Posted November 1997

Participation in practice / 2 The People's Participation Programme

Experience in Asia FAO involvement with small farmer organizations in Asia provided much of the conceptual framework and field experience for the development of PPP. In the 1970s, FAO studies found that informal groups, consisting of 8-15 members from similar socio-economic backgrounds, were better vehicles for participation in decision-making and collective learning than heterogeneous, large scale and more formal organizations. This served as a stimulus for the FAO Small Farmers Development Programme (SFDP), which organized thousands of participatory groups in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Laos PDR, Nepal, The Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

THE FAO People's Participation Programme arose from WCARRD and its call for "the active involvement and organization of the grass roots level of the rural people". PPP's main emphasis is on formation of small, informal, self-reliant groups of the rural poor as part of a longer-term strategy to build institutions serving their interests. These groups allow members to work together on income-generating activities, serve as receiving mechanisms for development services, and provide a voice for members in dealing with local authorities. Facilitators in this process are project coordinating committees, government and NGOs, and locally recruited group promoters.

The first PPP project was launched in Sierra Leone in 1982. Later, other projects were implemented in Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Tanzania, Thailand, Zambia and Zimbabwe. In all, more than 13,000 people have actively participated in PPP; including their household dependents, beneficiaries totaled more than 80,000 people.

PPP elements

• Focus on the rural poor. PPP beneficiaries included immigrant settlers in Zimbabwe, artisanal fishing communities in Tanzania and subsistence farmers in Ghana, Nicaragua and Thailand. In Lesotho and Swaziland most participants were female household heads, one of the poorest strata in rural society.

• Promotion of women in development. About 5,000 women - or 37% of all participants - were actively involved in PPP projects. While their involvement was weak in some countries, women made up more than seven out of every 10 participants in Lesotho, Swaziland and Zambia.

• Small groups. The key element in PPP is the formation of small homogeneous self-help groups. More than 1,000 such groups with average membership of 12 persons were formed, almost a third of them in Ghana and Sri Lanka. In other countries the number of groups ranged from 18 to 90. Groups were run democratically, with members holding regular meetings and electing their leaders. This group approach facilitated farmers' access to credit, extension and other services.

• Implementing agencies. Government ministries or semi-government institutions had responsibility for implementing projects in Pakistan, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Tanzania, Thailand, Zambia and Zimbabwe. FAO believes, however, that NGOs can make an important contribution. With government agreement, NGOs were appointed as implementing agencies in Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho and Nicaragua.

• Coordinating committees. To maximize efficiency in use of resources and promote better understanding of PPP, FAO encouraged the formation of project-level and national-level coordinating committees. At field level, these consisted of beneficiaries, project staff and administrators who guide project implementation. At national level, representatives of government ministries, NGOs and FAO monitored project performance.

• National project staff. All project coordinators were nationals trained by FAO. Each project coordinator was recruited directly by the implementing agency, usually from the ranks of government services. Project coordinators included extension officers, economists and youth workers.

• Group promoters (GPs). Some 130 GPs were selected and trained to assist in PPP group development and in linking groups to government services. While most GPs were agricultural extension agents, school teachers or secondary school graduates, the Programme encouraged the recruitment of "second-generation" GPs from among PPP members.

• Income-generation. Encouraged by their GPs and assisted by government services, PPP members undertook additional income-generating activities to build up and diversify their economic base. The majority of groups were engaged in staple food and animal production, coming together on individual members' plots or group farms for land preparation, planting and harvesting. Many groups marketed their produce in bulk.

• Group savings. An important objective of PPP was to mobilize group savings to serve as additional credit, cover loan defaults and build up the members' capital base. At one point, PPP participants - most of whom had no previous experience of saving with banks - had saved a total of $68,000.

• Group credit. To facilitate credit for PPP groups, FAO covered the banks' risk of loan defaults with a Credit Guarantee Fund held at lending institutions. Thanks to these arrangements, PPP groups received annually a total of $350,000 in loans, an average of $324 per group. PPP loan repayment rates were generally much higher than those recorded by "low-cost" credit programmes for small farmers.

• Training. High priority was given to improving the organizational and production skills of PPP members, mainly through small field workshops. Training was usually conducted by government extensionists at the request of project staff or groups. It covered a wide field, including project planning, recordkeeping, food storage, animal rearing and soil conservation.

• Participatory monitoring and evaluation. Group members participated fully in action research connected to the project, and in monitoring and evaluation of project activities.

• Self-reliance. Once groups began to consolidate their economic base, they were urged to increase their self-reliance in preparation for the withdrawal of their GPs and of FAO assistance. Self-reliance was stressed through training, savings mobilization and consolidation of PPP groups in self-governing umbrella organizations serving their wider interests. Some 121 inter-group federations were formed, along with loan committees that process loan requests and distribute credit.