Let the people decide! Grassroots participation
If you want to help someone it seems natural to ask what they need. So it is surprising that the idea of “grassroots participation” is a fairly new one in development work.
Between the Second World War and the seventies, huge amounts of aid funds were given to the governments of poor countries to finance the development of their infrastructures, hoping for a so-called "trickle-down" effect. But even back then, doubts were raised regarding the effectiveness of grand-scale, government-to-government aid. All too often, it failed to relieve poverty, reduce pollution or improve infrastructure. In fact, it often made the situation worse because relief projects and development programs, designed in the lofty offices of Western aid agencies, were seldom adequately adapted to local circumstances.
As a consequence, a new “participatory development approach” was pioneered by aid agencies to counterbalance ineffective funding. Aid was increasingly given to people at the grassroots. Poor people were involved in the process of selecting, planning, implementing and monitoring aid projects and they were held responsible for the outcome. By inviting local people to participate in the decision-making process they came to regard local development projects as their very “own”. Moreover, this new approach made aid experts of NGOs as well as local authorities look more closely at the specific circumstances and the root causes of poverty in a particular region or village. By listening to the people at the grassroots directly, they were now able to adapt policies more adequately to a specific local context.
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Preparing for a grassroots participation meeting and election in rural Sichuan. |
In China, grassroots participation was pioneered in the early 1990s. Amity started to apply the participatory method extensively when, in 1993, the organization’s main development focus shifted to the poor provinces in Western China. This method proved successful not only in projects related to poverty alleviation but also in social welfare projects.
Zhang Liwei, Amity's Associate General Secretary, explains the three main advantages of involving beneficiaries directly: “Politically, it gives people more power because they can play an active role in a project’s decision-making process - in other words, farmers can exercise democratic participation. On a social level, ‘participation’ can pave the way to a more equal society in which no-one is left behind. Economically and financially, poverty alleviation efforts which take farmers’ decisions into account get better economic results, because people actively support the whole concept.”
In order to be as efficient as possible, Amity has made it a rule to invite not only the beneficiaries to get involved in grassroots participation projects but also development experts and government officials. That development experts need to be consulted seems obvious, but what about the government? “The government needs to be part of it,” says He Wen, director of the Integrated Development Division, who has 12 years of experience in the field. “Government officials need to understand the problems and needs of poor communities better than before so they can actually help these communities.” When local officials are invited to join Amity staff on a project visit, they will ask villagers directly about their opinions, listen to their stories and see the extent of poverty first hand. This can be a staggering experience because a lot of them are used to dealing with social problems in the seclusion of their town offices, far away from the realities of village life. Ideally, involving government officials leads to better cooperation between the farmers and the local government.
Grassroots participation can certainly not solve all of the development problems in rural China. Cao Feilian, a young doctoral candidate in sociology who has visited several such projects during her research on Amity’s development work, describes clearly what can be expected from the participatory method: “It can help empower people to take their fate into their own hands, it can improve their material living conditions and it can eventually be another step towards a civil society in China,” says Ms Cao, “but it cannot wholly meet the spiritual and moral needs of the peasants.” This void has to be filled in a different way.
In any event, inviting people to participate personally already makes a big difference to them: join a meeting where peasants are asked to give their opinions and cast their votes on what they want in order to develop their village - and you will be surprised to see how very happy they are.
Will the participatory development approach have a sustainable impact then? First of all, this will depend on a sustained willingness of local and higher authorities to support a more active role of farmers in managing rural development. Then, it will be decisive if grassroots participation theory will become part of the higher education curricula in China, e.g. in the agricultural universities, where future rural development experts are educated. And, finally, a long-term success will depend on the people at the grassroots level themselves. Only if the farmers manage to take the initiative and participate in designing their own future will this approach succeed. Amity, in any case, is supporting them in their effort wholeheartedly. So far, the future looks promising.
