Resources

"Developing and using practical and appropriate community indicators is one of the most effective ways of engaging people's interest in their community, enabling them to identify and clarify what things are most important to them and what they would like to change." This guide introduces the idea of sustainable local communities and sustainability indicators. It provides ideas for how community members can get together, choose indicators, gather information, communicate progress and take action. At the back of the guide there are listings of useful people and projects in the UK, a list of jargon in use and examples of indicators chosen by communities.

This document proposes an approach to sustainable development that includes three environmental care objectives of ecosystem management, meeting basic needs, and community empowerment. It notes a growing consensus that sustainable human development depends mainly on what people in their families and their communities do for themselves. The document argues that under any political or economic system, sustainable development seems to follow a common sequence. Projects move from pilot phase into large scale implementation. It highlights a UNICEF program, "SCALE for human development" and discusses topics such as preconditions for sustainable development, stages of action, and basic principles in sustainable human development, among others.

This training manual with a practical reference guide clearly presents the rationale for participatory project development and a step-by-step process for its use in training workshops. Workshop sessions are outlined in a sequence of stages in project development, viz., planning (understanding the community, needs assessment, determination of goals and objectives, assessment of resources and constraints, planning project activities), implementation and evaluation. The use of sample charts, checklists, and worksheets applied to different stages of project development make it easy for trainers to follow the reference guide. The manual emphasises community participation at all stages of project development.

This newsletter is a special issue on trying to bridge the gap between donors' resources and their effective use in targeting the poor, through the use of community development funds. Community development funds function like banks, but can work more flexibly and at different levels. Several case studies are presented from countries in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and southern Africa, and a number of tips and advantages in setting up a community development fund are outlined. Some of these are that they: " Set new standards of transparency and accountability; " Make multiple, small-scale investments in many community-initiated urban development projects; " Support tangible outputs of value to the urban poor, in different sectors and areas; " Help establish and strengthen long-term partnerships between community organisations, municipal authorities and the private sector, while stimulating new working practices; " Provide poor communities and their organisations with opportunities to learn by doing.

Integrated pest management (IPM) emerged in Indonesia in the late 1980s as a reaction to the environmental and social consequences of the Green Revolution model of agriculture. A cooperative programme between the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Indonesian Government centred on Farmer Field Schools (FFS), which are schools without walls. The FFS aimed to make farmers experts in their own fields, enabling them to replace their reliance on external inputs, such as pesticides, with endogenous skills, knowledge and resources. Over time the emphasis of the programme shifted towards community organisation, community planning and management of IPM, and became known as Community IPM (CIPM). This study assesses the extent to which Community IPM has been institutionalised in Java (Indonesia). The dynamics of institutionalising people centred and participatory processes were found to be closely dependent on the following mutually reinforcing factors: 1. Enabling national policy decisions by the State were complemented by farmer led attempts to contest and shape policies from below; 2. Actors with emancipatory values, attitudes and behaviours championed the cause of FFS/CIPM; 3. Farmer centred learning and critical education promoted ecological knowledge for sustainability, both among farmers and those who work with them; 4. Enabling organisations that emphasise farmersÆ abilities, promote organisational learning and which are flexible in their structure and procedures; 5. The existence of safe spaces where farmers can get together, share problems and decide on action. Linking together these safe spaces and local groups into broader federations has helped farmers capture power back from centralised, top down agencies; 6. A context in which farmers have some control over funding decisions and allocations made by local, national or international funding bodies.