In English only
Volume 8
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Since the late 1980s, democratic institutions and an active civil society are being prescribed as important ingredients and preconditions to reduce poverty, social exclusion, and violent civil strife. Multi-party systems and elections are seen as the most important expressions of formal democracy. This paper argues that more attention is needed to substantive democracy, which requires a greater understanding of the various lega-political variants within a democratic framework. The paper discusses in some depth the crisis of governance in Belgium. The analysis raises questions about the relationship between 'political' and `civil society', and between social movements and political parties. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development and Social Action.
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This article sets itself to answer the question: why theatre in development? It examines the reasons why development agencies have been reluctant to put Theatre for Development high on their agendas. It demonstrates the importance of critical pedagogy in the history of the form, which is linked directly to the emphasis placed on learner-centred participation in the Theatre in Education movement and in the techniques of Theatre of the Oppressed. It advocates a central role for the cultural component in any development process which claims to represent the needs of specific communities as articulated in their own voices, while exploring the particular dynamics of theatre as a non-literary form of dialogic communication that creates a `safe space' of fiction in which those who are habitually marginalised can not only find, but also use, a voice to effect change.
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This paper offers an insight into the creative ways in which a major social institution in one of the most progressive States in India has attempted to take gender issues on board. The Maharashtra Police Force has taken a major step towards empowering women by opening all mainstream duties to them as from 1994. The paper records the process through which the Force has taken this up as part of a larger agenda to tackle the issues of violence against women, and may serve as an example for similar organisations and students of gender issues.
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Worldwide concern for the environment has spawned a new field of interest and expertise within the development assistance industry. Environmental projects have become the new `darling' of the foreign aid community with donors and practitioners vying for suitable `eco' projects to support. While this support for the environment mimics the attention the development industry has paid to women (and later, gender), concern for these equally fashionable issues has not always been synchronised. Many development practitioners promote environmental projects which accord nominal concern to gender issues. Drawing on a case study of eco-timber production in the Solomon Islands, this article demonstrates how environmental sustainability and gender equity should be seen as complimentary project goals.
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The concept of sustainability has evolved and expanded to include more than just environmental issues. Development practitioners now address questions linking sustainability to population and, in particular, to poverty alleviation. Environmentally sustainable development cannot be achieved, let alone maintained, unless poverty is reduced. Thus, the connection between sustainability and poverty reduction must be properly understood if economic assistance for the poor is to be successful. These questions can be confusing and difficult to address satisfactorily in practice. How can poverty reduction programmes and projects be designed for sustainability? How can the elements of sustainable poverty reduction be built into all stages of the project cycle? These issues are examined and a set of guidelines and minimum standards proposed. Relevant examples are cited to illustrate how the inclusion of poverty alleviation concerns into the project cycle can be achieved.
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The author puts forward the personal view that participatory methodologies (such as Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) and Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA)) are often used by NGOs in such a way that they create a negative impact on the community they were intended to empower. Arguing that these methodologies incite the poor to feel the need to seem poor - a potentially disastrous starting point for any collaborative community/NGO initiative - the author advocates an approach by which communities identify their resources, and their capacity to improve their quality of life. An earlier version of this article was presented by the author at a PAMFORK Partticipatory Methodologies Workshop held on 24-27 September 1996 at Resurrection Gardens, Karen-Nairobi, and was published in Baobab, Issue 22 (1997). This article is freely available as a chapter in Development Methods and Approaches: Critical Reflections
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In 1996 the Peruvian NGOs ALTERNATIVA, FOVIDA and INCAFAM spoke to many soup kitchen members, all women, to establish how they felt about the work and the future of the kitchens. The author reports on the connected activities sometimes run by these organisations, and on the benefits members have received from their membership, including discussions of capacity and skills built, changes in gender relations in households, and the sense of social and personal recognition for work. The women interviewed also identified difficulties, including reconciling work with the demands of motherhood. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development with Women.
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While larger non-governmental development organisations are implementing gender policies and practices, smaller NGDOs - while generally aware of the relevance and importance of gender-awareness - are yet to put this concern into practice. One reason for this is the lack of focussed gender specialists in these smaller organisations, but also, in the 5 Cameroonian and 8 UK-based organisations surveyed, there emerged little understanding of gender in the wider development context. Gender issues are marginalised and the NGDOs, while recognising that women's participation in the economic growth of a community is vital, fail to identify the fundamental inequalities regarding power, division of labour, and access to and control over resources.
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The author reports on this conference arranged by the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, England, in April 1998, ostensibly to agree on ways forward for socially responsible enterprise and corporate accountability. Participants were overwhelmingly business leaders and academics, and the author found challenging views were not particularly in evidence; it became clear that the issues under discussion were too complex for a consensus to be reached at this time, and by these representatives. The author argues that NGOs should take part in the ongoing debate and build mass support from the consuming public, as well as from states: `the final arbiters of conflicts of interest between social and economic goals.'
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In English only
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The authors begin to outline the epic now unfolding at the grassroots, arguing that pioneering social movements are groping for their liberation from the `Global Project' being imposed upon them. Going beyond the premises and promises of modernity, people at the grassroots are re-inventing or creating a fresh new intellectual and institutional frameworks. As is clear from the recent rebellion in southern Mexico, ordinary men and women are learning from each other how to challenge the very nature and foundations of modern power, both its intellectual underpinnings and its apparatus. Explicitly liberating themselves from the dominant ideologies, fully immersed in their local struggles, these movements and initiatives reveal the diverse content and scope of grassroots endeavours.
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Teams at their optimum efficiency during the normal course of work are more likely to be able to respond appropriately and handle pressure in emergency situations. This Practical Note goes on to describe various work procedures to ensure efficiency, communication and learning in a team. The author suggests ways of offering feedback to team members, skills supervisors should cultivate, and highlights the importance of `continuous learning'.
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It is argued that community development can contribute to national development, in conjunction with other phenomena. Village-level development efforts depend on the dynamism of community groups. The populations of the Cameroon grassfields possess the creative capacity to adapt new techniques and knowledge to their local realities. The paper identifies the critical factors that influence the effectiveness of their self-help development efforts. Issues discussed are: the socio-political setting; the concept of mutual help; rural leadership and authority; socioeconomic factors; socio-cultural and institutional factors; and self-help development initiatives and gender. Abstract supplied by kind permission of CABI.
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The author reports on the proceedings of this conference, opened by Clare Short (UK Secretary of State for International Development), who suggested that the event had come about due to a desire to `tackle the underlying causes of conflict and strife'. The participants, though, made it clear that humanitarians are divided over the principles governing their work. Many key questions, while discussed, remained unanswered; such as how to prioritise principles, whether political will or humanitarian principles (or both!) are lacking, and how to handle humanitarian intervention into just wars. The author concludes by discussing the under-representation of women at the conference.
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This Research Round-Up provides a brief literature review of the use of pre-departure briefings (PDBs) for NGO staff delivering overseas aid programmes, especially from the point of view of Australian NGOs. The professionalism, productivity and effectiveness of aid workers can be enhanced using improved human resource management. The author reports the results of a questionnaire sent to aid workers in 22 countries; the vast majority reporting that they had received no effective PDB, although job satisfaction was high. Respondents identified areas in which they would have liked more assistance, particularly cultural information and language training.
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There is a widespread perception that Southern NGOs best represent the authentic voices of the Southern poor. This article challenges this perception, arguing that poor people in general, and children and women in particular, continue to be disenfranchised, while NGOs - both Northern and Southern - offer a poor imitation of their voices. It argues that what is needed, given the current global economic paradigm, is an authentic `joint venture' between NGOs in the North and the South and the authentic voices of poor people themselves, that would bring the poor into the mainstream; and a new approach to capacity-building that would seek to empower them better to advocate for themselves. It concludes that, to achieve this, economic advocacy should perhaps take greater precedence over political advocacy. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development and Advocacy and in Development and Social Action.
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Non-governmental organisations now play prominent role in UN peace-keeping operations, mainly in the areas of humanitarian relief, demobilisation and resettlement, support for elections, and mine-clearance. This reflects the preference of major donors to use NGO channels for their own aid. This article examines the challenges this expansion poses both to the agencies involved and to the government of the country in question, with particular reference to the 1992-95 peace-keeping process in Mozambique. The author describes the many practical difficulties facing NGOs in a politically charged post-war environment, and concludes that there is a need for a sharper definition of appropriate roles and minimum operational standards if NGOs are to implement such programmes in ways that neither compromise their integrity nor jeopardise the longer-term reconstruction process.
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'Multilateral debt is not a widespread problem for Severely Indebted Low Income Countries' wrote the World Bank in September 1994. Two years later, the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) - the Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) -agreed to a proposal to bring the debt of Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs) to sustainable levels. While imperfect, the proposal went some way to meeting the demands of NGOs which, with progressive forces both within the World Bank and among creditor countries, have played a crucial role in this process. While the multilateral debt problem is now too great to ignore, the authors maintain that it has been the persistent pressure of these players that has been responsible for the enormous progress made by the IFIs. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development and Social Action.
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Official aid funding for the development NGO sector grew fast in the late 1980s and early 1990s. These halcyon days are over. Thinkers within the NGO community are concerned with how to adapt to the end of the funding boom, and to correct its adverse effects. However, in spite of many calls to reorganise, re-think, and professionalise, one major set of issues has been largely ignored: the scope for introducing collective self-regulation of the organisational structure and procedures of NGOs in developing countries. The authors argue that this could make a major contribution to solving several problems currently faced by NGOs. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development NGOs and Civil Society.
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The standard models of the state and civil society balancing each other, as propounded by de Tocqueville, Hegel and Gramsci, are no longer useful in all cases when thinking about the relationship between the state, civil society and NGOs. The emergence in many countries of a weak state and relatively strong civil society organisations has led to NGOs filling the gaps in the provision of services which should nominally be provided by the state. The dangers of this are well-documented, and the author argues that NGOs should be seeking to strengthen the capacity of the state to perform these functions, as well as nurturing civil society.
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An examination is presented on a type of NGO, known as a network NGO that, it is argued, is currently exploiting the personal links across the government-NGO divide, and acknowledging their interdependence. Characteristics of such NGOs are that they have a broad membership, consisting of professionals from the same ethnic background. Two examples of such network NGOs are Dupoto e Maa, which is based in Kajiado, Kenya, and is an organization mainly lobbying for Maasai pastoralists; and SADEA, based in Same, Tanzania, focusing on conventional) fundraising activities for social projects. Case studies of these two organizations are reviewed in a discussion on their relevance in the government-NGO debate. Abstract supplied by kind permission of CABI.
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The paper presents a case for all organizations that work on development, environmental, social justice, and human rights issues to work more closely together, arguing that many of the issues these organizations are addressing are one and the same. It is a call to reflection, debate, and action concerning the protection and guarantee of all human rights, and the holding accountable of all actors for actions that contribute to their violation. Abstract supplied by kind permission of CABI.
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Using the example of reforms in Bolivia, the author discusses `second generation' structural and institutional reforms taking place in Latin America, in the aftermath of Structural Adjustment Programmes' (SAPs) failure to reduce poverty and inequality. Providing a new context for social policy and participation, the most radical reform in Bolivia is the Popular Participation Law, intended to decentralise the allocation and administration of resources and encourage participation in democracy from all sectors of Bolivian society. According to the author, the Law has been only partially successful in achieving these aims, and he discusses its limitations.
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In English only
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Victimising women as witches is prevalent in the tribal regions of South Bihar. As a result, between 1991 and 1994, over 60 women are known to have been killed in West Singhbhum district alone. The main reasons behind this persecution are to maintain women in economic and social subjugation, to exploit them sexually, and to wrest property from their families. This article examines the issues behind this form of socially sanctioned violence, analyses their implications on development work, and suggests appropriate methods of intervention. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development with Women.
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The author reports on a visit to Lagos State, Nigeria, to research aspects of primary healthcare, and highlights how communities knew what they needed to improve their quality of life, and how they felt health education was not necessary. Their self-determination forced the researchers to adopt a participatory approach, and provide assistance in getting the locally identified schemes underway before attempting, collaboratively, to set up an education programme.
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It is noted that identifying with protection and enhancement of natural resources as central to EC development support, articles 33-41 (of the Lome IV Convention) focuses on three principles: a preventive approach aimed at avoiding negative impacts on the environment as a result of any programme or operation; a systematic approach for ecological feasibility studies at all stages, from identification to implementation of a programme or operation; and a multi-disciplinary and trans-sectoral approach, taking direct and indirect consequences of EC-supported initiatives into account. The paper addresses these needs, with the goal being to develop a systematic procedure for the Belgian Agency of Development Cooperation (BADC) to test the potential environmental impacts of development projects before these are implemented. The BADC aims to avoid sponsoring projects that have a negative impact on the environment in the broadest sense. A comparative study is presented of guidelines and procedures, drawing mainly on the EC environment manual, the OECD guidelines on environment and aid, and the various environmental guidelines of the OECF, the Asian Development Bank, and the World Bank. Abstract supplied by kind permission of CABI.
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The Small Enterprise Development Fund of the Department for International Development (DFID) of the British Government commissioned a literature review and held workshops, both co-ordinated by ActionAid UK, to assess the impact of micro-finance schemes on women's empowerment. Three broad approaches to micro-finance for women are identified as well as the constraints affecting impact in each case: approaches emphasising financial sustainability, integrated community development or feminist empowerment. The author provides a framework for assessing degrees of empowerment and presents a `minimal gender strategy' for micro-finance.
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In 1996 UNRISD sponsored a survey, using questionnaires, interviews and participant research, into the parallel pharmaceutical market in the Democratic Republic of Congo (then Zaire). The author describes `typical' purchasers and vendors, the quality of products sold and bought, and the levels of regulation possible/needed in such a market, and challenges policy makers to develop a system of partial regulation combining the relevant merits of government and private sector control.
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Using data from a recent ethnographic study in rural Bangladesh to explore relationships between men's violence against women in the home, women's economic and social dependence on men, and microcredit programmes, this paper suggests that microcredit programmes have an varied effect on men's violence against women. They can reduce women's vulnerability to men's violence by strengthening their economic roles and making their lives more public. When women challenge gender norms, however, they sometimes provoke violence in their husbands. Male violence against women is a serious, widespread, and often ignored problem worldwide. By putting resources into women's hands, credit programmes may indirectly exacerbate such violence; but they may also provide a context for intervention.
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Drawing on recent research, the author explores how far and in what ways UK NGOs have tried to incorporate gender into the policies and procedures of their international development work, and how far a formal recognition of gender issues is shaping the way each organisation functions. The author assesses the strengths and weaknesses of different strategies (such as specialist staff or units, formal gender policies, gender training, equal opportunity recruitment policies, and mainstreaming) for transforming organisational practice.
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This article describes and analyses the Gender Quality Action-Learning (GQAL) Programme of BRAC, a large rural development NGO in Bangladesh. This works with men and women field-staff and managers in a process of issue-analysis, action planning, and implementation (the GQAL cycle) to address organisational change and programme quality concerns that is informed by an understanding of gender. Gender, meaning women or the relations between men and women, is sometimes lost as deeper issues of power and instrumentality surface. The greatest challenge for the Programme now is to explore the gendered nature of both, and find ways to change gender bias along with other organisational, structural, and process features that promote gender inequity both within BRAC and in the delivery and impact of its social change objectives.
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This paper focuses on the role of women in the Barmanan rural production system in the Manghadié area of Mali. The suggested methodology aims to identify areas of women's autonomy in production activities and factors determining their degree of control. For women, control over work depends both upon their involvement in the decision-making process and on their ability to negotiate access to the various components of their activities. The paper highlights gender-related and other social factors such as inter-ethnic relations and relationships between women that determine women's autonomy in production activities. Some economic and environmental factors are also identified.
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NGOs, like other organisations, are gendered; that is, they reflect society's power relations between men and women. The author argues that NGOs must begin a process of gender-sensitive institutional change, building equitable practices and attitudes in the long-term, benefiting and empowering NGO staff as well as impacting on their programme work, and strategic objectives. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development with Women.
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Coffee production was the main source of family income in the North West Province of Cameroon until there was a fall in coffee prices. The author recounts a positive side effect of this potential economic crisis for the province: the empowerment of women. Previously denied land-ownership, due to men's traditional hold on land and women's legal status, women bought now-unused land and successfully made money from their produce. The resulting shift in financial power saw the beginning of a shift in status for these women: with economic control came decision-making power.
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The author identifies three key weaknesses in the debate leading up to establishing the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) for the European Union (EU). The process started in 1996 and a generally useful and relevant discussion has taken place between various governmental and non-governmental actors concerning conflict-prevention and structural stability. The author believes there must be further consideration of inconsistencies in international policy, the incoherence of the view that conflict and structural instability are essentially problems of the `South', and the tendency to analyse only countries where conflict has broken out, ignoring those where the potential for violence existed, but was avoided.
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An examination in presented of a pilot project to strengthen Primary Health Care (PHC) in Sheikhupura District, which was initiated by the Department of Health, Punjab, Pakistan. The project seeks to create a viable PHC model, providing accessible and sustainable services. Community Development Workshops for Village Health Committees (VHCs) to promote local participation are being held, and several experiences have been gained, from conceptual shifts to implementation issues. Issues discussed are: sowing the seeds through dialogue; organization of the workshop; duration and timing; introductions; discussions on health; the health system; the role of community; individuals and groups; community organization; an examination of what is development; threats to the village; the road to development; and empowering people. Abstract supplied by kind permission of CABI.
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In English only
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The author recounts his experience in developing Community Listening Theatre with RISE, a Namibian NGO that works in shanty-town districts and with dispossessed farming communities. In depicting their concerns through dramatic expression, previously diffident people began to address pressing political issues, and to challenge their own 'self-oppression', before proceeding to organise around specific issues, and take sometimes audacious collective action towards their own (re)empowerment. Reflecting on the role of the outsider, the author warns that it often proves disempowering to assume that such experience can be distilled into a replicable formula. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development and Social Action.
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SatelLife was set up by the organisation International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) in 1985, with the aim of providing a forum for the involvement of medical colleagues in the South in discussion of health and peace issues. SatelLife set up and run a satellite linking service (HealthNet) providing email and a medical information network for organisations and communities world-wide, integrating people working in countries with limited communications infrastructure into the debate. The author provides an overview of the system and the ethos behind it.
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The authors offer some initial thoughts on the potential of using video to record Participatory Rural Research (PRR) sessions, highlighting the medium's apparent strengths and weaknesses compared to taking written notes and/or still photographs. They conclude that the use of video should be considered afresh in different contexts so as to determine whether its use is appropriate and desirable.
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Global Knowledge '97: Knowledge for Development in the Information Age was organised by the World Bank and the Canadian government and held in Toronto. The Benton Foundation put together a group of US experts from the NGO sector, and the author reports on the conference and how various NGO representatives viewed the discussions. The consensus at the conference was that technological improvements and updating infrastructure were of the greatest importance for development. The NGO representatives quoted here, however, felt that an emphasis on meaningful content would also have been appropriate, as would the recognition that market forces alone should not drive policy in this area.
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Drawing on a case study from Central Argentina, this article suggests that researchers can be too cautious about introducing technologies of which farmers have no previous experience. In particular, it challenges the notion that the only technology appropriate to peasant conditions is that which is rooted in traditional ideas and culture. Under certain circumstances, externally supplied technologies may also be appropriate. Rather than focusing solely on the technology, it is necessary to look at the socio-economic and historical context in which the technology will be used.
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The vision shared by most development scholars and practitioners today is for beneficiary-driven development, the impediment and the means to which both lie with communication. The debate concerns the communication approach that would best realise this vision. This paper examines and critically comments on two major approaches, Development Communication (DC) and Development Support Communication (DSC), though it argues for neither of these. Rather, it draws on the `Another Development - Another Communication' paradigm and proposes a Participatory Communication (PC) approach, which both resonates in people's own moral values, conforms to the reality of many communities in Africa, and offers better prospects of achieving beneficiary-driven development.
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This paper elaborates on two themes. Firstly, it presents the historical evolution of Northern Non-governmental Development Organisations (NNGDOs), proposing an enlarged and transformed proposal based on Korten's Generations. Secondly, it puts forward several recommendations in order to develop a hypothetical Fifth Generation of NGO - Northern and Southern alike - whose activities may contribute to a very broad, diverse, and unpredictable social movement for structural change on both the political and social levels. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development and Social Action.
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Organisational capacity-building may be so focused on the hope for an improved future that it unwittingly fails to draw upon key learning from past experience. Reflection upon and public affirmation of those moments in organisational life when members felt high commitment can ignite imagination and build momentum for a better future. Appreciative Inquiry (AI) methods of organisational transformation suggest that a positive future image of one's organisation can be a compelling, if not irresistible, force, the creation of which needs to embrace the already-lived and shared satisfying moments of members. Organisational capacity is best understood, and most enjoyably and authentically pursued, when the process and desired product is co-generated from within the lived realities of all its stakeholders. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development Methods and Approaches: Critical Reflections
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The author gives a personal account of the importance of the late Paolo Freire's work and thinking. Freire's influence can be seen in many of the ideals and practices of educationalists, community workers, and specifically adult-literacy workers across the globe.
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Many governments and international organisations have offered utopian visions of a Global Information Infrastructure (GII), a successor to the Internet, which will enable global sharing and communication. The development of the GII rests on the capacity of all nations to have access to the requisite technology, and the currently widening gap between access to PCs and telephone lines does not bode well for the prospects of the envisioned network. The People's Communication Charter may provide a framework for critically assessing and influencing the quality and distribution of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) and their products. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development and Advocacy and in Development and Social Action.
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The author considers how Northern NGOs present the South, in order to recruit volunteers and fundraise. Negative and positive images have been used to illicit feelings of pity and self-satisfaction respectively. Here, the author describes the effects of using different images, and argues that NGOs should be educating and building long-term supporters by substantiating the use of images with information about the causes of poverty, famine etc. The concept of mutual dependence between South and North should also be emphasised: a more pragmatic reason to help.
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The author, formerly Director of the Clearinghouse Project, describes the aims, achievements and underlying philosophy of the Project, which was set up in 1979 by the American Public Health Association (funded by USAID) to improve access to information for health-practitioners in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The Clearinghouse is a capacity-building resource, providing information on women and children's nutrition, as well as training for staff in the field, and works from the principle that services can match users needs more accurately if the users and service-providers are involved in communication and networking promoting information-sharing and dialogue.
