In November and December 2019, the TRUEPATH project team in Nicaragua implemented four workshops to reflect on actors’ worldviews on issues related with sustainable development and the environment.

The workshops used a photography-based participatory methodology with farmers, credit officers, technicians and researchers, and – in one of the communities where the project is working – a participatory mapping exercise.

Photo-based discussion on worldviews. Photos: Pierre Merlet. 

The participatory exercise aimed to create a forum for collectively discussing with community members the dynamics of land-use change in the community.

Participatory mapping. Photos: Pierre Merlet.

Finally, on 6 December, following the process of strengthening climate observers’ capacity to gather and analyze climate data, the TRUEPATH team implemented a workshop with community climate observers to collectively analyze the second half of the rainy season.

Elsewhere, staff of Nitlapan Uca and staff at the Institute of Development Policy at the University of Antwerp facilitated a two-week pilot course on ‘Participatory research methodologies for and from the transformation of territories’. This course took place in different communities of Río Blanco in Nicaragua.

A group of 24 students and facilitators – with different ethnic, social, professional, and disciplinary backgrounds – are experiencing different ways of doing research for the co-creation of actionable knowledge.

This course is one of the projects in the Going Global programme, with funding from Vliruos, in which
the Institute of Development Policy at the University of Antwerp and its partners in Central America are collaboratively designing an international course on research methodologies in a development context.

This initiative is also embedded in the TRUEPATH project, which investigates the role of microfinance in dynamics of agrarian change with the aim to achieve more sustainable cattle/agricultural development in deforested areas.