Grassroot Horizons : Connecting participatory development initiatives East and West

Grassroots activists and researchers build on their varied personal experiences to clarify and strengthen the effectiveness of participatory group action in overcoming impoverishment, oppression and exclusion in this book.

The work originates from insights gained in a workshop at the East-West Center, Hawaii.The authors focus on core issues of social and political organization and change, such as: relations between self and other; group identity and solidarity; honouring different types of knowledge systems; and organizing against vested position and unjust power structures.These issues are discussed through accounts of participatory development in diverse, often conflict-filled situations.Integrative chapters present an alternative development paradigm, offer techniques of coalition-building in diversity, and propose a conceptural design of values and ethical principles toward a socially-just, sustainable development.The book is primarily aimed at organizers and activists in grassroots groups, and supporters and facilitators in voluntary NGOs, although it should be of interest to development agencies wishing to encourage self-directed grassroots organization too.

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