Evaluating community projects through participatory rural appraisal: case study of a CSR initiative in India

The success of any project depends on the stakeholder participation. There are many methods by which stakeholder participation is ensured in a project. Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) is an approach that is used by many development projects to incorporate knowledge and opinions of the stakeholders, especially the beneficiaries, in various stages like planning, implementation, and evaluation. This paper documents a PRA exercise done by trained social work students to evaluate a company's Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) projects implemented in India. Apart from highlighting the process of conducting PRA, this paper sheds light on the possibility of using participatory methods like PRA to assess CSR projects in India, which ensures the inclusion of the perception of beneficiaries. The research adopted a case study approach, and the participants were the beneficiaries of CSR projects in the community. Qualitative feedback was also taken from 20 participants to understand the advantages of using participatory tools in the performance evaluation of CSR. The group discussions, in-depth interviews and PRA techniques were adopted to gather data. The findings underline the relevance of social work professionals in CSR initiatives and also the role of PRA in empowering the beneficiaries.