Resources

This paper describes a 15-year battle by a poor rural community to stop industrial pollution of their water supply, and reveals the multiple strategies used by the people of Yellow Creek to hold powerful government and corporate interests accountable. Key elements of success included the uses of participatory research (including scientific research), freedom of information provisions, and the legal system, as well as strategic alliances and genuine partnerships with supportive and respectful NGOs.

This paper outlines Action Aid's work in progress in exploring the monitoring and evaluation issues related to the impact of advocacy work. It contains a framework for looking at these possible outcomes and impacts and explores some of the trade-offs inherent in advocacy and campaigning work. The author urges greater attention to power dynamics within and among civil society groups, in order to safeguard transparency, legitimacy, representation, and participation in decision making

This is the first of four distance learning courses (other courses are: Advocacy, Barangay Administration, and Barangay Development Planning and Enterprise Development) that have been prepared by the Education for Life Foundation as distance learning modules. This first course is organized in four five units as follows: You and Your Barangay (village); Democratic Participation in Local Governance; Power, Engagement and Development through Local Governance; The Progressive Barangay û an Instrument of Development; and Leadership in Barangay Governance. The main material is the workbook for course enrollees which is user-friendly, with helpful illustrations and tables. There is enough space for enrollees to work on for most exercises making it possible for the enrollees to refer back to material that they had already covered.|For each of the five units in this course, the learning objectives are clearly spelled out as well as the total time required to complete the unit. Each unit is further broken up into readings with clear discussion guides, and exercises and assignments that intend to help bring the readings into a more practical understanding of the workings of the barangay. While most of these exercises and assignments are intended to be individually completed by the course enrollee, there are some exercises that will involve group efforts with other course enrollees. These group activities are to be organized and faciliated by a Learning Guide, to be identified by the enrollees themselves. The course workbook also includes very clear reflection guides after exercises and assignments, and at the end of every unit.|Three cassette tapes with accompanying audio material recommended for listening throughout the course come with the course book. Also, there is a Guide to Learning for the course student that explains the distance learning approaches adapted, the structure of the course, and suggestions for effective learning. There is also a Guide for the Learning Guides who are expected to help organize and facilitate the group learning sessions with other students as recommended in the course. The Guide for Learning Guides clearly spells out the roles of the Learning Guide in the distance learning process and includes practical pointers on how the Learning Guides can help facilitate learning. All material is in Pilipino.

This newsletter is a special issue on trying to bridge the gap between donors' resources and their effective use in targeting the poor, through the use of community development funds. Community development funds function like banks, but can work more flexibly and at different levels. Several case studies are presented from countries in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and southern Africa, and a number of tips and advantages in setting up a community development fund are outlined. Some of these are that they: " Set new standards of transparency and accountability; " Make multiple, small-scale investments in many community-initiated urban development projects; " Support tangible outputs of value to the urban poor, in different sectors and areas; " Help establish and strengthen long-term partnerships between community organisations, municipal authorities and the private sector, while stimulating new working practices; " Provide poor communities and their organisations with opportunities to learn by doing.

Recent policy initiatives focusing on local government modernisation and neighbourhood management seek to reinvigorate local democracy and ensure that government is more responsive to local needs. Such policies could mark profound changes in the way our communities are governed, but what are the practical implications? Drawing upon research findings of current practice and the authors' direct experience, this report presents an overview of the issues faced by public, private and voluntary organisations, community groups and residents engaged in neighbourhood renewal and management. The analysis suggests that more attention needs to be given to issues of organisational and cultural change, capacity building and the hidden costs of implementing these new agendas.

This workshop report is a source of case study material and group discussions by practitioners of participatory planning (PP) for local governance (LG) from around the world, useful to practitioners and students of PP. The first section is an overview of approaches to PP and a framework for analysing power dynamics in PP, followed by participant questions and debate. Participants from Bolivia, South Africa and Indonesia gave presentations on their experiences of PP in LG, which provide interesting comparative material on the legal and institutional contexts and the operational, cultural and attitudinal challenges. Further input on the Indonesia experience comes later in the report in the write-up of the field visits organised for this workshop by the Indonesian Partnership for Local Governance Initiatives. Participants identified key cross-cutting themes and issues: changing habits to make PP happen (attitude and behaviour), Citizen participation in PP (who participates?), Frameworks for PP (laws, regulations), Resource mobilisation and organisation for local plans, Skills and capacity for PP (both in LG and communities), and Power relations in PP. Finally, discussions focused on sustainability and innovation in PP, and the spread, scale and quality of these processes. Feedback is tabled under 'dangers' and 'actions'. The report has several annexes with lists of participants, activities, case write-ups and evaluations.

It is only over the 1990s that local government bodies have started to apply participatory methodologies with any consistency. This is surprising given their mandate to meet the needs and interests of local people. This overview discusses the many issues surrounding participation and local government. These include: the reasons why local government has failed until recently to employ participatory methodologies; how local government officials in both the North and South can learn from each other and how participation can be used to influence new styles of leadership that are more democratic, transparent and accountable.