It works! Speaking for ourselves - a development dialogue tool (PLA 53)

This article describes how a dialogue tool helped to merge a community’s knowledge about their own livelihood situation with one of the latest theoretical development concepts. Community members are often marginalised throughout the whole development process. There is often no dialogue, and no pre-arrangement of meetings and discussions. More significantly, there is no preparation, planning or prioritisation by the community of the issues they should present to development actors when these chances arise. The catalyst for the development of this power tool came during a government evaluation of the first phase of SOS Sahel International’s Borana Collaborative Forest Management Project (BCFMP 1999-2001) in Ethiopia.

Guest-editor: Sonja Vermeulen. This special issue of PLA comes from the Power Tools initiative which aimed to develop, test and circulate existing and new tools to bridge key gaps in policy processes and content. These policy tools – tips, tactics and approaches – provide practical help to people working to improve the policies and institutions that govern access to and use of natural resources.

Participatory Learning and Action (PLA, formerly PLA Notes) is the world's leading series on participatory learning and action approaches and methods. PLA publishes articles on participation aimed at practitioners, researchers, academics and activists. All articles are peer-reviewed by an international editorial board. See: www.planotes.org

Keywords: policy, natural resource management (NRM), community-based natural resource management (CBNRM), Power Tools.

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