Placente