Needs assessment and prioritization of the needs of local communities with rural participatory appraisal approach (case study: Malekshahi county, Ilam)

1. Introduction
Nowadays, the participation of villagers in rural development programs is considered one of the fundamental principles of planning in rural areas and helps to overcome the limitations of centralized planning. In order to increase the success rate of development programs, it is important to identify the real needs and demands of local communities and take them into consideration when developing programs. Participatory Needs Assessment (PNA) aims to identify the needs of rural communities by actively involving local residents and communities, prioritizing them, and proposing suitable action plans to address them. PNA is used in various fields, including identifying service needs, infrastructure, employment, health, and in different societies ranging from urban to rural. This research focuses on using PNA and prioritization of needs in identifying and categorizing the main needs of the villages in Malekshahi County as perceived by the local community.

2. Methodology
The research methodology used in this study is Participatory Needs Assessment, which is a step in the Rural Participatory Appraisal method. The focus group meeting technique was utilized to collect data for this study. The data collection took place between 1398-1400. All meetings were conducted in villages, with attendance ranging from 5 to 30 people depending on the population of the village. Researchers made an effort to ensure that the attendees represented different sections of the village, such as women, farmers, herdsmen, youths, workers, elders, council members, and other villagers. After completing the meetings and determining the priorities of each village, the identified needs were aggregated based on their importance and priority to arrive at the needs of the villages in Malekshahi county.

3. Results
The top three needs of the villagers in Malekshahi are providing access to clean drinking water, improving the conditions and opportunities for employment, and enhancing mobile phone and mobile internet coverage while solving related issues. Following these, the priorities include supplying domestic and piped gas to the villages, providing agricultural water, repairing and asphalting rural roads connecting to the main road, implementing the Hadi project, upgrading agricultural and livestock facilities, and constructing a health center. The third tier of priority needs include facilities for constructing animal shelters, asphalting alleys and roads, providing sports spaces for both men and women, repairing and restoring roads connecting farms, constructing and/or repairing religious places, leveling agricultural land, and constructing a bridge over the river. In addition, creating housing facilities, offering waste transportation and disposal services, building green spaces and parks, establishing a bakery in the village, resolving electricity outages, providing security and preventing theft, providing mechanized equipment, agricultural inputs, marketing and sales services, and constructing dams for gardens (which are common in fewer villages) were some of the identified needs. Based on the local community's perspective, financial facilities, construction and infrastructure, public services, and the agricultural sector's needs are the four top priority areas. The four most common needs across more than ten villages include mobile phone and mobile internet coverage, creating employment opportunities, providing access to quality drinking water, and building educational infrastructure to support children's education.

4. Discussion
From the local community's perspective, four categories of needs have high priority: financial needs and facilities, construction and infrastructure needs, public services, and agricultural needs. The four most important needs of the villages in Malekshahi are mobile phone coverage and mobile internet, employment opportunities, access to quality drinking water and piped water, and creating educational infrastructure for children's education. Overall, mobile phone coverage in Malekshahi county is very poor, and even in Erkowaz city, making a simple call is tedious and painful, while using mobile internet is very difficult. The second priority identified by the local community is creating employment opportunities in the villages. Dependence on traditional and pasture-based livestock farming, as well as the nomadic nature of a significant part of livestock farmers and, as a result, the people of the city, have caused the youth to have low aspiration towards this way of life. The rocky and mountainous region with limited land suitable for agriculture has caused unemployment to be extremely high in the villages. Moreover, due to the lack of water or the very low quality of water caused by salinity in many villages, daily life in those villages has become a problem. The dispersion of villages, low population density, hilly terrain, and high altitude compared to Ilam's Dam are among the factors that have hampered construction operations for water transfer and drinking water supply. Creating suitable infrastructure for children's education is also a pressing need for the villages in Malekshahi, which is a high priority for the local community. The high average age of the villages, low number of young people, and small household sizes have caused villages with low populations to struggle with providing adequate education to children.

5. Conclusion
The results revealed that the local community's most important needs are infrastructure needs and financial resources. Although this statement holds significant truth, to prioritize the community's basic needs related to their livelihoods, issues like the destruction of pastures, water resources, oak forests, and the environment should have a higher priority. Due to the accumulation of infrastructural needs, the local community has low trust in governmental institutions, and the community itself does not take serious actions for resolving their problems, despite the potential and capacity to do so. However, a significant portion of these needs can be addressed by the local community itself. The extreme centralization of the political administration and the development of administrative and managerial hierarchies from the national level to the village level have caused the degradation and destruction of traditional institutions of local management, such as the ineffectiveness of the role of tribal hierarchies in resolving the problems of the local community and the diminution of the role of the beard, white men, and local trustees in local management.