Here To Help Ngos Combating Poverty In Latin America

Over six billion dollars in developmental assistance is funneled annually through non-governmental organizations (NGOs), yet little is understood about the nature of their relationship with communities and the real impact of their work. This book examines what role NGOs really play in fighting poverty in Latin America. Expert NGO professionals and scholars explore grass-roots relationships between international religious and secular NGOs and poor communities. They probe the power structures, cultural assumptions, dangers and possibilities that underlie NGOs' work. While fighting poverty is the mission of many NGOs, most are aware that they often fail to make things better, and, in fact, may make things worse. By providing a forum for Northern and Southern NGOs, donors, scholars, and poor people themselves, this book explores the causes and cures of poverty, and presses at the boundaries of our understanding of participatory development. It identifies both internal and external factors that influence the success of NGO projects, and moves beyond standard best-practice theory to probe more deeply the relationships that underlie poverty and how these relationships can be shifted to achieve solutions..

This book brings together two of today's leading concerns in development policy - the urgent need to prioritize poverty reduction and the particular circumstances of indigenous peoples in both developing and industrialized countries. The contributors analyse patterns of indigenous disadvantage worldwide, the centrality of the right to self-determination, and indigenous people's own diverse perspectives on development. Several fundamental and difficult questions are explored, including the right balance to be struck between autonomy and participation, and the tension between a new wave of assimilationism in the guise of 'pro-poor' and 'inclusionary' development policies and the fact that such policies may in fact provide new spaces for indigenous peoples to advance their demands. In this regard, one overall conclusion that emerges is that both differences and commonalities must be recognised in any realistic study of indigenous poverty..

Effective community development means that many different stakeholders have to work together: governments, development organizations and NGOs, and most importantly, the people they serve. Knowledge Partnering for Community Development teaches community development professionals how to mediate community needs and development agendas to make community-based solutions for development challenges. Based on the newest research in community and global development, Eversole shows readers a strong research and theoretically based framework for understanding local development processes, and gives them the skills to turn this into cutting-edge practice. Each chapter features global case studies of innovative community-state partnerships, and practical application exercises and strategies for professionals looking to bring new approaches to their research. Knowledge Partnering for Community Development is essential for community workers and students of community development looking to bridge the gap between research insight and best practice between community actors..

.

The Economic Development Institute (EDI), in cooperation with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Inter-American Foundation, launched the Partnerships for Poverty Reduction program in six countries in Latin America and the Caribbean—as part of the Bank's Mission "to fight poverty with passion and professionalism for lasting results." The program sought to promote the adoption of an approach to poverty reduction that relies on partnerships among local, regional, and central governments, other public sector agencies, nongovernmental organizations, private sector companies and other civic organizations. This publication is a result of these collaborative efforts. It contains a powerful message about partnerships with the state, civil society and business: these partnerships have the potential of becoming the basis of an approach to poverty reduction that replaces old and failed paradigms in the region..

.

.

.

.

.

.

While a large number of foreign and state initiated water management systems have failed for various reasons, locally developed water harvesting systems have proven their viability by surviving for hundreds of years. While there has to be some recognition of the geographical limits and some questions asked about the quality of these water supplies, even with these detractors accounted for, these systems often remain superior to those imposed by political and private interests, not only in terms of their reliability, but also in terms of their flexibility and more equitable control. This book offers a closer look at Andean flexible strategies for securing water resources under demanding climactic conditions and during environmental changes. The book identifies a range of initiatives that have been created by and for members of indigenous communities to address challenges, such as traditional structures for collecting run-off and rainwater. It poses the questions: How have these strategies been formed and made to operate? What positive and negative lessons can be learned from the interplay between local knowledge, subsistence strategies, and the influx of knowledge and initiatives from the outside? The book highlights the wider political and economic context of local knowledge about water harvesting and its uses, and the impact of contrasting management strategies on social development in the local communities involved. Together with the management of land, the management of water resources frequently provides the basis of social institutions and relationships to which ideas of belonging and community membership are tied. Water resources, along with other natural resources, comprise not only a vital element of subsistence, but also a vital field of social and political interaction and practice..

Millennial Ecuador is a superb collection of essays by leading anthropoligists, historians, and indigenous intellectuals that provides a multifaceted, critical view of the social and cultural pratices of Andean, Amazonian, and Afro-Ecuadorian peoples engaged in mounting political struggles. Focusing on the clash between structural and contra-structural power, on empowerment processes of traditionally disenfranchised populations, and on multiple and competing representations of current confrontations, the book constitutes an outstanding analysis of the contradictions of modern and millennial globality of local cases.--Fernando Santos-Granero, author of The Power of Love: The Moral Use of Knowledge amongst the Amuesha of Central Peru.

.

This volume brings together a selection of classic and contemporary articles written by anthropologists over the last sixty years. The essays reflect the move from earlier preoccupations with 'culture' and 'relationality' and cast new light on the relevance of ethnography for organisational and social theory..

.

.