Strengthening people-led development

What is the best way to increase yields and incomes? How to improve the way that the world’s sources are managed? And how to ensure that rural communities can assert their rights and participate in local decision making processes?

Scholars and practitioners have been struggling with these questions for decades, and new approaches have been presented regularly. Gradually, these new approaches have meant a change from a “transfer of technology” model to a growing number of “participatory” methods and techniques, responding to the general idea that sustainable results can only be achieved if the local population is involved in the process.

During the past few years, different organisations in India and Bangladesh have tried different approaches to development, by giving a new meaning to participation. These are organizations which had been working with the local population for many years, and had been following participatory approaches.

These development organisations realised that applying a set of participatory tools was not enough. They had to go through a real, and somehow painful, change. The articles gathered here want to show how, notwithstanding some initial difficulties, such a change is possible. Readers can find in the successful examples of participatory methods presented, a source of motivation and inspiration.

More information:

Authors: T M Radha, Jorge Chavez-Tafur, Anja Mertineit, Emmanuel Yap

Source: AME Foundation

Year: 2010

Pages: 56

ISBN: 81-87293-07-1

Language: English

More details: Book details

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