In this meeting, we had some members of the Village Council came to discuss the survey and formulate questions for the survey.
I had been anticipating for this meeting from the week before the scheduled meeting. Reading on the best practices for Participatory Mapping, imagining a crowd of residents all actively engaged in the formulation of questions and having in-depth discussions of how to make the survey and mapping a success and that all three subject areas were amply covered with well crafted questions.
There was a definite shift of expectations and reality.
In reality, there were five persons during the entirety of the meeting (most would be discouraged). We did have in-depth discussions of the survey and the issues that the community faced. The focused initially on the social issues - initially, they said they had nothing for the community to come together and socialize. Then they started to speak of the activities that the community would do when they came together. That they had special communal events for Carnival, Independence Day and after Christmas.
The conversation moved to recreational activities they would like to see continue and expanded upon. Then they spoke about what they would like to see in the community, with some prompting of what they think can achieve in the relative short term.
We formulated questions based on our discussion that we had. We were able to create relevant questions which they felt the community would be interested in finding out as well.
Lesson learnt: Never be discouraged by the numbers it is the quality that counts.
A Blog about the insights & observations of a CCRIF intern of the Department of Geography
Friday, 25 November 2016
Thursday, 10 November 2016
Participatory Planning for Aripo - Mon 7th
Map brought into the GIS Lab for digitization. (A.Thorne. 2016.) |
The next steps are to hang up the confirmed maps of the entire community in the primary school for community members to fill out. There shall be overlays with the different themes outlined for each layer for residents and stakeholders to fill in. The maps shall be in the school for about three weeks to a month.
I am curious as to what areas and points would be labelled on the map so the base map comes to life with points and vectors full of information about Aripo.
Our next meeting, shall be to develop the survey questions which the community would like to ask itself to cover the important issues and opportunities. It is important to understand the final product which the community would like to have achieved to then understand the types of questions to be asked.
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