Fostering local participation, organization and negotiation structures or techniques enhances development initiatives’ sustainability. This because they:
• enable the description of stakeholders’ integral perspectives on their situation and the problems that affect them (its components, factors, conflicts, the resources they have available, problems, needs), as well as strategies that the initiative could undertake to respond to all of them in a similarly integral fashion.
• help balance global needs and interests with local needs and interests — assuring plural relevance.
• help to create local capacity so that stakeholders can take ownership of the initiative, becoming agents of their own development: defining strategies, adopting roles and responsibilities.
• give transparency to the decision-making process, which enhances trust, solidarity, and further support.
• can serve as feedback mechanisms to the initiative, that can aid planning, flexibility and adaptation to unplanned events.
• can define how can roles and functions be covered (supervisory, managerial, communicational, etc.), that would otherwise funds to be covered — which is of particular importance considering the limited number and lack of stability of development ’s funding sources.
• can serve to make a ♣ clear distribution of roles and responsibilities, key to the oriented (not bounded) and effective work of the different stakeholders, and to their ownership of the initiative.
• can provide the initiative with more information that allows it to make better decisions in the management and allocation of its available funds.
Related strategies at:
♣ Structures and techniques for local participation, organization and negotiation
See also:
Decentralizing Participatory Mapping Information and communication technology tools Local stakeholders organizations Rotatory Management commissions Favoring internal communication with concrete means Banking Trust Funds Spaces and mechanisms for planning, flexibility and adaptation Alternative Barter Systems Feedback mechanisms Showing people concrete means to contribute and impact Voluntary contributions Demonstrated scaled effect ♣ Co-management ♣ Methods for the selection of objectives and priorities ♣ Clarity in the definition of roles and responsibilities