Culturally Appropriate Illustrations
Illustrations will be used by your promoters to hold participatory workshops with community members. The drawings will represent typical community scenarios that workshop participants can select and use in a needs assessment or in solution identification. Workshop participants may also receive ‘How-To’ cards which summarize development activities new to them, that they can take home.
The drawings should be made by local artists to reflect local culture and conditions. Upon identifying the artist, you should explain to them that the drawings will be used to help group members think for themselves and participate in the process of making improvements to their daily lives.
Explain that the people, types of housing, vegetation, clothing and buildings must look similar to the community you are working with, and that this will help people use the drawings more successfully.
Visit the community together and take notes on how people live, dress, interact and work; what they do for entertainment; what problems they have, and what they usually do to solve them.
Drawings should show men, women and children - and combinations of people to reflect situations in the actual community. You will need 10 to 15 drawings showing scenes of everyday life. A single drawing may be able to represent different things in different workshops.
Keep the drawings simple. Do not put in too much detail or too much background. Quick, clear sketches in solid lines, of recognizable scenes are preferable.
Keep the original master set of line drawings safe. Photocopy the number of sets that you will need for a workshop, color the photocopies, and laminate the colored sets for use with the community.
