Participatory Structural and Social Mapping with the Community

Objective

To introduce participatory and interactive resource mapping techniques to students.

Outcome

Students will cultivate the ability to facilitate community driven site-analysis and acknowledge the local wisdom and knowledge. This will also help them engage with the interrelationships between social-economic, cultural and spatial characteristics of informal settlements.

Requirements/Prerequisites

• A well established relationship with the community (pick a community you have visited before and have a well established rapport with), ideally in collaboration with the social organization already working with the community,
• presence of community members from different age groups, charts, sketch pens, locally available material for mapping.

Procedure

Step 1 : Students welcome the community 

Step 2: Students explain the purpose of the exercise to the community 

Step 3: Students draw a north arrow on the chart/ground

Step 4: Students hand over the sketch pen/chalk powder to community members 

Step 5 : Students ask community members prompt questions (eg. where are community taps, water sources, drainage lines, places of worship, community hall, Aanganwadi, etc) and community members are told to indicate these as symbols on the map ( students can support community members time and again, but need to facilitate discussions in a manner that enables the community to own and drive the mapping process) 

Step 6:: After the initial mapping students should explore if there are any socio-economic underpinnings to the settlement structure ( eg. are certain parts of the settlement inhabited by people from certain religions, working groups, etc) 

Step 7: Students thank the community, click photographs of the map and let the community keep the map. 

References

None