You plan your research with the community through:

• Verbal ranking of problems and opportunities, during which a list of problems and opportunities is drawn up 
• Prioritisation of problems and opportunities, which consists of a broad discussion and reshuffling of the listed problems and opportunities
• Listing of activities, based on the prioritised problem and opportunity list
• Prioritisation of activities, based on the listed activities and a broad discussion on actual possibilities to carry out such activities
• Delegation of responsibility, or WHO should do WHAT.

involves the sketching of houses and other social facilities and infrastructure in a village. It helps to visualise and situate the location of household, social facilities and infrastructure in the village.

This is a tool that helps us to learn about the community and its resource base, mostly based on the perception of the natural resources found in their community.

This helps villagers to set priorities (problem, needs, action etc). This is usually done with key informants.

Here the villagers meet in small groups and discuss the most important events in the community in the past and put in to a timeline. This process reflects discussions on problems, social and technological innovations or on the community’s history of cooperation  to solve problems in the past.

This method determines patterns and trends throughout the year in a certain village. It can be used to know about rainfall, food availability, agriculture production, income and expenditure, health problems etc. This tool helps to understand how villagers allocate their time to various activities during a year.