| It is sometimes said that development is about the mobilisation of resources behind a collective goal. But, in the quest to achieve a high volume of activity and increased numerical impact, there is a risk that the quality of development work receives less attention.
During the last two years, Community Works has conducted or contributed to thirteen training programs for staff of government and non-government agencies in which 115 organisations have participated. A key question raised by individuals is ‘how can we translate our learning into quality practice?’ For many people, it seems that mobilising resources and engaging with communities comes more easily than maintaining work of consistently high quality.
Revisiting material on social inclusion and discussing it with a group of NGO managers from Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay made us think again about this subject. The principles that underlie social inclusion, such as awareness of power relations, encouraging negotiation and understanding individual experience, were relevant to all their work.
Visit our project case studies to see how the question of achieving quality arises in different settings.
The challenge of converting classroom theory (top image) to community practice (bottom image).
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