CAP Tool 6. PAPP Matrix

Planning on the basis of Analysis of Problems and Potentials

Objective:

To let one specific group of community members analyse problems, causes, livelihood strategies and potentials and proposed activities to address this problems.

How to facilitate:

1. Clarify the objectives of this task. Refer to the different columns of the PAPP Matrix to explain the matrix.

2. Explain to the participants that you will now discuss the different problems they mentioned during the brainstorming. Problems will be discussed one by one. This process will take some time. The most important problems should be discussed first. Start with the problem which was ranked highest in the ranking or voting exercise.

3. The note-taker writes down the selected problem in the first column of the matrix. The facilitator asks the participants to explain the problem. Use simple questions like: What exactly is the problem with the water? Where do people get the water? How does the problem affect you in your daily life?

Keep in mind:

• The note-taker should write down the problem as a negative statement and the direct impact this has on the community, for instance: "The drinking water is dirty and is a health risk. People have to fetch water from the river, which is far." Do not just write: "water problem". That could be anything. Always write down the location of the problem. There might be many different water points in your kushet/got.

• Do not formulate problems as an absence of a solution: "We do not have our own oxen". This will limit the following steps of the analysis. This statement already suggests a solution: "let's get our own oxen". Obtaining a loan to buy oxen might be too expensive and therefore maybe not feasible. Instead, the statement could be “We do have to give away a big share of my harvest to the person who is ploughing my land”. This would problem statement would leave it open to find some alternative solutions. Members of the group might for example have ideas on how to reduce the costs for ploughing through some collaboration among oxen less households.

• It is important to formulate the problem in the way it is directly experienced by the community: "There are no trees left in this area and we have to walk many hours to find some fire wood."

• The facilitator and note-taker must only deal with one problem at a time. Fill in each column separately, working from the left to the right. Do not write down all the different problems from the brainstorming at one time, as you do not know yet how much space of the matrix you will need for each problem.

4. Move to the 2^nd column by constantly asking "why questions" in order to find out about underlying problems and causes of the problem. For every problem, you usually find more than one underlying problem.

(Example: Why is the drinking water so dirty? Answer: Because it was protected but it is damaged now. Why was it not fixed? Answer: There is nobody who is taking care of it! Why is nobody taking care of it? We had somebody who used to do this, but he is not there anymore? Why has nobody else taken over this task? etc.)

5. Once the causes are sufficiently discussed, ask the participants about what they already do to address or cope with the problem. These could be very small activities which help the farmers to make small changes to their income or food availability situation. These activities are livelihood strategies and coping mechanisms and are written down in the Livelihood strategies column of the matrix.

6. Secondly, ask about other resources available inside and outside the community that can be used to solve the problem. Potentials or resources to solve problems include:

natural resources - river water, stones, sand, uncultivated land,

human resources - manpower, skills, knowledge, influential individuals

social resources - local institutions, church groups, saving groups, labour sharing arrangements, committees, projects, developmental programmes of NGOs or government that attends to the problem; remark: you can remind them about the Venn diagram which was done previously

material resources (tools, transport, machinery, bore hole, empty building, funds from the community or elsewhere.

7. In the fifth column, write the measures that are suggested to solve the problem. These measures (proposed projects) can either target the problem as listed in the first column or tackle the problem causes listed in column two. Encourage the group to discuss different options and alternative solutions. If the community identifies many causes of a problem, a package of measures might have to be formulated to address the problems in an adequate (integrated) manner.

8. Now ask the participants which problem from the brainstorming list should be discussed next and proceed as described, starting again from the above mentioned activity No. 3. Continue until you have either covered all the problems or, if you have a time constraint, let the group decide how to deal with the remaining problems identified.

9. The note-taker fills in the first page of the documentation sheet (number of participants, date, duration of task, etc) and after the workshop he/she copies the information from the big MATRIX into the empty PAPP matrix form which is the second page of the documentation sheet.

10. As a next step facilitate a secret ranking of the preferred project proposals and fill in the results in the last column titled “Rank”.

Duration of this task: 2 hours,

Material needed: 1-3 prepared PAPP matrixes on VERY BIG sheets of paper (2 meter by 2 meter) in the local language, big pens (markers), masking tape for fixing the paper at a wall or pin board to fix the chart, documentation sheet.

Documentation Sheet for PAPP Matrix

Please, do not forget to attach a Copy of the PAPP Matrix