PLA 49: Decentralisation and community-based planning

This issue has a special theme section on Decentralisation and community-based planning. Community based planning (CBP) is defined as ‘planning by communities, for their communities, which is not isolated from but links into the local and or national government planning systems’.

Many of the articles in this issue draw on a four-country CBP project delivered in South Africa, Uganda, Ghana and Zimbabwe. They also include examples from francophone Africa, Asia and Latin America. The various country studies seek to draw comparisons between the different approaches, objectives and scales used in CBP projects, and highlight the need to look at them as part of an integrated planning process.

There is also a general section which includes the following items:

A paper looking at the effects of the work undertaken by Concern Worldwide in haor areas of Bangladesh to promote the socio-economic empowerment of women, principally by examining domestic violence experienced by housewives.

A short overview of a booklet and video that introduce the concept of Citizen Juries, and how they can be set up and run to enable communities to examine and debate key issues that are affecting them.

The Tips for Trainers section extracts from a manual by Khanya - Managing Rural Change, entitled 'Action Research for Community Based Planning'.