The Tool
As a
community prepares for a more focused effort at achieving better livelihood for
its members, it is important to take into account their collective history.
This enables both the community and outsiders to learn where they are coming
from and so that they are in a better position to decide where they are headed.
It is especially important to get the lessons learned from the collective
experience of the community as a whole and as individuals. In order to achieve
this, a timeline is used in PRA’s. The time
line is a chronological list of events in the history of the community
(famines, floods, dips, attacks, settlement pattern, introduction of new crops,
rainfall pattern, forest activities etc.) It helps identifying problems and
experiences (and especially lessons learned) over a longer period of time.
Implementing the tool
The
timeline is developed through focused group discussions (FGD), where a mixed
group is told to recount the happenings in the area. During the process of modelling the timeline, the facilitator should keep probing to find how the community has coped with specific events, which events occur on a regular cycle, and what natural disasters or crisis affect the community livelihoods regularly. The information will be used later at the problem analysis stage and in the development of the community development plan. The output from the tool helps development actors from repeating previous failed interventions and building on the communities indeginous knowledge in the face of disaster.
To start the discussion the question: who were the first people to settle here… may be used. The older members of the community will immediately get interested in telling the story… until the present!
Output
The output of a timeline should be a foot-noted list that shows events that have occurred over time, a list of events or resources that move in regular cycles over time and how the community has coped with each type peak/trough of the cycle. Clear list of time bound problems and coping mechanisms.
