Resources

This document outlines the learning process that the Rural Integrated Project Support, RIPS Phase II has gone through in introducing a participatory approach to its work in rural development in two southern regions of Tanzania over the last five years, as seen by the stakeholders and facilitators in that process.

"Voices of the Poor" is a series of three books that collates the experiences, views and aspirations of over 60,000 poor women and men. This first book of the series gathers the voices of over 40,000 poor women and men in 50 countries from the World Bank's participatory poverty assessments. Using participatory and qualitative research methods, the study presents very directly, through poor people's own voices, the realities of their lives; these voices send powerful messages that point the way toward policy change. The book explores the common patterns that emerged from poor people's experiences in many different places. It starts by presenting the conceptual framework, elaborating on participatory poverty assessments and the study's methodology, including its limitations. It then articulates definitions of poverty from the perspective of the poor, stressing its multi-dimensionality. State institutions and civil society institutions are assessed critically, with their impact on reaching the poor deemed ineffective and limited respectively, forcing the poor to depend primarily on informal networks. Gender relations in the household are then analysed, as is how these affect and are affected by larger institutions of society. The issue of social fragmentation is also explored, including a discussion of social cohesion and social exclusion. The book concludes by proposing the way forward, while elaborating the elements of a strategy for change.

This article gives account for experiences from the Centre for Alternative Technologies (CTA), an NGO working on alternative futures for and with rural small-scale farmers in Zona da Mata of Minas Gerais, in Brazil. CTA staff work with a Local Development Plan (LDP) focussing on developing participatory Municipal Rural Development Plans (MRDP) in three municipalities: Araponga, Tombos, and Acaiaca. This article compares the three municipal planning processes, offering them as an exiting alternative methodology for local development in the Brazilian context. The article starts by describing the study area, CTA's evolution to municipal planning, and CTA's vision for pro-poor municipal planning. It goes on to explain the main building blocks of the CTA-supported MDRP, including participation as a learning process; planning process and methodology; working with new partners giving and giving farmer groups a more prominent role in the process; building accountability structures; non-neutral pro-poor facilitation; and finally learning from diversity, where the importance of differences between the participating communities are and how that forms the process are discussed. The key impacts and challenges are examined, with the problems of standardisation of methodologies in scaling-up of these types of processes. However despite many differences, several elements were found to be effective in all the three cases: the value of PRA (participatory visioning, problems appraisal and solution identification); the importance of some kind of supervision and decision making body; the needed for patience in conflict solving in the group (internally and in interaction with external parties); capacity-building of leadership, facilitation, and negotiation skills; and the need for clear facilitation at the onset of the process with a gradual transformation of the role of external bodies to advisory bodies.

This article looks at the experiences of the Social Enterprise Development Foundation of West Africa (SEND Foundation) in building the capacity of civil society groups and local government officials in resource-poor northern Ghana. The article uses these experiences as a case study to explore how the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS) engages pro-poor and grassroots civil society organisations in facilitating participatory economic development in their local communities. The article has a two-fold focus on capacity building: increasing knowledge and understanding of the GPRS with civil society, and developing participatory monitoring and evaluation skills. The focus is on the Ghana HIPC Watch, which is a pilot project that aims to be a mechanism through which civil society organisations can engage in policy monitoring and evaluation. The central concerns of equity and accountability, particularly in terms of gender, emerged as important issues.

This resource pack is designed for anyone interested in poverty reduction in a context characterised by inequality and exclusion. DFID has focused on the political dynamics of poverty in Peru in order to address the underlying causes of inequality and exclusion. This has meant engaging with political processes, supporting new spaces for dialogue and participation, and working with and building alliances between state, society and the international community. This resource pack includes a book of reflections from DFID, its partners and other local and international voices highlighting lessons and key issues; a DVD looking at DFIDÆs work to strengthen accountability, build citizenship and institutionalise rights in Peru; and a CD-ROM containing a selection of material on DFIDÆs experience such as the book, a series of papers prepared for DFID on state-society relations, and key corporate documents e.g. DFIDÆs target strategy papers. Some of the main recommendations raised include issues for donors, such as addressing poor people as citizens with rights and responsibilities as a key means of tackling inequality and exclusion; working systematically with both the state and wider society to achieve more inclusive development; investing in alliances between those individuals and institutions that are committed to pro-poor reform; and acting openly, transparently and accountably in tackling this more political agenda.

In this WASH Talks video, Robert Chambers talks about the use of Rapid Action Learning (RAL) workshops, immersive research and participatory mapping methodologies in India with the purpose of checking what is actually happening on the ground, and learning from this, in relation to the national Swachh Bharat Mission (Gramin) (SBM-G) (clean India mission).

These methodologies have been developed and implemented with the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC), WaterAid, Delhi University and the Indian government.