Gubbels, Peter

Aimed at grassroots NGOs, 'From the Roots Up' gives a thorough guide to organisational capacity building and assessment. It includes an outline of the tools and building blocks that are useful to adapt and create participatory exercises, ways to prepare for and carry out organisational self-assessment, methods for facilitators to guide and support the process and details 47 participatory exercises appropriate to conduct with local NGO and community group members. (Later 2001 edition also available in French and Spanish from World Neighbors)

There are several ways to interpret the term "participation". Confusion surrounds it and people now are no longer simply talking about "participation", but about "actual", "real", "true" and "active" participation. This World Neighbours discussion paper outlines two major schools of thought of participation: instrumental and tranformative participation, and gives details of indicators to measure impact and quality.