Resources

Latin America is one of the world's fastest developing regions, yet also a hub area for crime and violence, where the links between social exclusion, inequality, fear and insecurity are clearly visible. This book explores the meaning of violence and insecurity in nine towns and cities in Colombia and Guatemala to create a framework of how and why daily violence takes place at the community level. It uses participatory urban appraisal methods to ask people about their own perceptions of violence as mediated by family, gender, ethnicity, and age. It develops a typology which distinguishes between the political, social, and economic violence that afflicts communities, and which assesses the costs and consequences of violence in terms of community cohesion and social capital. The featured towns and cities in Colombia are: Embudo, 14 de Febrero and Jerico in Bogotß, and Portico, el Arca, Amanecer, Rosario, Cachicamo and Colombia Chiquita; and in Guatemala: Concepcion, Nuevo Horizonte and La Merced in Guatemala City, and San Jorge, Sacuma, Limoncito, Gucumatz, El Carmen and Villa Real. Based on the experiences in these sites, the book examines the following aspects of urban violence: the role of participatory research methodologies in policy planning; the complexity of daily violence; community perceptions of underlying structural factors; the family as a violent institution; linkage to substance abuse; organised violence at the community level; social institutions and social capital; and community perceptions on strategies of dealing with violence.

This report provides an assessment of the conditions in Montserrat by people in Montserrat. It begins by discussing the impact of the start of a volcanic eruption in 1995 on peopleÆs lives and government action. By 1998 a four-year Sustainable Development Plan was set out with a strategy to rebuild Montserrat and its social fabric. The report discusses peopleÆs own perceptions and definitions of poverty and hardship with reference to a wide range of factors. Three groups emerged as being particularly vulnerable: single headed households; the elderly; and the mentally challenged. A discussion is then made of coping strategies people have developed that illustrate a high degree of resilience and resourcefulness. Finally, a discussion is made about how PPA can help the sustainable development process. It is found that it provides a more disaggregated assessment of who is facing what levels of poverty and hardship; it can help to assess the impact of policies on peopleÆs lives; and it provides a more informal channel for feeding peopleÆs views up to the government.

'Voices of the Poor' is a series of three books that collates the experiences, views and aspirations of over 60,000 poor women and men. This second book of the series draws material from a 23-country comparative study, which used open-ended participatory methods, bringing together the voices and realities of 20,000 poor women, men, youth and children. Despite very different political, social and economic contexts, there are striking similarities in poor people's experiences. The common underlying theme is one of powerlessness, which consists of multiple and interlocking dimensions of illbeing or poverty. The book starts by describing the origins of the study, the methodology and some of the challenges faced. This is followed by an exploration of the multidimensional nature of wellbeing and illbeing. Most of the book comprises the core findings - the 10 dimensions of powerlessness and illbeing that emerge from the study - and is organised around these themes. These include livelihoods and assets; the places where poor people live and work; the body and related to this, accessing health services; gender roles and gender relations within the household; social exclusion; insecurity and related fears and anxieties; the behaviour and character of institutions; and poor people's ratings of the most important institutions in their lives. These dimensions are brought together into a many-stranded web of powerlessness, which is compounded by the lack of capability, including lack of information, education, skills and confidence. The final chapter is a call to action and dwells on the challenge of change.

This report presents the preliminary results of a participatory study of urban poverty and violence in Jamaica carried out during September - October 1995 using a Participatory Urban Appraisal (PUA) methodology. It describes findings from 5 poor urban communities in Jamaica on local perceptions of poverty and violence, and the causal relationships that produce and reproduce violence. The PUA began by eliciting local people's conceptions of poverty and vulnerability as an "entry-point" to discuss the sensitive theme of violence. The study clearly identified that violence in the selected communities erodes two key assets - labour and social capital - which are vital for reducing poverty, and ends with conclusions of specific relevance to the design of the Jamaican Social Investment Fund.