Training and Support for Grassroots Organizations

We are closing this "micro" project since we are focusing all of our efforts on raising funds for our grassroots affiliates. We believe the only way to ensure genuine accountability to the communities we are working with is by creating and maintaining organizational structures built around trust, solidarity and mutual accountability. Within this framework the concern is not just with the final outcome, but with how the outcome is reached and how the people within the framework contribute meaningfully to the organization. The people become actors working to build the system, instead of being subjected to it. Key features of people-based organizations are empowerment of members of the community, decentralized decision making, context specific practices and policies, and an emphasis on the importance of trust between the employees of the development agency and the people with whom they are partnering (Korten 1984). While people based organizations are certainly still concerned about desired outcomes, the process by which the outcome is reached is organic and can be changed as needed. Such organizations are more responsive to the places in which they work and location specific needs, as opposed to being bound by the ways in which they work and trying to replicate generic processes. A central feature of such organizations is a bottom-up flow of decision making, which enables the organizations to foster participatory development within communities. Projects and needs are met on an individual basis, evaluated with the input of the community and a unique process grows out of that input. 

Thank you!

David Bartecchi

Links:

• Village Earth