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== Introducing Participatory Methodologies (Facilitation) ==

'''1. What are participatory methods?'''

You could just as well ask, “What is a developmental process?” Is it something a government or development organisation does for a community, or is it something a government or development organisation does to assist a community to make informed choices and actions in order to improve the livelihoods of the community members? Too often governments have made the error of imposing development solutions on communities. Regardless of their good intentions, external agents cannot possibly understand all local community issues, cultural considerations and conditions, resulting in the implementation of ‘solutions’ that are all too often inappropriate and unacceptable to the community. As a result, these top-down solutions are not sustainable.

Participatory methodologies have been developed in response to these sustainability problems and involve the use of processes and tools that allow external agents such as governments and development organisations to work with communities to arrive at sustainable and acceptable solutions to development problems.