Resources

This collection of eleven cases from Canada and the United States gives expression to the ideal of a new economy based on fairness and environmental sustainability. Grappling with complex problems in their local communities, organized citizens are forging innovation, prying open cracks in the prevailing economic system and seizing opportunities to redirect economic life.

Featured here are examples in urban and rural contexts and ethnically diverse settings — First Nations, Inuit, Latino, African American, predominantly white, and mixed communities — where citizens are challenging the short-term focus of political leadership and taking action now to pave the way for an economy that can sustain future generations. They illustrate a new way of working, tying economic justice to the creation of multiple types of environmental, economic and social assets or forms of wealth.

This book is about people and the processes needed to facilitate sharing of knowledge in order to achieve sustainable developmental change.  It underlines that development communication is based on dialogue, which is necessary to promote people’s participation.  It follows a two-way model and increasingly makes use of many-to-may forms of communication to facilitate the understanding of people’s perceptions, priorities and knowledge with its use of a number of tools, techniques, media and methods.  It aims to give voice to those most affected by the development issue(s) at stake, allowing them to participate directly in defining and implementing solutions. Based on the assumption that authentic participation directly addresses power and its distribution in society, which often decreases the advantage of certain elite groups, the authors argue that structural and sustainable change necessitates the redistribution of power.