Document(s) 13 of 16

There is no doubt that participation has become one of the most "valuable" buzzwords among development practitioners and supporters throughout the world within the last decade.

However, as has been well articulated by many other writers, a large number of the projects that have been supported by funders in the recent past were participatory only on paper.

This situation raises much concern. This is because even in its most sincere form, participation, at least for some years to come in most of the developing countries, has to be catalyzed from outside the rural settlements, owing largely to the related problems of limited sociopolitical awareness, low literacy, and high poverty levels. In other words, much of what happens to participation in the developing countries still depends on the sincerity of the practitioners, who still play the role of "introducing" participation at the local levels.

The direct implication of the foregoing is that a lot of awareness creation and appropriate literacy programs among the local people will be required to engender sustainable development in most of our rural communities.

We need to aim for the point where the local people will not only be able to recognize, but also to challenge disguised exploitation coming in the form of participation.

On an additional note, it will be necessary to emphasize that one of the ways to ensure effectiveness is for rural development practitioners and supporters to recognize that our role should be limited to that of catalyzing a process. And this necessarily implies that the intervention mechanism should incorporate some valid elements that will enable the local people to continue with the process towards clearly identified objectives: employing resources that they can generate (both locally and otherwise) and manage by themselves, on a sustainable basis.

It therefore follows, that as a basis for any technological or vocational training needs identified over time, the program proposed by IDRC should emphasize research and training activities that will:

• answer the key question: What are the existing indigenous communication efforts, systems, and training mechanisms?
• reduce the high level of illiteracy through appropriate formal and nonformal educational events;
• improve the level of sociopolitical awareness among the rural populace through appropriate approaches; and
• enable the local people to realize their enormous potential with respect to the process of socioeconomic development.

Finally, the proposed program should incorporate a workable follow-up or evaluation plan, as already discussed extensively during our follow-up committee meeting in Toronto.

On a specific note, the follow-up or evaluation should be structured so as to:

• review the program in line with the proposed project plan (schedules, objectives, etc.); and
• enable the transfer of the program to the local people in a way that ensures the successful continuation of the specific projects after the exit of the catalysts.

Document(s) 13 of 16