Participatory Mapping as a tool for Community Empowerment

Dr. Joseph O. Prewitt Diaz1

Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to discuss participatory mapping as a tool to

empower communities as part of the recovery and reconstruction process after a
disaster. The drawing of maps by local people in developing a sense of place and
identity and to enhance cultural knowledge can be traced back centuries. However in
the psychosocial support sector of humanitarian assistance, social and spatial mapping
as a participatory exercise, often facilitated by ‘outsiders’ as a means for knowledge
creation has been taking place since the 2004 (Prewitt Diaz, 2006). This process
focuses primarily on the individual experience of participation, and how individuals
move through different types, experiences and spaces of participation through their
lives.
The three basic components of community mapping: (1) method for data
collection, (2) visual representation of the findings, and (3) behaviors and attitudes
toward the process has been adapted from traditional PRA methodology. The methods
for data collection are visual and tangible usually performed by a representative group
of neighbors. Community mapping are developed as a concensus of what the group
has observed. The findings include houses, and other building in the community,
roads or paths, water taps, and electric poles, fields, school, churches and the location
where different groups live in the community. The behaviors and attitudes include
training the community members and then taking a step back and put trust in the
process of data gathering and analysis in the local group.

Finally the power of community mapping in empowering and enhancing

resilience in the participating community cannot be overstated. It is a versatile and
powerful activity that is easy to teach, and once underway it is fun to do, and after
completed it instills a sense of fulfillment and pride on the participants. They become
master’s of their process and have a tool to influence the future.

The sections below provide a discussion of the methods develop by the

psychosocial support personnel of the American Red Cross after the 2004 tsunami in
South Asia.

What is participatory mapping?

Participatory mapping is an interactive approach that draws on local people’s

knowledge, enabling participants to create visual and non-visual data to explore social
problems, opportunities and questions resulting from the effects of a disaster or
emergency. Participants work together to create a visual representation of a place
using the tools and materials at their disposal, such as chalk or markers, construction
paper, plastic cement, scissors, and tape.

1
Dr. Prewitt Diaz is a Visiting Professor in the School of Law, University of Puerto Rico. He was the
recipient of the 2008 APA International Humanitarual Award
 While creating the community map, the group may deliberate over how to best
represent the place in question, share their observations as they go along, and tell
personal stories and anecdotes. This is a valuable process to identify the community’s
risks, needs, resources and protective factors. By the time the exercise is completed
the community members have a pretty good idea of what psychosocial activities will
help them to reconstruct their community, and plans, and implementation strategies,
timelines and monitoring devices and external resources are needed to reconstruct the
community, improve their resource and well being and move forward.

Community participatory mapping becomes a monitoring tool (Dayal, 2007).

This process allows the outsider to observe the different psychosocial features of a
particular place and the interaction between and within them. For example a
participatory mapping exercise twice a year over the duration of a project reveals the
physical changes that have occurred over time, residents’ personal and collective
experiences, and their attitudes and perspectives on their “place”. These bi-annual
maps reflect the knowledge of the community; omissions and variations from one
map to the next are indicative of the progress made during a project cycle, where
participation happens, who participates, how the participants are involved in their
communities and beyond, and their reflections on the opportunities and barriers to
participation in their areas.
Tri-dimensional models to identify community vulnerabilities and resources.
This method uses participatory mapping principles to invite affected
communities to generate a tri-dimensional model of their neighborhood, community
and place and suggest how they would like to see their community reconstruction
after a disaster. After the map is develop on a table top, representatives from
community groups prioritize the suggestions that have been offered by all
stakeholders and develop an action plan that serve as the basis for community action
and may be used to request funds from external stakeholders, and humanitarian
agencies.
Maps as representations of physical, psychological and social geography of
the place.

A tangible outcome of community mapping was the development and

production of large paper and table top maps which indicated specific physical
locations, or sites, where people participate – for example, schools, churches,
businesses, and community centers - as well as examples of the activities and users of
these sites.

Where several community groups (women, youth, and the elderly) are engaged
the maps were all quite different in appearance, although those depicting the same
places included a number of the same landmarks, activities and sites. Some groups
chose to create quite physical maps which marked sites geographically, while others
created more conceptual maps that grouped sites thematically, such as by type of
activity, type of organization, or group (Buddhist, Christian or Muslim). In all cases,
the finished maps included a number of details of where types of participation took
place and who provides or coordinates these opportunities, providing a snapshot of
some of the components of community life.
The maps further highlighted the institutions, organizations or groups that operate,
manage or control the sites and spaces of participation. These included: government
bodies (schools, the police, local authority maintained parks/green spaces, hospitals);
faith- based organizations (mosques, churches, or Hindu or Buddhist temples);
community centers, and informal “gossip” networks (often the interception of two
paths or under a tree where you wait for the bus).

Mapping people’s perceptions and experiences

A paper map is limited in its ability to represent a place – and participation happening
within that place - as dynamic. People’s conversation as they create the maps adds an
important layer to the interpretation of the maps, and to their value. The meetings
explaining the maps are a valuable source of information. identify some common
themes related to perception of place, accessibility, and multi-purpose of sites.

Perceptions of place and of community

The chatter during the development of the maps and accompanying

discussions revealed that community members in some of the fieldwork areas
have a strong sense of their collective identity as residents of that place, and a
common idea of where its boundaries begin and end. One important finding
of the activity in Sri Lanka was that this sense of identity with a place affects
community members’ participation either within or beyond their immediate
environment. The psychosocial support team was able to identify from the
participants their mental maps and sense of boundaries of particular
communities.
Accessibility and inclusion of sites of participation
Participants in the map exercises raised issues relating to the accessibility and
inclusivity of local sites. Barriers to participation can range from the practical
—programs are conducted far away, to an emotional feeling of discomfort
that a member of a different caste or religious group can get when joining a
group that does not present itself as welcoming.
Multi-purpose and single use sites

All communities identified ‘hubs’ of participation which support a wide range

of activities, events, and organizations, and through which diverse groups of
people access opportunities to participate. Common hubs included community
center’s, places of worship, schools, parks and green spaces.
The visual method created prompts in mapping that encouraged participant
dialogue and started to develop the psychosocial support team's relationship with the
affected people. The visual method motivated the discussion, and resulted in a
tangible representation of local participation that the psychosocial support team was
able to take away, reflect on, analyze and use for the project development process.

The basic, ‘self-created’ mapping technique provided a means for the affected
people to express their ideas and thoughts in an easily understandable and enjoyable
manner. A ‘blank slate’ approach was promoted to see how local people interpreted
and constructed their local area in relation to key landmarks and participatory spaces.
The final product was a varied, colorful and rich visual representations of the
neighborhood, community and place highlighting where participation happened.

Mapping is a community-generated process of knowledge creation; it invites

dialogue and enables the reflection of individual and shared experiences. This
exchange of ideas is generated both during the mapmaking process and afterwards,
when the groups reflected on one another’s maps. Participants’ comments and
conversations were important because they took the process beyond a simple two-
dimensional representation of the affected areas and invited exploration of people’s
perceptions and experiences of participation in those areas. These conversations
provided insights related to the context and quality of participation in the local areas,
and brought a broader interpretive dimension to the workshops.

Participatory mapping was designed to overcome community wide social

boundaries by focusing on visual and informal information and enabling participants
to contribute ideas easily and without pressure by being physically informal - people
standing around a table contributing ideas rather than a formal meeting setting. As
such, mapping can involve the local community right across the social spectrum,
bringing in those who might often be excluded, and encouraging collaboration,
sharing and relationship-building between groups who may not usually work together.

Challenges to community mapping

The maps created will always to some extent reflect the knowledge, world-view
and experience of the participants involved in their creation. While the community
mapping activity is done through an open invitation, some groups of people from a
particular participatory activity or interest, which has the potential to affect the group
dynamics during the mapmaking process and unbalance the content of the final map.
The organizer of this activity has to invite equal participation from all segments of the
affected community.
Another factor that can influence the map- making is the way in which the
group negotiates the map creation. Depending on the group facilitators the maps do
differ according to not only the individual knowledge of participants but also the way
in which the person/people who took charge of populating the map order and present
information. Some maps are more conceptual; others more spatial. Some have used
coding and clearly demarcated the boundaries of the area, whereas others have not.
Participants generate the data and the role of the PSSP volunteer is to facilitate the
process, allowing the participants themselves to shape the mapping session to some
extent.

The success of participatory mapping depends highly on the interests,

motivations and capabilities of the individual participants involved. Thus
disagreements can arise, misunderstandings can occur, one person’s perception of
‘boundary’ can be entirely different to another’s. More often than not this is of
interest and part of the dialogue prompted by the exercise.

Recording and analysis

The Psychosocial Support team ensured that they fully captured the discussions
in the workshops to complement the visual data generated through the creation of the
maps by digitally recording discussions and by taking notes. Two members of the
team were present at each workshop so that one could facilitate and the other could
take notes and ensure that the digital recorders were capturing the discussion. This
approach worked well, and whilst it was useful to have the backup of the digital
recordings, enough was captured in the notes of discussions, photos and the paper
maps for the team not to need to transcribe recordings of group conversations.

Each researcher wrote a short report of each workshop, which included some
key observations and themes, and the main sites and activities from each map. After
this, the project team met to collectively analyze the maps and identify key themes,
and the researchers wrote this report. This process has ensured that the project has
captured all the learning involved in the mapping workshops – from the initial
rationale for choosing the method, to the practicalities of recruitment and designing
the sessions, to capturing and reflecting on the data that has emerged from the
workshops. Finally, the team were keen to use an inventive and collaborative
approach such as participatory mapping as a fun, interesting and eye-catching
introduction of the project to local community members in the hope that this would
encourage participation in the project later.
Conclusion

Participatory mapping has developed a range of principles and methods that can
be used in a wide variety of contexts and for many different research purposes and
questions. The psychosocial support decided to use this method at the initial stages of
community interventions. The team developed quite a specific approach, relevant to
the project, the context and the groups of disaster-affected people they were working
with. They found that the participatory mapping provided real practical benefits at
this stage of the project: helping to facilitate disaster affected people to work
collaboratively to draw on their local knowledge, motivating forward thinking and
planning of reconstruction, and increased knowledge of planning and developing a
psychosocial support project. The limitations of participatory mapping, particularly
that the data mapping generates and captures reflects only the views of the people that
participated in the exercise and not all the members of the community

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