Blogs

This morning (27/10/09) a group of around 25 participants debated the question of welfare and development. Using tools borrowered from Participatory Appraisal methodologies, we quickly agreed that welfare can be development, and that we need not apologise for providing short term relief, or for lobbying for welfare interventions such as grants.  Short term relief is vital for alleviating the ill effects of poverty and distress, while social security is a right of citizenship as well as a investment in the future.  Welfare is development, and development involves the prov

Denis Hunt of the AIDS Consortium facilited a session on networking: The session was  for shairing best practices and to brainstorm deas for improving networking. The session was also to maximize and strengthen links as civil society for maximum impact as well to sustain the work of civil society.

That was the question that constantly reverberated through the room as we discussed, "If men are in, who are out". A very active session, where clearly people had very strong views on men and their role in society, their power, their abuse thereof, their culture and how they percieve themselves. The dialogue focused session touched on numerous issues, which I do not propose to report on, but rather give my thoughts as they were shaped through the session.

An interesting discussion we had around participation as a key ingriedient for good development, was that while we all see the significance of it to ensure sustainability of the intervention, we all find it difficult. It is time and resource intensive and to add to the load, we are often bound by funders. Funders are very specific in the programmes they are wanting to support and are also demanding of result and impact in the very near future. It was acknowledged that funders have to answer to back donors as well and at times their hands are also tied.