Resources

This article reports on a scoping study called Power in Community in which the author carried out Power Talks with community activists in the north of England.  She gives a comprehensive analysis of the meaning of power ranging from dominating power, to the power to co-operate, to empowerment.  She then concludes that these community activists were using non-dominating power: describing power as enabling others, sharing and listening with others.   The article argues that the evidence of practice on non-dominating power should be used to shift the debate from empowerment to transforming power.

This book is written by 13 Karimojong researchers, young men and women aged between 20 and 29, of the Matheniko, Bokora and Tepeth groups who live in the Karamoja Sub-Region in Uganda.  In November 2011 they set out to research the situation of youth in their area and this book comprises their findings and conclusions.  Some of these researchers have been through school and university, others have not been to school at all, and this combination of people who read and write and those who speak and hear is the strength of this research.  It enabled access to people, knowledge and ideas that would not have been possible otherwise.  The basic principles used are described in a methods paper, Action Research; how a group of young people did it in Napok and Moroto, in Karamoja, Uganda.

This paper proposes a framework for how empowerment can be conceptually understood and operationally explored. It makes recommendations for forthcoming areas of work within the POVNET Work Programme on empowering poor women and men to participate in, contribute to and benefit from growth.  In responding to our terms of reference the authors have sought to introduce ideas and evidence from latest publications on this theme, combined with findings from our own research.

Facilitators are being called upon to work in international and cross-cultural arenas more than ever before to help groups identify and achieve their goals and resolve differences in areas including governance, education, health and community development.  This book provides a practical approach for facilitators needing to enhance their skills when working with people from a diverse range of backgrounds.  Using a step-by-step approach, it takes the facilitator through ideas, processes, models and frameworks that are designed to assist with the preparation, facilitation and evaluation of workshops.  Based on research and facilitator experiences, it advises how to adapt learning materials to suit specific situations and offers techniques to deal with conflict.

With the priority of poverty reduction and with accelerating change in many dimensions, up-to-date and realistically informed perceptions of the lives and conditions of people living in poverty have come to matter more than ever. At the same time, new pressures and incentives increasingly trap decision-makers in headquarters and capital cities, reinforcing earlier (1983) analysis of the attraction of urban 'cores' and the neglect of rural 'peripheries'. These trends make decision-makers' learning about poverty and from people living in poverty rarer and ever more important. One common means has been rural development tourism, the phenomenon of the brief rural visit from an urban centre. In 1983, six biases of such visits - spatial, project, person, seasonal, diplomatic and professional - against seeing, meeting and learning from the poorer people, were identified and described. Security can now be added as a seventh. Much can be done to offset the biases. The solution is to make more visits, not fewer, and to enjoy doing them better.

In addition, new and promising approaches have been pioneered for experiential, direct learning, face-to-face with poor and marginalised people. Examples are: UNHCR's annual participatory assessments by staff; SDC's 'views of the poor' participatory research in Tanzania; and various forms of immersion, most recently those being convened and organised by ActionAid International. In many immersions, outsiders become guests for a few days and nights, and live, experience and learn in a community. The question now is not how an organisation can afford the time and other resources for immersions for its staff. It is how, if it is seriously pro-poor, it can possibly not do so. This paper is a challenge to development actors to practice a responsible pro-poor professionalism; to be pioneers and champions, seizing and making space for themselves and others to offset the biases and traps of headquarters and capital cities; and to have the vision and guts to seek out direct experiential learning and so to be in touch and up-to-date with the realities of the people living in poverty whom they seek to serve.