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The Positive Path: Using Appreciative Inquiry in Rural Indian Communities
Graham Ashford , Saleela Patkar
International Institute for Sustainable Development / Myrada
Winnipeg, Canada
2001, Dec
Annotation: This guide is intended for development practitioners who are looking for methods by which local people can consider long-run issues of sustainability while addressing immediate deployment priorities. It will be of particular interest for those seeking to move beyond deficit-based approaches to project planning and implementation, to methods that identify and build upon local strengths, values and visions. The guide introduces and explains the use of appreciative inquiry, an approach to organizational and social development that identifies peak moments within a community, then discovers and reinforces the conditions that made past achievements possible.
This document is not intended to be a comprehensive reference source for appreciative inquiry, but rather a synthesis of our experiences using appreciative inquiry for community development projects in India since 1999. Appreciative inquiry has been widely praised for its effectiveness in helping corporations become more competitive by aligning their structures and activities with employee and client values. Yet, since it was developed by David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland in the 1980s, it has remained largely unknown to those working outside the corporate sector. However, as remarkable accounts of its applications in community development projects emerge, interest in the approach is growing. Still, few references are widely available about how the approach can be used in the world’s poorer areas where innumerable development challenges exist.
After testing the approach over a two-and-a-half-year period with nearly 500 community groups in the most disadvantaged villages in southern India, we have been convinced of the value of this process. The production of this guide results from our desire to document our experiences and share material that will enable the more rapid adoption of appreciative inquiry in community development.
The guide is divided into three sections:
Section 1 presents a summary of the project including its objectives, strategy, participants and outputs.
Section 2 presents the rational for an appreciative approach, a step-by-step outline of the four stages of appreciative inquiry, including the exercises that we found particularly useful, and illustrations of their results. In addition we explore possible applications and limitations of appreciative inquiry and its relation to “participatory rural appraisal” (PRA), a set of learning and action tools.
Section 3 provides a summary of the theory behind appreciative inquiry and a selection of resources on appreciative inquiry that the reader may find useful.
The guide concludes with an extensive bibliography of appreciative inquiry resources and references.
A final note: we consider this book to be a work in progress. As MYRADA and IISD further explore the use of appreciative inquiry, we will undoubtedly discover new opportunities for application and the need for refinement. Nonetheless, the absence of material on the use of appreciative inquiry for community development and repeated requests for a consolidated guide prompted us to publish our experiences. We hope that this guide will provide development practitioners with additional tools and a more positive mindset, both of which are necessary on the bumpy road to sustainable development.
Online Resources:
The Positive Path (PDF format)
MYRADA Appreciative Inquiry Project
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