Conventional rural development strategies tend to see development as a series of technical transfers aimed at boosting production and generating wealth.
Conventional projects usually target medium- to large-scale “progressive” producers, hoping that improvements will extend to more “backward” rural groups. However, this approach often leads to concentration of resources, marginalization of small farmers and increasing landlessness.
The basic fault in the conventional approach is that the rural poor are rarely consulted in planning or given an active role in development activities. This is because the poor have no organizational structure to represent their interests. Isolated and often exploited, they lack the means to win greater access to resources, and to prevent the imposition of unworkable programmes or technologies.
The lesson is clear: unless the rural poor are given the means to participate fully in development, they will continue to be excluded from its benefits. This realization is provoking new interest in an alternative rural development strategy: people's participation through organizations controlled and financed by the poor.
Several advantages
The FAO People's Participation Programme (PPP) has demonstrated that participation is possible when the poor form small self-help groups that allow them to pool resources in pursuit of their own objectives. For governments and development agencies, people's participation through small groups offers several advantages:
▪ Economies of scale. Participatory groups constitute a receiving system that reduces the delivery costs of government services.
▪ Higher productivity. Given greater access to these services, the poor become more receptive to new technologies and ideas, and achieve higher levels of production and income.
▪ Reduced costs and increased efficiency. The poor's contribution to project planning and implementation represent savings that reduce project costs.
▪ Building of democratic organizations. The small group environment is ideal for the diffusion of collective decision-making and leadership skills.
▪ Sustainability. Participatory development can lead to the establishment of a network of self-sustaining rural organizations.
| Principal elements of the PPP approach | |
 | PPP projects have been implemented in 12 countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Some 13,200 people have actively participated in PPP, while beneficiaries total 80,000. The principal elements of the PPP approach are: |
| ▪ Focus on the rural poor. PPP beneficiaries include immigrant settlers, artisanal fishing communities and subsistence farmers. | |
| ▪ Small groups. The key element in PPP is the formation of small homogeneous self-help groups. Some 1080 such groups have been formed. | |
| ▪ Local implementing agencies. Projects are implemented by government ministries, semi-government institutions or NGOs. | |
| ▪ Group promoters (GPs). Some 130 GPs assist in group development and in linking groups to government services. | |
| ▪ Income-generation. Assisted by government services, groups undertake additional income-generating activities to build up and diversify their economic base. Most groups are engaged in staple food and animal production. | |
| ▪ Group savings. Group savings serve as additional credit, cover loan defaults and build up groups' capital base. By 1990, PPP participants had saved a total of $68 000. | |
| ▪ Group credit. To facilitate credit for PPP groups, FAO covers the banks' risk of defaults. Thanks to these arrangements, PPP groups received total credit of $350 000 in 1989. | |
| ▪ Training. PPP members' organizational and production skills are improved through field workshops covering topics such as project planning, recordkeeping, food storage and soil conservation. | |
| ▪ Self-reliance. Self-reliance is stressed through training, savings mobilization and consolidation of PPP groups in self-governing umbrella organizations serving their wider interests. | |
