- In many case studies, participatory development is most successful when implemented by agencies that made developing sustainable patterns of participation and self-help one of the primary goals of their field programs – at least as important as the delivery of aid itself. Likewise, the most successful programs were implemented by agencies which embraced participation internally, maintaining a climate approving of intellectual honesty and critical reporting. Agencies and programs that made participation an elementary value internally and in the field succeeded more often.
- There is a steady temptation to interfere and distrust. Half measures and ersatz participation are often the result. Practitioners who have learned lessons the hard way warn against doing anything for people they can manage for themselves. Beginning a process of soliciting local input and building local capacity is likely to carry programs to the edges of the map, where the serpents are drawn. Best judgement should be used and scrupulously followed. Western educational culture emphasizes an intellectual, step by step, paint by numbers orientation foreign to this process and intuition-based cultures in general. Observe, partake, facilitate.
- Organizations willing to front higher start-up costs to support a large field presence deployed more quickly and more often met program goals. These are not programs best run out of capitols or headquarters. They are decentralized and field driven. The greater costs associated with implementing participatory projects usually averaged out over the life of programs and participation-centric programs counted such operations expenses as project costs in the first place, given their process oriented goals. It is important to compare what is leveraged against operations expenses as well.
- Throughout the case studies, small is beautiful. Successful participatory programs paid keen attention to absorptive capacity and in many cases resisted providing more resources even when donors made them available. The same went for monitoring political impact. Local relationships proved essential to understanding the complexities of political expression, the layers of formal and informal authority and the consequences of participatory programs and other assistance efforts in local communities and the region. In many instances, this made advocacy essential, putting participation facilitators and program managers at odds with their development colleagues’ programs which sometimes exacerbated the suffering of local residents. This role of advocate sometimes caused heated exchanges with local and national authorities as well as with embassies, but often it strengthened the facilitator’s bonds with local partners whose legitimate complaints were otherwise ignored.
- One of the most compelling conclusions from over sixty case studies of humanitarian interventions is that there is little cause to avoid the use of participatory methods when there is no time. A persistent theme in humanitarianism is that participatory methods are not appropriate in rapid response disaster mitigation. This remains one of the most potent myths constraining the wider use of participatory methodologies. Correspondingly, from day one of non-participatory interventions, local capacities are overlooked, dependencies are often created and the potential for self-help atrophies. It is in such early, best-intentioned interventions that destructive patterns are established that too often worsen the enduring problems that confound residents and later development professionals. In many disaster response cases, the primary motivation is to save lives regardless of context or collateral impact and to be accountable only
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