People-driven solutions

An introduction to facilitating deep participation for systemic change through Systemic Action Research programming

You can use this resource to support team reflection and co-learning on how to: 

• Strengthen meaningful, deep participation,
• Deepen levels of ownership among participants and groups,
• Shift power to local people, children and marginalised groups,
• Strengthen people-driven (including children) or -led programming,
• Work effectively as a diverse, equitable and collectively-minded partnership
• Find new, sustainable ways to address longstanding development and humanitarian challenges
• Find ways to reduce dependency on external development and humanitarian actors
• Build team capacity around the fundamental practitioner and team skills underpinning most deep participatory, people-driven, power-sharing approaches
• Use participatory forms of adaptive management to enable learning that supports effectiveness

The resource is designed to be used primarily by practitioner teams working within international or national NGOs, in the development or humanitarian sector.

In each module in the blocks below, there are video and written briefs, including information on how to adapt the approach to different working contexts and programmes. It also encourages teams to set themselves some actions to start shifting how they work.