Resources

This report provides an overview of communication and rural women, and is structured around five the key themes: communication in a changing world, invisible partners, giving a voice to rural women, communication approaches and looking towards the future. The report also features short case studies about womenÆs indigenous knowledge and communication; international conferences and the role of communication; participatory rural communication appraisal; Mayan women learning communication skills; participatory communication to assess the role of women in natural resource management in Pakistan; grassroots artists and popular communication in Malawi; developing agricultural technologies with rural women in Jamaica; access to the internet, village pay phones and a womenÆs networking support programme. The report concludes by looking at the potential of communication to be a powerful force for fostering learning, positive change and empowerment in the process of rural development: ôwithout communication the voices of rural women for change will not be heard.ö

In this book, development and other social policy scholars and practitioners seek to address simplistic criticisms of participation, while addressing key problems of power and politics. The authors describe and analyse new experiments in participation from a wide diversity of social contexts that show how participation can, given certain conditions, be linked to genuinely transformative processes and outcomes for marginalised communities and people. The book looks at links between participatory development and participatory governance, and spans the range of institutional actors involved in these approaches including the state, civil society and donor agencies. The book places participatory interventions in political contexts, and links them to issues of popular agency and development theory. The book is grouped under six main themes: from tyranny to transformation?; rethinking participation; participation as popular agency: reconnecting with underlying processes of development; realizing transformative participation in practice: state and civil responses; donors and participation: caught between tyranny and transformation; and broader perspectives on from tyranny to transformation. Chapters include "Towards participation as transformation: critical themes and challenges" by Sam Hickey and Giles Mohan; "Towards participatory governance: assessing the transformative possibilities" by John Gaventa; "Rules of thumb for participatory change agents" by Bill Cooke; "Relocating participation within a radical politics of development: critical modernism and citizenship" by Giles Mohan and Sam Hickey; "Spaces for transformation? Reflections on issues of power and difference in participation in development" by Andrea Cornwall; "Towards a repoliticization of participatory development: political capabilities and spaces of empowerment" by Glyn Williams; "Participation, resistance and problems with the local in Peru: towards a new political contract?" by Susan Vincent; "The transformative unfolding of tyrannical participation: the corvÚe tradition and ongoing local politics in Western Nepal" by Katsuhiko Masaki; "Morality, citizenship and participatory development in an indigenous development association: the case of GPSDO and the Sebat Bet Gurage of Ethiopia" by Leroi Henry; "Relocating participation within a radical politics of development: insights from political action and practice" by Sam Hickey and Giles Mohan; "Securing voice and transforming practice in local government: the role of federating in grassroots development" by Diana Mitlin; "Participatory municipal development plans in Brazil: divergent partners constructing common futures" by Glauco Regis Florisbelo and Irene Guijit; "Confrontations with power: moving beyond the tyranny of safety in participation" by Ute Kelly; "Falling forward: going beyond PRA and imposed forms of participation" by Mark Waddington and Giles Mohan; "Participation in poverty reduction strategies: democracy strengthened or democracy undermined?" by David Brown; "Beyond the technical fix? Participation in donor approaches to rights-based development" by Jeremy Holland, Mary Ann Brocklesby and Charles Aburge; "The social embeddedness of agency and decision-making" by Frances Cleaver; and "Theorizing participation and institutional change: ethnography and political economy" by Anthony Bebbington.

With this pioneering book introducing participatory approaches in rural development, the author challenges preconceptions dominating rural development at the time. The central theme of the book is that rural poverty is often unseen or misperceived by outsiders, those who are not themselves rural and poor. The author contends that researchers, scientists, administrators and fieldworkers rarely appreciate the richness and validity of rural peopleÆs knowledge, or the hidden nature of rural poverty. He argues for a new professionalism, with fundamental reversals in outsidersÆ learning, values and behavior, and proposes more realistic action for tackling rural poverty. The book is divided into eight chapters focusing on rural poverty unperceived (i.e. as perceived by outsiders); two cultures of outsiders, negative academics vs. positive practitioners; how outsiders learn; power structures and knowledge; integrated rural poverty including deprivation, vulnerability and powerlessness; making priorities for action; reversals in professional values and bridging gaps between disciplines, professions and departments; and recommendations and discussion of practical actions.

This set of documents present the Nijera Shikhi (NS) peopleÆs literacy movement, an organisation working to abolish illiteracy in Bangladesh. The main document is a PhD thesis with the above title, and attached is also a brief summary paper, æNijera Shikhi: an effective way of tackling illiteracyÆ, outlining the effectiveness of the NS approach, with flexibility, fluidity and æsocial energyÆ as their primary resources; and a written account of ten NS participants on their involvement in the programme. The thesis is focuses on the effectiveness of literacy work and its role in development. It reviews the literature on development, education and literacy. It looks at the types of organisms working in development and literacy, placing this in a context of changes in development thinking in the last half century. Issues involved in testing literacy are subsequently examined with ZieghanÆs literacy test being trialled and modified to a test that can be used with a group of twenty neo-literates to determine functional literacy. The dissertation finally focuses on NS and compares it to literacy work done by the government and ActionAid, an NGO which has developed the REFLECT method. By testing neo-literates at least twelve months following the completion of their course, and by interviewing neo-literates to assess the life changes that have occurred as a result of becoming literate, NS is found to be both extremely low-cost and highly effective. The possible reasons for this are explored with the concept of æsocial energyÆ emerging as a critical issue. Issues relating to different methodologies for educational planning are subsequently explored.

This brief reviews initiatives focusing on youth and children in city governance, with focus on mainstreaming attention to children's needs into the routine practices of local governments; giving greater attention to children's own perceptions; and drawing on the proven energy and creativity of children and young people to contribute to making their cities better places. It details projects that include: evaluations by children of their own urban neighbourhoods and how they could be improved; these also show how urban neighbourhoods can provide a richer and more supportive environment for children in low- and middle-income nations (with examples from Buenos Aires, Argentina and Bangalore, India) than in high-income nations (with an example from Melbourne, Australia); an initiative in Johannesburg, South Africa, where children evaluated their environment and reported on their needs and priorities to city authorities, and a municipal authority in Brazil (Barra Mansa) that fully involved children in city government and in participatory budgeting; programmes in the Philippines and in Brazil that successfully encouraged local governments to better address the needs and priorities of children; and child-friendly city programmes in many nations and the legal, institutional, budgetary and planning measures that underpinned them. Assessments of these experiences by children were generally positive, although they find that city administrators can be unreliable in implementing their promises and adults often retain control of processes where children had expected more autonomy. These precedents also show how children's participation becomes not only an objective in its own right but also a practical instrument for creating better cities.

In recent years the "development" industry has began to incorporate into its vocabulary notions about the "empowerment of the poor," "participatory democracy," "gender in development" etc. as part of a strategy for poverty alleviation in the developing world. This paper critically examines the notion of participation as the basis of empowerment in the context of a joint CanadianûGhanaian financed rural development project in the Northern Region of Ghana, NORRIP (Northern Region Rural Integrated Programme), including aspects of the IVWP (integrated Village Water Project. The paper argues that because of the inherent goodness of the notion of participation, it has become a substitute for the structural reforms needed for social change. The paper raises questions not just about the terms and mode of participation but further points out that reference to the term "village" or "community" as the basis of participation is simplistic and problematic. The paper also questions the feasibility of the institutional and administrative structures within which such concepts may be realized and makes the case that a focus on local participation and empowerment can provide the state with a legitimate opportunity for shirking its responsibilities by dumping them on local areas, even though those areas lack the resources needed.