East Asia

This article examines the capacity-building experiences of two research teams in Yunnan and Guizhou provinces in southwest China who used participatory monitoring and evaluation (PM&E) to strengthen their development research actions, particularly in the area of natural resource management (NRM). The authors describe their efforts to incorporate PM&E practices in their work. The process proved challenging despite political and economic changes in China that aim to allow more space for local voice and decision-making power in the management of natural resources and other village affairs.

This Practical Note examines the design and implementation of Community-Driven Development (CDD) programmes, using the Kecamatan Development Programme (KDP) and the Urban Poverty Programme (UPP) in Indonesia as case studies. Launched in 1998, both have been praised as successful twin CDD pilots, allowing community groups to gain control over financial resources and decision-making processes. Despite similarities, the paper finds that different CDD approaches have been adopted, for various reasons.

This article looks at lessons that emerge from one specific approach to bridging activism and scholarship – the collaborative research partnership between scholars and activists. What these lessons share is a focus on recognising difference in order to bring people together.

Thailand is experiencing the unfamiliar phenomenon of aid and multilateral agencies such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank lending money for internal development programmes. In the economic boom years, aid was neither sought nor required since structural development was funded from the growth which South East Asian countries had begun to take for granted.

The author presents the views of Thailand's Population and Community Development Association (PDA - Thailand's largest NGO) about how to provide women attracted to the commercial sex industry (CSI) with economically viable alternatives to this accepted (in Thailand) type of `manual labour'. Research has shown that poverty is the major factor cited by voluntary commercial sex workers (CSWs) as influencing their move into the industry, and that economic development is their way out.

Agrarian reform or land reform has virtually disappeared from the international development agenda since the 1980s. However, many people's organisations (POs) and NGOs in Third World countries are attempting to restore it as a development priority and policy imperative. The Philippines provides an example of agrarian reform that is currently being implemented within a democratic political framework which, while not without problems, presents an opportunity for a meaningful change for small farmers and landless peasants.

There is growing interest in organisational and institutional development, or capacity-building, but little understanding of what these involve in practice. This article provides a case-study of a successful long-term programme of institutional development, which built the capacities of the Tibetan refugee community in development planning. The primary focus is on key features for adaptation by development practitioners. The authors also clarify some of the confusions in the debate on organisational and institutional development.

The discrepancy between the goals of political policies and in beneficiaries is apparent in rural development. One reason is the lack of political clout by rural people themselves to influence policy decisions that affect their livelihoods. If rural development is to benefit these people, upward influence in policy decisions should go hand in hand with development policies. Ideally, both government agents and politicians should commit themselves to support the people's agenda, and any government intervention should reflect political response to grassroots demands.

This is an account of the author's experience as an adviser in the Education Ministry of the Lao People's Democratic Republic. The article looks critically at the role of the foreign `expert', the contexts in which such expertise is provided or even imposed, and the barriers to effective communication which exist. It also looks positively at what is of value once these issues have been addressed.

This article explores the prospects for indigenous and foreign NGOs in post-Mao China. The structural complexity of the emerging NGO sector in China is illustrated by a typology of the new social organisations which have flourished in the last ten years. The author considers the factors favouring the expansion of this intermediary sector of quasi- and non-governmental activity, but also analyses the factors constraining the emergence in the near future of a vibrant NGO sector.