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Source based on S Tilakaratna in Fals-Borda O and Rahman MA (1991 Eds) Action and Knowledge; Intermediate Technology publications

The learning process undergone to develop people capable of sensitive intervention in other cultural situations should be distinguished from formal training courses where the trainee becomes an object of training and a depository of knowledge delivered by a trainer. The main elements of this learning process may be summarized as follows:

• The starting point is a collective reflection on and an analysis of the experiences that "trainees" already have in working with communities and their existing knowledge of micro and macro social situations. Such a critical review of existing knowledge and experiences provides an opportunity for each "trainee" to engage in self-criticism and self-evaluation, to initiate a process of "unlearning" as well as new learning.

• Beginning from such an initial self-reflective exercise, the trainees are exposed to concrete field situations by living among selected communities in order to gather socio-economic information through informal discussions with the people and through direct observations as a base for understanding community life.

• Such an exercise in basic data gathering enables the trainee to identify categories of groups. Through interaction, the trainee seeks to stimulate those groups to identify issues of common concern, collect the relevant data on these issues and assist them in analyzing the data so as to enrich their understanding of their own life situations. It requires a sustained effort on the part of a trainee to be able to set in motion such a process of self-inquiry by the people.

• While engaged in such field exercises, the trainees meet regularly (at least once a month) as a group to share and analyze their experiences among themselves as a collective learning experience. This transference from field action to collective reflection is an important method for the trainees to improve the quality of their work by learning from each other's experiences.

• While their can be no definitive time table, concrete experiences suggest that trainees generally take at least 6 months to acquire the basic skills for stimulation and to demonstrate some concrete results in the field. At this point, the trainees would begin to show varying degrees of success in stimulating the people with whom they had been interacting, and to organize themselves so as to initiate changes. The process is not necessarily even; some would lag behind others.

• As an important part of these field exercises, the trainees also should identify those individuals from within the communities who possess the potential skills for animation and facilitation, and should assist in improving such skills. Creation of internal or community cadres is an important requirement for the ultimate phasing out of external cadres.

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