EDIAIS : Conference papers

The systematic analysis of the lasting or significant changes - positive or negative, intended or not - in people's lives brought about by a given action or series of actions. (Roche 1999 p21)

More recently, there has been increasing agreement that impact assessment should be seeking not so much to analyse change and 'prove impact' as an end in itself, but in order to 'improve practice.' However deciding the aims of such improvements, and which particular improvements, often continue to be seen as the job of programme staff and outside 'experts'. Even participatory impact assessment generally consists of a series of participatory focus group or diagram exercises conducted by outsiders, where most of the information is analysed and used at programme or donor- level. At the same time, somewhat apart from debates about impact assessment, have been debates about civil society development and participatory action learning. Participatory methods have received somewhat greater respectability following the World Bank's Participatory Poverty Assessments which brought together insights on poverty from 60 different countries. Here the authors argue for an ongoing dialogue between very poor people and policymakers. However the mechanisms through which such a dialogue could be supported and continued are unclear. This paper discusses one particular approach towards supporting such a dialogue: annual fairs or melas which have been facilitated by an organisation called ANANDI and its sister organizations in Gujarat, India. These fairs can both produce systematic information on impact and provide a forum for fully integrating grassroots views into participatory assessment. They help to build ongoing and sustainable networks for information exchange between women for collective action at the local level and as a basis for lobbying and advocacy: · Part 1 of the paper looks at the challenges of livelihood development for very poor women in Gujarat which led to development of the mela idea as a forum for women to exchange experiences and identify ways forward.

Part 2 discusses the design, process and lessons of the five melas held so far
Part 3 looks at the challenges and current proposals to address them.
Part 4 examines the broader implications for impact assessment processes and methodologies which aim to improve development practice.

The Appendix gives details of the exercises and tools used.

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