McGee, Rosemary

Analytical work on poverty in Uganda has been undertaken using both quantitative measures and participatory data collection. This is a report of a consultancy carried out to analyze Participatory Poverty Assessment (PPA) and household survey findings on poverty trends in Uganda, particularly to help clarify the picture on poverty trends, identify areas which require further work and any further findings from the analysis which require policy action.

This report offers insights into new aid coordination processes promoting the inclusion of civil society organisations (CSOs) in aid coordination. It has been produced as part of a wider Christian Aid programme on aid coordination, which aims to enhance the participation of civil society in development by regarding participation as involving shared decision making rather than merely information sharing, observation and consultation.

This book presents the findings from a research project carried out by a team of researchers based in the UK, Uganda and Nigeria. Using examples from Uganda and Nigeria, it sets out to examine the processes by which policies for poverty reduction are made and implemented and assesses the scope policies provide for positive change in the lives of poor people. The writers based their approach on three interconnected themes. Knowledge: the information on which policies are based û who provides it? How is it used?

The targeting of resources for poverty reduction is central to the contemporary poverty orthodoxy. This recent stress on targeting heightens the importance of poverty information, giving rise to two divergent tendencies: the tightening-up of targeting through redoubled means-testing efforts and narrowed eligibility criteria - the technocratic approach -; and the development of a new epistemology of poverty based on qualitative and participatory research methods - the alternative approach.

Colombia's new Constitution of 1991 gave the status of citizen and participant to a people which had not historically enjoyed it. This implied the need for citizenship education and formation to enable people to take advantage of their new status. Many non-governmental organizations in Colombia immediately rose to the challenge. Some of these were newcomers to this field. Others, among them the Instituto Popular de Capacitaci¾n (IPC, Popular Training Institute), came to this task with a long history of working to deepen democracy in a range of ways.

Participatory approaches to development planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation and research have been adopted and spread rapidly in many development agencies. This working paper takes stock of the current debates on participation in development and briefly reviews other agencies' approach to participation. It then focuses on Christian Aid's record in this regard, and analyses some of the key challenges facing the organisation as it strives to put its participatory principles into practice.

Written from the field, this article presents problems, progress and early observations from doctoral fieldwork on poverty and anti-poverty policy which combines ethnographic, rapid appraisal (RA) and other methods. Some of the practical and ethical dilemmas facing researchers aiming to use RA for doctoral fieldwork are outlined and reflections made.