Dr. Patricia Wilson
Abstract
Participatory practice in community development is process- and relationship-oriented. Yet many community development practitioners focus on technical problem solving, service delivery, or information provision. How might these practitioners respond to participatory practice? Using narrative analysis, this case study examines the response of 24 community development practitioners from government and education to a two week field workshop in participatory practice in two peri-urban communities outside Mexico City. Accustomed to technical or procedural practice and unfamiliar with participatory approaches, the 24 practitioners from government and education quickly faced the vulnerability and uncertainty of participatory practice. By the end of the workshop, however, most of the practitioners had changed their attitudes and assumptions about themselves, their work, and the community. Six month follow-up interviews evidence the continued integration of some of these changes into their own practice. The results indicate the importance of the engaged practitioner’s attitudes and assumptions in mediating state/civil society relationships.
Keywords: Participatory community development; practitioner experience; participatory action research; peri-urban Mexico
Participatory community development practice is built upon the relational and process capabilities of the practitioner. The practitioner becomes a facilitator and catalyst, holding in abeyance his or her potential roles as expert, planner, problem solver, and implementer until such time as those roles can be skillfully utilized by the community. Rather than privileging expert diagnosis and prescription or following a managerial approach that objectifies the client or community, the participatory practitioner opens spaces for generative dialogue, collective action, and mutual learning through a relational, organic, and contextualized practice. The objective is to build community, create solidarity and pro[1]mote agency (Bhattacharyya, 2004, pp. 10-11). The participatory practitioner introduces the kind of horizontal relationships and collaborative inquiry that are the building blocks of participatory democracy (Wilson & Lowery, 2003).
The participatory practitioner facilitates the community’s discovery of its own path forward (Botes & van Rensburg, 2000):
Being a facilitator that promotes participatory development implies first understanding a community’s questions, assisting them to articulate them better and then helping the community to search for solutions. Facilitators should never come with ready-made solutions or tell the people what to do. They must rather encourage and assist people to think about their problems in their own way. (pp. 54-55)
The following case study examines an attempt to introduce participatory practices to community development practitioners who were accustomed to technical, managerial, and procedural practices. A two-week field-based workshop in participatory community development was con[1]ducted in an ecologically fragile river basin northwest of Mexico City. Hosted by the Guadalupe Dam River Basin Commission (CCPG) and the Universidad Albert Einstein (UAE), the workshop involved 24 Mexican community development practitioners, 19 from local, state, and federal agencies working in the river basin, and 5 from local universities in[1]volved in sustainable development. Eight graduate students from a University of Texas practicum course in participatory action research (offered by the Graduate Program in Community and Regional Planning) also participated in the workshop alongside the Mexican professionals. The two-week field-based workshop itself was designed and facilitated by the author.
The unfolding response of the practitioners to the participatory practices used in the workshop and in the field became as fascinating as the field[1]work itself. Those responses were documented in narrative interviews facilitated by UAE on the closing day, a written survey using open-ended questions conducted by the CCPG, and follow-up interviews six months later conducted by a UT graduate research assistant.
The results illustrate how community development professionals accustomed to technical, managerial, or procedural practice respond to the uncertainty and vulnerability of the unscripted and unpredictable situations that characterize participatory practice. The narrative analysis indicates a closer and more respectful relationship with community members, an enhanced experience of teamwork, personal change in attitudes and assumptions, and an increased ability to be confident outside of more customary professional roles. The findings contribute to the limited empirical literature on the felt experience of the community development practitioner engaged in participatory practice
Few articles or books with empirical referents investigate the community development practitioner’s subjective or felt experience of practice. Ingamells, Lathouras, Wiseman, Westoby, and Caniglia (2010) offer a collection of reflective essays by volunteers who took part in a participatory action research (PAR) project. Vidyarthi and Wilson (2008) relate practitioner experiences following a values-oriented training in participatory development in rural India, highlighting the importance of love and self-discipline. See also Westoby and van Blerk (2012); Fenge, Fannin, Armstrong, Hicks, and Taylor (2009); Green (2012); and Brookfield and Holst (2011).
Case Study
Context
As in many parts of the urbanizing world, water and waste have become critical issues in Mexico, especially in the Valley of Mexico where Mexico City’s metropolitan population approaches 25 million inhabitants. Its footprint spreads across the valley floor into the surrounding mountains where once rural river basins are now contaminated by urbanization. The main source of contamination is the growth of informal peri-urban communities that lack adequate access to water and waste services (Ar[1]reguin, Martinez & Trueba, 2004).
In the case of the Guadalupe Dam river basin on the northwestern edge of the metropolitan area, the peri-urban challenge had become clear to Ing. Blanca Cinthya Garfias Galván, the operations director of the Gua-8 dalupe Dam River Basin Commission (Comisión de la Cuenca Presa de Guadalupe, CCPG). The commission’s outreach and public awareness campaigns had not succeeded in reducing the yearly flow of fifteen million cubic meters of black and gray water into the now unusable Guadalupe Dam Lake (CCPG, 2014).
After conversations with two local universities and the University of Texas, Ing. Garfias decided to host a field workshop that would use a participatory approach to engage two peri-urban communities on issues of water and waste. She saw the workshop as an opportunity to intro[1]duce the local, state, and government professionals who worked in the communities of her river basin to participatory community development, while at the same time form working relationships among them for future collaborations.
Through municipal government officials in Nicolás Romero, the most rapidly urbanizing of the five municipalities in the river basin, Ing. Garfias met the local leaders of two informal communities. Each leader was the president of the Citizen Participation Committee (COPACI), the sanctioned body for interfacing with the community. The more consolidated of the two communities selected, El Tráfico, had grown from a series of informal settlements on rural ejido land starting 25 years ago. Now with nearly 15 thousand residents, it is integrated into the urbanized area of Nicolás Romero. About 80 percent of the residents are served by a municipal water system that distributes piped water twice a month. Wastewater goes directly into the ravines as does much solid waste.
Higher up the slope from El Tráfico is Llano Grande, a less densely settled community of five hundred to seven hundred people on the outskirts of Nicolás Romero. Formed by periodic arrivals of settlers through questionable land sales over the last ten to fifteen years, Llano Grande lacks basic water and sanitation infrastructure altogether. The community is served sporadically by private and public water trucks and private garbage haulers.
Higher up the slope from El Tráfico is Llano Grande, a less densely settled community of five hundred to seven hundred people on the outskirts of Nicolás Romero. Formed by periodic arrivals of settlers through questionable land sales over the last ten to fifteen years, Llano Grande lacks basic water and sanitation infrastructure altogether. The community is served sporadically by private and public water trucks and private garbage haulers.
The workshop
Held in August, 2013, the resulting workshop had 24 Mexican professionals, 19 from government agencies and five from local universities, all involved in community water and waste issues in the Guadalupe Dam river basin. The public sector professionals came from the Nation[1]al Water Commission (CONAGUA), the State of Mexico Department of the Environment (Office of Prevention and Control of Soil and Water Contamination), and four of the five municipalities that comprise the Guadalupe Dam river basin, including Nicolás Romero, site of the two peri-urban communities where the field work would take place. The participants’ functions included resource conservation outreach and training, community relations and conflict management, cultural affairs and youth programming, extension services, and the planning, construction, and management of community parks and infrastructure projects. In terms of professional backgrounds, the participants represented engineering, architecture, planning, social work, law, agronomy, communications, and media.
The author, who facilitated the workshop, chose a participatory action research (PAR) method of action learning (Reason & Bradbury, 2008), based on rapid cycles of action and reflection, which were applied in the field work with the communities as well as with the practitioners in the workshop. After an overview of participatory community development and team building exercises with the practitioners on the first day, daily rounds of fieldwork in the two communities in the mornings were followed in the afternoons by lunch, reflection, planning and preparation for the next day’s field work at the nearby campus of the UTFV.
The two teams, one working in El Tráfico, the other in Llano Grande, met separately most afternoons, each working through the challenges of a situation to which the team members were not accustomed—not knowing each other, having no one officially in charge, having no predefined objective nor strict protocol, and learning as they went. As one participant said in the final debriefing, “we were as naked and vulnerable as the residents themselves… .” “I was actually afraid at the beginning, it was very difficult,” said another. “I really doubted that we would accomplish anything,” said a third. But each morning they stepped foot back into the community not knowing what was awaiting them. All they could do was be present and alert to what was unfolding in the moment—exactly what the participatory practitioner is called upon to do.
As insecurity and frustration rose during the first week due to the un[1]certainty of how to proceed in the field, a few plenary sessions were con-10 vened in the afternoons to address the discomfort. The UT facilitator led the professionals in dialogic inquiry, using the two teams’ unfolding experiences to reflect on collectively and “become uncertain together” (Philippson, 2009, p. 29). At one point, when morale was lowest, when their best laid plans seemed not to pan out in the field, the UT facilitator introduced participatory theater for each of the two teams to act out their experience, thereby gaining perspective, insight, and levity. The UT facilitator refrained from using her authority to fix or solve the problems they raised, instead engaging them in mutual inquiry, reflection, and learning.
The field experience
Compared to the first day when Señora E, the longtime community lead[1]er and party representative in El Tráfico, lined up rows of chairs for the community and introduced the workshop team at the head table as the experts, much had changed by the end of the two weeks. The community members had identified their own priorities, and the women had decided to turn discarded plastic bags into a resource. These 16 women from different parts of the community now knew each other. They had learned to make thread from recycled plastic bags and use it to knit and crochet. On the last day they sat in a circle talking while they made purses, shawls, and earrings from the plastic thread. They were joined by several new women and teenaged girls from the community who wanted to learn from them.
As the women sewed, the facilitators asked them to recap all they had accomplished in the past two weeks and what it meant to them and to their community. Not only had they removed hundreds of plastic bags from the waste stream and turned them into beautiful and useful creations, they had involved the men in re-using discarded tires for building retention walls. Used tires had disappeared from the waste stream (and soon would have a market value). Most important of all, the women had decided to continue to meet every week to sew, talk, and take action together.
There were smiles on the women’s faces and warmth in their voices as they asked the team to be sure to come again. One year later the women’s group was still gathering every Friday. They had taught many women in El Tráfico and some in other communities how to make thread from plastic bags, and were selling their wares commercially.
In Llano Grande, where workshop participants had discovered a tense division in the community upon their arrival and had been met with hostility by one faction, the situation was also very different by the last day. When workshop participants and residents met for a final encuentro to recap and celebrate the work from the two weeks, members of both factions were present. For the first time they had worked together: they had created a plan for a community park in the empty field in front of the church. Residents and team members alike expressed their delight with the strides made in just two weeks toward a more unified community and a greater sense of possibility. Eight months later the park was a reality, a colorful source of community pride and cohesion.
The following day the closing session for the practitioners was a chance to come back together and share their responses to the experience. A faculty member from UAE moderated the session, arranging the chairs in a large circle for more than two dozen people and introducing a pine[1]cone from Llano Grande as a talking stick. He asked them to share aha moments and describe what had been most important to them, professionally or personally. The results follow.
Analysis and Findings
The 13 oral responses that were recorded at the final session with the participating practitioners, along with the 13 written evaluations of the workshop completed the day before, provided rich narrative from 19 of the professional participants. Six months after the workshop semi-structured follow-up interviews were conducted with 15 of the professional participants, 12 in person and three in writing, bringing the total narrative responses to 41, which covered all 24 professional participants. The narrative data from the responses to the workshop were coded, clustered, and themed.
Three of the 24 participating community development practitioners indicated the workshop had had little or no impact on them. The majority, 19, of the practitioners responded by describing a felt experience that had changed them. These changes clustered into three themes: relationship with the team, relationship with the community, and personal change.
Relationship with the team
The relationship with fellow practitioners was one of the three main themes to emerge: navigating together the chaos and uncertainty of not knowing each other, nor having a clear idea of expectations, nor hav[1]ing someone in charge to tell them what to do; figuring out how best to 12 contribute to the team effort; realizing one’s own capacity to contribute and be respected; learning from each other and respecting each other; being lifted up by the strength of the team to keep coming back each day; learning from experience and moving forward; enjoying the satisfaction of teamwork; and making new colleagues and friends. Five of the respondents cited teamwork as the most important impact on them. The following quotes from the practitioners illustrate the impact of the team experience:
- “I learned that it’s possible to build good teamwork with other professionals without someone in charge.”
- “I experienced the power of uniting as a team and collab[1]orating.”
- “The most important thing was learning how a team can pull through, be successful, and have a real impact.”
- “I learned I could be a real contributor to the team effort.”
- “For me, it was making new friends and colleagues across different agencies.”
Relationship with the community
A more frequently mentioned theme was the experience of a deep[1]er connection with the community—valuing the opportunity to listen to community members, learn from them, work shoulder to shoulder with them, respect and appreciate them, earn their respect, and connect with them in a heartfelt way. As one participant expressed, amid his tears, “I could see my own niece and nephew in the eyes of the children.” Their take-aways included the following:
- “I realize the importance of listening to the people in the community and learning from them.”
- “I learned to respect them and not look down on them.”
- “As a public servant, I now know my responsibility to listen up close to the needs of the community and to each person in it.”
- “I realized my own capacity to connect personally with people I thought were very different from me.”
Seven of the respondents considered their relationship with the community to be the most important impact on them and highlighted the following:
- “…the experience of working with the community and 13 learning along with them,”
- “…being accepted and respected by them,”
- “…feeling their warmth toward us,”
- “… being honest with them from the beginning, earning their trust,”
Personal change
The most frequently mentioned theme was personal change: learning to see their own assumptions about, and prejudices towards, the community residents; learning to trust process, to be open to what is unfolding in the present moment; and becoming comfortable with not knowing, not being in control, not having a clear game plan or procedures to follow; and not needing to play the role of the expert or technician. Seven of the respondents considered their personal change to be the most important impact of the workshop for them.
- “[The workshop] helped me recognize my patterned responses and agendas,”
- “Really the main thing was learning about my own attitude of superiority and disdain toward community people.”
- “I learned to shut up and listen.”
- “I had to trust and try not to control, and it worked out.”
- “I learned to be more spacious and in the moment, to allow things to unfold.”
- “[The big change for me was] letting go of my need to solve, fix, or teach,”
- “Being more flexible in the way I think and to set aside pre-conceived ideas [were huge]”
A felt experience
In sum, the experience of the government and university practitioners indicates that the practice of participatory community development goes far beyond the use of tools, techniques, and procedures. It is a felt experience involving both heart and head that generates awareness of group process and relationship. Most of the practitioners had experienced the undefended openness to possibility in the moment that characterizes participatory practice. The two week experience in participatory community development had touched them at the level of values, attitudes, and feelings. 14 At the end of the workshop in the closing ceremony Ing. Garfias, the operations director for the river basin commission and the force behind the workshop, struggled to find the words to describe the vulnerability, depth, and meaning of what the professionals had learned through the two week experience. She could not hide her tears as she said,
My aha moment is right now here with you, my colleagues in different governmental agencies and universities, hearing that you each took in deeply the importance of working with people in this collaborative horizontal way, alongside and for the people. This work is so difficult to understand and explain. It’s not an imposition of authority by government agencies. It’s a response to the social and environmental context of each community. The work of river basin planning must be this way. It’s not just about planting trees and water quality. I ask you all to transmit the special nature of this work and what we’ve learned here, including the emotions and feelings, to your agencies. This is so important!
Follow-up
Six months after the workshop, follow-up interviews were conducted with 15 of the participating practitioners. Eleven reported a change in how they related to the communities where they did their work, as the following quotes illustrate:
- “[I know now] we don’t have to tell the community what they need!… . We have redefined ourselves as supporting them and their projects, the projects that they define. …I am doing my work with love, like in Llano Grande.”
- “We did the same as in the workshop: we listened to people, showed respect for their values, their family life… It was great to see their smiles…!”
- “Perhaps it’s a water filtration plant we want to do; perhaps they want it located further up the stream. …I get them to come up with a plan they can all agree upon, just as we did in Llano Grande.”
Seven of those interviewed also described relating to their co-workers and employees with more acceptance, respect, conviviality, openness, and/or caring, resulting in better teamwork and morale.
None of the public sector practitioners noted any change beyond their immediate circles of influence. Referring to co-workers outside his own team, one manager said, “there are so many demands on their time and they are wedded to their patterns—just doing what is required and nothing extra.” However, the educators reported that both of the universities involved and the one high school had made significant institutional changes to strengthen student involvement in local communities.
A surprising dividend was the impact of the workshop on the educators’ pedagogy. Three of the five educators reported significant changes in their teaching towards more empowering relationships with students.
- “The workshop definitely changed my way of teaching— transformed it literally. I now do inquiry, action, and re[1]flection with my students to rediscover the environment in which they live. What I experienced in the workshop I’m doing with them, inside and outside the classroom. …The head of the school is amazed!”
- “The university where I studied is very traditional—all about imparting information and not letting go of control or authority. Now I know I don’t have to tell my students exactly what to do and how. I can give them options and encourage their own research.”
- “I used to give talks in the communities about environ[1]mental awareness and what people could do, but they didn’t have much impact. What I discovered [from the workshop] is … you don’t have to convince them. You work with them. … I have used this experience with my students.”
Summary and Conclusions
By the end of the field-based workshop almost all of the participating professionals had experienced a felt sense of participatory practice: They had learned to seek and value what was emergent in the moment, rather than follow a scripted procedure or pre-defined technical solution. They had let go of the safety of their professional identities and the need to demonstrate their technical expertise. They had engaged in a horizontal relationship with each other and with the community that made them “as naked and vulnerable as the community members themselves.”
Most of the participating professionals had learned to listen to the community residents; to respect their knowledge, experience, and aspirations; to work beside them, and discover along with them. As a result of the workshop, professional participants could experience a new kind of relationship with the community members, one based on respect, acceptance, and trust.
By allowing the action to unfold at the initiative of the community members, the practitioners were able to experience the satisfaction of seeing results much greater than they had expected and more useful than they could have planned. One community was breaking the tradition of paternalism while turning plastic bags and discarded tires into valuable resources. The other community was healing a long-standing division in the community while creating a community park and learning to compost and germinate seeds. In both cases, new patterns of democratic engagement were introduced, among the community development practitioners, among the community members, and between them. In the process, the Guadalupe Dam river basin became a little healthier–not because these peri-urban communities were finally doing what they were told, but because they were doing what they themselves had decided to do. Six months later the majority of the workshop participants interviewed had begun to relate with more respect and sensitivity to the communities where their agencies worked. Some had changed their way of relating to their employees and their colleagues, in and across agencies. The majority of the educators had incorporated participatory inquiry and action into their teaching, and at both local universities institutional changes had been made to relate more actively to local communities.
New patterns of emergent change are visible: a division between two community factions that begins to heal, a calcifying relationship of clientelism that begins to crumble, a new awareness of refuse as resource, a dent in authoritarian pedagogy, a glimpse of the humanity and heart of the other, a practice of listening. These are the patterns of an emergent post-modern world of participatory engagement that is calling for the naked practitioner—the one who is strong enough to be vulnerable and wise enough to listen, learn, and love.
This case study illustrates how the engaged practitioner has an opportunity to choose the kind of relationship he or she builds with the community: one of superiority, condescension, control, expediency, and objectification, or one or respect, openness, caring, and collaboration. While structural and systemic relations of power between the state and civil society are ever present, the participatory practitioner finds a space of choice. It is this space, and these choices, which make the participatory practitioner an agent of emergent change in the relationship between state and civil society.
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