Resources

This paper discusses the concept and practice of public advocacy. It describes the various practices of public advocacy, what advocacy involves, its challenges, and offers a brief look at public advocacy in India. It argues that public advocacy, rather than being a mere fashionable term, should signify a set of planned, proactive and organised actions to address issues of injustice, marginalisation and rights abuse in a more effective and efficient manner. To do so effectively, existing power relations have to be shifted in favour of the marginalised.

This paper discusses community exchange programmes as a powerful mechanism for increasing the capacity of community organisations to participate in urban development. By enabling communities to share and explore local knowledge created through livelihood struggles, a powerful process is triggered, whereby community exchanges transform development. Through a cumulative process of learning, sharing and collective action, strong sustained and mobilised networks of communities emerge. Central to this has been the sharing of experiences between communities, first at very local levels, then in the city, then nationally and internationally. The development of this methodology by the National Slum Dwellers Association, SPARC (an NGO) and Mahila Milan (a federation of women's cooperatives) in India is described. Exchanges are located within a broader approach to community learning and people's empowerment. Benefits of the exchange process are examined, and the paper reflects on why exchanges are an effective methodology for supporting a process of people-centred development. The necessary conditions for the exchange process to be fully effective are reviewed, which consequently point to the distinct characteristics of the exchange process vis-Ó-vis other participation methodology. It concludes by drawing together some of the wider implications of this approach.

This document presents the proceedings from the three-day National Workshop on Network management organised by the Eastern Region Participatory Action Network (ERPAN) in collaboration with the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), under the Pathways to Participation project. The main objectives of the workshop were to exchange ideas and practices of network management existing in national and international contexts, and to formulate future strategies. A brief analysis is made of the lessons learned from the workshop procedure and structure, and the document goes on to present the daily proceedings of the workshop. The first two days of the workshop were focussed on sharing, concept, history, and present situation of the networks with experiences from Nepal, Bangladesh and Tanzania. On the third day the discussions of the previous two days were summarised by dividing the participants into four groups discussing monitoring, quality and linkages, membership issues, function, and sustainability of networks. The proceedings are followed by 14 annexes comprising some of the presentations made, including: evaluation and feedback; review of the workshop; notes on workshop facilitation; a letter from the ERPAN chairperson reflecting on the workshop; an overview of international participatory networks and their present status; experiences of ERPAN, ActionAid, NEPAN (Nepal Participatory Action Network), PANDA (Participatory Analysis of Needs and Development Action), PARENT (Participatory Resource Network Tanzania); promotion of peopleÆs participation in Bangladesh and the role of PPS (PRA promotion Society); an analysis of networking of civil society, development and capacity building, and challenges encountered by networks and future perspectives; a daily programme schedule; and a list of the participants

This is a report on research undertaken with the objective of gauging real and perceived human insecurity among civilians affected by social violence in South Asia. The project drew on qualitative methodologies to measure æriskÆ and ævulnerabilityÆ in four communities in South Asia affected by small arms-related violence. In determining whether participatory research had any added value to uncover qualitative dimensions of arms related insecurity, it became clear that there is a strong case for expanding participatory action research in the security and disarmament fields, especially in relation to the monitoring and evaluation of violence reduction programmes and security sector reform. The main finding was that most communities felt threatened by the excesses committed by security forces and were particularly worried about being caught in the crossfire between armed forces. Almost without exception, they believed that a political solution to armed violence is the only workable option for redressing insecurity and that preventative and reactive military responses would yield few positive results.