This manual is intended as a guide to trainers of “animators” or teachers in nonformal adult education (NFAE) centres for fisherfolk in Tamil Nadu, India. Who is an animator? He hails from the village. He runs an NFAE centre and helps the “learners” acquire knowledge and various skills. The “trainer” is the person who trains the animators. This Trainer’s Manual contains profiles of animators and describes the participatory training approach, its beliefs and assumptions. It includes a 12-day training model divided into five stages. It contains easy—to-use, step-by-step explanations for trainers in their conduct of various sessions. BOBP commenced its NFAE work in Tamil Nadu under a pilot project in Adirampattinam, a fishing village in Tanjavur district. The fisherfolk of Adirampattinam accorded a high priority to education and requested that an education programme be initiated in their village. Since the fishing occupation makes regular school impractical, the idea of an NFAE programme was born. Available materials for an NFAE programme for fisherfolk were found to be inadequate. BOBP, therefore, developed a model curriculum in close cooperation with the Tamil Nadu Directorate of Nonformal and Adult Education, the State Resource Centre and the Tamil Nadu Directorate of Fisheries. This manual is one element of the package. The other components include an animator’s guide, a numeracy primer and an animator’s edition of the numeracy primer, literacy primers and workbook, supplementary readers. The Trainer’s Manual was developed after a workshop in April 1984 attended by 14 participants from the Directorate of Fisheries, the Directorate of Nonformal and Adult Education, the State Resource Centre, the National Council for Educational Research and Training, voluntary agencies working in NFAE and BOBP. Following the workshop a four-member sub-committee devised the Trainer’s Manual. It was then field tested and circulated to over 150 agencies in India and abroad for comments and suggestions. The project was coordinated by Ms Patchanee Natpracha, Sociologist, BOBP.The preparation of this manual is an activity of the smallscale fisheries project of the Bay of Bengal Programme (BOBP). The project is funded by SIDA (Swedish International Development Authority) and executed by the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), and covers five countries bordering the Bay of Bengal - Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Thailand. The main goals of the project are to develop, demonstrate and promote appropriate technologies and methodologies to improve the conditions of small—scale fisherfolk and boost supplies of fish from the small sector in member countries. This document is a working paper and has not been officially cleared either by the FAO or the government concerned.