The Village Earth Approach

The Village Earth approach is a bottom-up approach to community empowerment. Rather than carrying out projects directly, the Village Earth approach works to create a support structure that enables grassroots organizations to realize their own strategies and solutions. Traditionally, INGO's decided what projects they are going to do based on their funding and/or their expertise in a single sector. As a result, the supposed beneficiaries had very little say in the overall goals, reducing their participation to making minor modifications to predetermined strategies and objectives. The usual response by communities is one of passive compliance or "sure you can install that well, latrine, irrigation ditch, etc. but we're not going to put much effort into helping because we have other, more pressing priorities." When single-sector organizations do attempt to facilitate general community analysis and planning prior to initiating projects, communities often feel steered in the direction of the organizations priorities or expertise.

The Village Earth approach overcomes this dilemma by supporting local intermediate organization whose sole function is to facilitate community dialogue and planning in an open and non-directive way, honoring the intelligence and creativity of the community members. Once the community or group has developed its own strategies and solutions, the support organization helps to connect them with the resources and expertise that help make it happen. In this way, the community gets the resources it needs, when it needs it. This approach also creates greater efficiency for outside resource institutions and single-sector organizations by creating community-driven demand for their resources vs. those resources being pushed upon disinterested communities.

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• development
• sustainability
• community development
• NGO
• rights based development
• inclusive development
• inclusive aid
• community-based
• community-driven
• india
• lakota
• shipibo
• amazon
• advocacy
• indigenous
• rights