"At the time, what I wanted to do didn’t fit within the parameters of the study programme and yet my internship supervisor gave me the confidence to do what I wanted—Participatory Action Research (PAR) in a remote mountain village in Guatemala. About 80% of my lectures and trainings begin with what I experienced during that internship in Guatemala. And we are talking about more than 12 years ago!"
"In Guatemala, I conducted action research on child mortality caused by diarrhoea. Due to the poor conditions in the village and the heavily polluted river, many children contracted diarrhoea, which resulted in dehydration and sometimes death. I thought with my Western ‘educated’ glasses that I knew what had to be done, but the methodology of action research forced me to take off my glasses and listen carefully to the various stakeholders in the village. I interviewed parents, primary school teachers, nurses, the village committee, the mayor and others. I outlined all of their perspectives and shared the results with the stakeholders in focus group meetings. During these focus groups, they came up with innovative solutions that I would have never thought of. They started a movement to address child mortality from diarrhoea based on intrinsic motivation and with local resources and manpower. Since then, I’ve been wondering why development programmes are still so often conceived from Western ivory towers (and why so much money is wasted on them), while the power primarily lies with the local stakeholders themselves!"
"In 2013, I founded 7Senses. We apply Participatory Action Research worldwide, for all kinds of complex issues. We give trainings, workshops and lectures on PAR and coach PAR researchers worldwide. My goal with 7Senses is to help as many people as possible to use PAR to address complex problems in a different way—not for the people involved but with those people!"
"I noticed that much of the literature on PAR is still quite abstract, while there is so much need for the ‘how you do it’. That is why I made my new book, the Manual on Participatory Action Research, very accessible, hands-on and practical—without academic language but simply explaining, as I would to you face-to-face, how to conduct PAR step by step."
"A tip: if you notice that your passion is off-track, don’t ignore it but talk about it with your supervisors. I did this with my tail between my legs but, to my surprise, I got the opportunity. To this day, I’m still grateful to my supervisor at the time because it led to me being able to pursue my passion every day."
- The Manual on Participatory Action: Working together for a better world (in Dutch) can be ordered here.
