VADODARA, JAN 21: Helping its participants break stereotypes, the Participatory Research Training Programme, organised by the Women’s Studies Research Centre WSRC in collaboration with the Society for Participatory Research Training in Asia PRIA, New Delhi, concluded on Thursday stressing on a greater need for M S University researchers and non-governmental organisations NGOs to work with each other in addressing issues. Sharing their experience with Express Newsline, Trupti Shah of WSRC, also secretary of women’s group Sahiyar, and WSRC project-coordinator Nandini Manjrekar said the programme had helped them look beyond the conventionally-accepted views about both varsity researchers and those with the NGOs.

“While the NGOs held that the university researchers were alienated from reality, we at the university thought that the NGOs were working within a given framework and had not time to get into details. But now both sides realise that their judgements were erroneous,” said Manjrekar.

Shah added that the programme had also motivated the NGOs to minimise their workers’ dependence on their seniors by handing over tasks to fairly experienced sub-ordinates. “The NGO representatives realised that they need not necessarily be there all the time, that they could get the work done by encouraging participation from their workers,” she said. Addressing the participants, United Way Director Girdhar Vaswani stressed on maintaining the continuity of the programme by conducting it periodically. He also emphasised on a “need to sensitise people at all levels” by encouraging participatory research at various levels of any voluntary organisation to break hierarchies.