The Art of Participation

White, Shirley A. The Art of Facilitating Participation:. Minneapolis: Sage Publications Pvt. Ltd, 2000. Print.

p. 7-22: Introduction and an overview of Part I: The Art of Participation.

This book aims to catalyze improved participatory approaches to development, The focus is placed on the importance of proper facilitation, and does this by combining a set of different essays by White and others on the topic of findings on participatory development. White starts off with a broad generalization that NGOs spent the 90's talking about involving the socially excluded, but have yet tlo effectively do so (p. 16). In addition, development has become a business. “We quickly forget that development starts from the heart” (p.17). “Reaching across the barriers of diversity, power, caste, and class to touch the life force of a person and lift them to a 'higher ground' becomes the objective of the challenge” (p.18)

Underlying assumption of the book: 'communication is the foundation of participation'. With this as an anchor, the story introduces the array of essays that will be presented to the reader. Each of them is written from a practitioners standpoint, but with the academic integrity of a university graduate research department. Together, the essays provide a set of lessons learned from their personal experiences working in development around the world.

The first essay is by White and Nair, and it explains how the facilitator role is one of a catalyst communicator (CC). A CC is responsible for setting up an environment for continual learning and honing communication for building partnerships for participatory development. Kiiti and Nielsen's essay validates the use of reflective thinking as well as contextualized definitions of roles and purpose. Specifically this essay distinguishes between the role of a facilitator and an advocate, and the importance of the ability to fill both roles depending on the situation. This theme of facilitator vs advocate continues into the next essay, by Ndunge and Erik. This essay discusses how facilitating starts from where the community is at, whereas advocating often has an external motivation and paints near-sighted pictures.

Simone St. Anne follows with an essay on the importance of creativity in synergy, or connection, which is the key to autonomous participation. “Synergy is the spark that triggers thinking and helps form innovative connections to allow others to see what they see – that's the essence of creative collaboration.” (p. 21). This essay is followed by an essay on the enabling conditions of development communication for giving voice to different stakeholders to negotiate their positions and common interests. Then comes on essay that appears to be written by someone recently faced with the harsh divisions associated with development, choosing to write on the personality and character requirements for someone to be a quality facilitator. These include selflessness, willingness to take risks, commitment, persistence, sensitivity, and others that are difficult to understand without extended time working in the field of development (p.21). The last essay included in the section titled the Art of Participation is by Jim Lees and Sonali Ojha who write it while in the midst of a project trying to do participation-based work in the midst of the harsh conditions of the streets of Mumbai.

Reflection

Interesting, how the book 'Autonomous Development' has affected the reading of this story. As much as Autonomous Development appears to be academic and critical in an almost witty way, White's book is much more open, personable, and lightly written. For this reason, her book is soaked with phrases that Carmen, the author of Autonomous Development, would and does tear apart in his book on the failings of participatory development. Of course, in some ways they are acknowledging the same failings, only in very different manners and with very different messages. One example of this is where White talks about 'reaching across' divisions of all kinds and 'lifting' people to a 'higher ground'. Carmen would point out that lifting implies that we are in control and thus are actually reinforcing those very stark power differences.

The essays listed included in this book are very interesting to me. It seems like an interesting opening The introduction to the essay by Ndunge and Erik is interesting because it seems to hint that facilitators are important in bridging the gap between the development goals of the outside world and the sheltered way of life of the people being developed. I certainly hope they would not agree with this assessment, but I wonder if it is not a subconscious reality in the minds of many development workers, especially those with academic training. I also am really excited to read the essay about using creativity to connect to people.