Glossary of Tools


Each of the methods described above is a combination of tools, held together by a guiding principle. Dozens of exercises exist to cultivate collaborative development planning and action. These are the tools with which social scientists and other development practitioners encourage and enable stakeholder participation. Some tools are designed to inspire creative solutions, others are used for investigative or analytic purposes. One tool might be useful for sharing or collecting information, whereas another is an activity for transferring that information into plans or actions. These brief descriptions are intended to provide the reader with a glossary of terminology that practitioners of participatory development use to describe the tools of their trade.