ADB Report Finds that Poor Communities Welcome Participatory Approach to Development
Empowering very poor communities so they can lift themselves out of poverty is finding increasing acceptance in Asia and the Pacific, even among countries with traditionally centralized decision making systems, according to a collection of case studies assembled by the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
In a world where the gap is widening between rich and poor, governments are increasingly recognizing that giving poor communities a greater say in development initiatives is an effective way of promoting social equity, as evidenced by the projects featured in “From the Ground Up – Case Studies in Community Empowerment.” The book, which was launched in Manila and Beijing on July 24, looks at participatory development projects in People’s Republic of China (PRC), India, Indonesia, Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan and Viet Nam.
In the PRC, a renewed drive for social equity is underpinning a bold experiment to empower very poor and isolated communities in Jiangxi Province by using NGOs (non government organizations), in partnership with local government agencies, to help the poor identify and carry out village improvement projects.
Since the very poor often lack the skills, confidence or capital to improve their lives, the PRC for the first time is channeling funds to competitively selected NGOs to facilitate village improvement projects which villagers plan and implement themselves. In the past, PRC has relied solely on local government to do this, but increasingly recognizes the role that NGOs’ grassroots experience, diverse skills, and ability to devote time, patience and empathy can have in this kind of work.
In the south-central province of Jiangxi, the pilot project is assessing the impact of two different models of NGO-government cooperation vis-à-vis traditional, “government-only” programs.
“This is a significant step in our poverty alleviation efforts,” Wu Zhong, director general of the country’s top poverty reduction agency, the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, is quoted as saying in the book. “The government was the main force when we tackled poverty alleviation on a large scale, but now our objectives are more detailed and we need to mobilize civil society, including NGOs, to improve our efficiency.”
PRC also has a pragmatic reason for enlisting NGOs as partners to develop community empowerment in its NGO-Government Partnerships in Village-Level Poverty Alleviation Project, which is supported by ADB technical assistance.
“The Government realizes it has neither the manpower, nor is sufficiently efficient or effective, to meet a growing demand for social services, so it needs civil groups like NGOs to help deliver good services,” notes Professor Li Xiaoyun, of China Agricultural University, who is leading a group of experts assessing policy implications from the pilot test.
Evaluations of the project have so far been encouraging. The first post-baseline survey found that, compared to the control villages (where projects are run entirely by government), projects with NGO involvement “were more participatory, involved many more poor in analysis, were far more transparent, and built a greater sense of ownership over projects.”
The survey showed that 82% of pilot village respondents were “very satisfied” with the planning processes, compared to 21% in the control villages. In particular, 85% of the women were “very satisfied” with the process, against 6% in the control villages. In the key area of transparency, 26% of pilot villagers could correctly identify how poverty funds were being spent, compared to 6% in control villages.
If the project is successful, PRC could adopt the approach in the 148,000 marginal villages – concentrated in the poorer central and western regions.
“PRC civil society is in a nascent stage of development, facing a bumpy, uncertain road ahead. But the new drive for a people-centered and harmonious development presents an unprecedented opportunity to harness the untapped potential of civil society,’” says ADB Economist Chris Spohr, who is managing the project in ADB’s resident mission in Beijing. “These are critical steps for building up civil society and promoting balanced development.”
Viet Nam is another example of a country experimenting with a bottom-up approach. It is consulting ethnic mountain communities on their wishes and needs in an innovative partnership between the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) and ADB to save a major rainforest in the Central Annamites.
“One of the first things we did was to sit down and talk to villagers about their traditional ways of managing the land and the threats they perceived to their system,” says a WWF official in the book. “In a top-down government, the attitude is, ‘Why talk to the community? We are the government, we are giving them land, we will tell them what they have.’ We had to persuade officials that getting communities involved is the key to sustainable forest management.”
Community empowerment projects have also proved successful in Mongolia and Tajikistan. In Mongolia, where civil society has taken root since the move to democracy in the early 1990s, an NGO, the Mongolian National Federation of Disabled People, has helped thousands of its disabled members become more productive members of society. In Tajikistan, the government is seeking to engage more with NGOs in community empowerment projects, although it still regards some NGOs as a challenge to their authority.
One of the most successful cases of community empowerment cited in the ADB book is a rural water management project in Kegalle province, Sri Lanka. Villages were shocked when they were asked to pay, in advance, towards construction costs of the water supply projects as well as take over their operation and maintenance. But, today, over 95% of 150 participating villages are receiving clean, easily accessible water from systems they helped to build and now run independently of the government.
The book notes that, despite evidence that participatory development provides win-win outcomes for all – poor people derive empowerment as well as benefit from the practical outcome of a project, while the government achieves its development goal more effectively and sustainably and often at lower cost – the approach is still at a relatively early stage in many parts of Asia and the Pacific.
But the book notes that, although governments have been – and some still are – wary of NGOs’ independent role, there is increasing recognition in official circles that NGOs can be a strong ally in the fight against poverty through community empowerment. The book adds that this is an area in which NGOs and development agencies have a valuable continuing role to play.
The book is available from ADB’s Department of External Relations.
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