Community-Based Participatory Initiatives: Unifying Soft Power Agendas for Human Development of Traditional Communities

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Potiara Castro
Author(s):  
Ben Cislaghi

How can we best empower people living in the most economically disadvantaged areas of the world to improve their lives in ways that matter to them? This book investigates work of the NGO Tostan as a working model of human development. The study is grounded in the ethnographic study of the actual change that happened in one West African village. The result is a powerful mix of theory and practice that questions existing approaches to development and that speaks to both development scholars and practitioners. Divided into three parts, the book firstly assesses why top-down approaches to education and development are unhelpful and offers a theoretical understanding of what constitutes helpful development. Part two examines Tostan's community-based participatory approach as an example of a helpful development intervention, and offers qualitative evidence of its effectiveness. Part three builds a model of how community-led development works, why it is helpful, and what practitioners can do to help people at the grassroots level lead their own human development.


Nova Economia ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (spe) ◽  
pp. 1157-1186
Author(s):  
Harley Silva ◽  
Jakob O. W. Sparn ◽  
Renata Guimarães Vieira

Abstract: This article offers a theoretical discussion on urbanization, nature and development and some of the links and interdependencies that connect these concepts. The focus is on some of the underlying dynamics and issues of our current development project defined as capitalist industrialization. The article illustrates the role of cities for human development and then argues that the relationship between society and nature could be - and indeed already has been - thought from a different perspective. Finally, the article discusses the transition from “campesinato” (peasantry) to traditional communities as product of extensive urbanization, as form of resistance and as potential blueprint for an alternative development and, potentially, for the Lefebvrian urban-utopia.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Md. Rahman

Abstract PROSHIKA is one of the largest non-government development organizations (NGOs) in Bangladesh. It is an acronym for three Bangla words, viz. proshikshan (training), shiksha (education) and kaj (action). Since its inception, PROSHIKA has made efforts to generate a participatory process of development and has succeeded in pioneering an approach that puts human development at the centre. The central ethos is human development and empowerment of the poor who gradually stand to achieve freedom from poverty themselves. The process is founded upon the understanding that poverty reduction and promotion of sustainable development are dependent on human and material capacity building of the poor to enable their socioeconomic and cultural empowerment. PROSHIKA implements an aquaculture programme through groups, federations and community-based organisations (CBOs) linked with government, national and international organisations and NGOs to promote access to water-bodies and to lobby with policy-makers for sustainable management of aquatic resources. PROSHIKA has enabled 256,000 men and women to directly benefit from the formation of private institutions undertaking policy development.


Author(s):  
Elias Mpofu ◽  
Lisa Lopez Levers ◽  
Jonathan Makuwira ◽  
Kumbirai Mpofu ◽  
George Mamboleo

1986 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 276-285
Author(s):  
Carl F. Calkins ◽  
Winnie Dunn ◽  
Phyllis Kultgen

This article reviews two community integration projects at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Institute for Human Development which illustrate model development across the life-span. The preschool project is aimed at successfully mainstreaming preschoolers who are handicapped with their nonhandicapped peers through the use of trained volunteers. The elderly project is directed at increasing community integration of elderly persons with developmental disabilities by using nonhandicapped elderly volunteer companions. A description of each project, including project goals, methods, and preliminary results is provided to develop a frame of reference for a comparative discussion of the strengths, weaknesses, and outcomes in these community-based demonstration projects. Three common variables are discussed: use of trained volunteers, changes in attitudes and knowledge by nonhandicapped volunteers, and measured outcomes for clients. The costs and benefits of model development are summarized.


Author(s):  
Marina de Lima Minari ◽  
Andrea Rabinovici

RESUMO Processos participativos são fundamentais para o êxito de projetos de turismo de base comunitária realizados com comunidades habitantes em unidades de conservação. Os processos formais e legalmente institucionalizados muitas vezes são insuficientes para gerar inclusão e participação social de fato, uma vez que podem deixar escapar questões importantes das complexas relações existentes nesses contextos. Com base na experiência de dois projetos – um na Reserva Extrativista do Rio Unini (AM), e outro na Floresta Nacional do Amapá (AP), buscou-se refletir sobre a importância do diálogo como alicerce na emersão de processos participativos nos projetos realizados com comunidades. O artigo tece uma síntese conceitual de turismo de base comunitária. Além disso, são apresentados os atores sociais do diálogo: as comunidades tradicionais, as organizações não governamentais e as instituições representativas do Estado. Indica-se a necessidade de inovação conceitual e prática no que se refere aos processos ditos participativos realizados com comunidades no campo das unidades de conservação. A metodologia dos projetos consistiu em pesquisa bibliográfica, entrevistas-diálogo, visitas de campo e oficinas. Dialogue and participatory processes in tourism projects with communities in Protected Areas of the Brazilian Amazon ABSTRACT Real participatory processes are fundamental to the success of community-based tourism projects conducted in protected areas. Formal and legally institutionalized processes are insufficient to create the genuine inclusion and participation that they propose, for they miss subtle details of the complex and important relations existent in these contexts. Based on the experience of two projects - one in the Extractive Reserve of River Unini, Amazonas state, and another in the National Forest of Amapá, Amapá state – this research sought to analyze the importance of dialogue as the foundation for the emergence of real participatory process projects with traditional communities. This work briefly synthesizes the concepts of community-based tourism. It also presents the dialogue among the social actors: traditional communities, non-governmental organizations and institutions representing the State. Final thoughts include the need for conceptual innovation and practice with regard to the so-called participatory processes that are recommended when dealing with traditional communities in relation to protected areas, along with possible practical guidance. The methodologies of those projects consisted in bibliography research, dialogue-interview, fieldworks and workshops. KEYWORS: Dialogue; Participation; Traditional Communities; Tourism and Protected Areas.


Asian Survey ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 497-519 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yul Sohn

Japan's new thinking on regionalism is a means of soft balancing that counters a rising Chinese influence. A "hard" balancing strategy through an alliance with the United States is insufficient because the Chinese economy is indispensable for Japan's prosperity and because China is rising through soft power. Japan's response uses the concept of community based on universal values.


2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 773-796 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentina Feklyunina

What is soft power, and how can we analyse it empirically? The article proposes a social constructivist take on soft power by anchoring it to the concept of collective identity, and by suggesting a set of criteria that can be used to assess whether soft power is present in a relationship between two or more states. It argues that soft power is generated through continuous renegotiation of collective identity. We can assess the weight of a state’s soft power vis-a-vis another state by investigating the extent to which the discursively constructed collective identity projected by the first state is accepted or rejected by different audiences in the second state, and by examining the ability of these audiences to affect the process of foreign policy decision-making. To illustrate this approach, the article applies it to an analysis of Russia’s relationship with Ukraine prior to the 2014 crisis. In the late 2000s–early 2010s, Russia’s dominant identity was increasingly associated with the idea of a ‘Russian world’ — an imagined community based on the markers of the Russian language, the Russian culture and the common glorious past. Despite a significant increase in Moscow’s public diplomacy activities in Ukraine around that time, those efforts did not and could not fundamentally transform the psychological milieu in Moscow’s relationship with Kyiv because the projected identity was inherently incompatible with one of the main identity discourses in Ukraine and was only partially compatible with another.


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