Incluye bibliografía

Executive summary -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Community participation defined -- 3. The state of the art: what do we know about the organization and potential impacts of participatory approaches? -- 4. The treatment of community participation in EDI training activities -- 5. The EDI's role -- 6. Proposed strategy -- Annexes -- References

Several factors have contributed to an increasing recognition of the need to address social aspects of development. First is the accumulating evidence about the effects that beneficiary participation in project design and management have on the efficiency of implementation, cost recovery and project sustainability. Second is the limited capacity of national and local government agencies to manage effectively the increasing number of development projects and programs. Third is the belief that development planners have a moral obligation to " listen to the people, " both to understand their needs and to assess how their lives are actually being affected by donor sponsored projects and policies. A final factor is the concern over gender issues. This paper contains the content of an international workshop on community participation which was held to help the Economic Development Institute (EDI) define how to incorporate community participation into training activities. The paper is in six sections. Following the introduction, section 2 presents a definition of community participation. The state of the art is discussed in section 3; while section 4 reviews current EDI treatment of community participation. Sections 5 and 6 discuss EDI ' s role and proposes strategy.