Unit 3 explores the breakthrough of people-centered development, and the emergence of people's movements in South Asia.

It also examines the type of enabling environment that is necessary for people's movements to succeed, and uncovers key principles and strategies for the sustainable end of hunger.

In South Asia, people's movements have made a significant impact in the struggle against hunger and poverty. Many of them are built on the ideals that Gandhi espoused - self-reliance, interconnectedness, and equality of women. Grassroots people have taken action using local resources and their own creativity.

The work of The Hunger Project extends from this extraordinary legacy of inquiry and struggle by grassroots people. As part of the Hunger Project team - as investors or as villagers - we are privileged to be part of this great tradition.

1. Paradigm shift from service delivery to people-centered development

2. Evolution of people-centered development

3. Creating an enabling environment

Service delivery refers to a top-down approach, in which services are provided to hungry people. Although service delivery has had some success in South Asia, it has only limited long-term benefits. Most importantly, service delivery does not draw on the creativity and resources of the hungry people themselves.

• Service delivery is an approach to development in which critical services are provided to people who could benefit from them. Some examples of these services are building infrastructure and emergency relief.

• Top-down development: Service delivery is sometimes called, top-down or centrally-planned development.

• Service delivery programs are created and implemented by people other than the poor and hungry themselves.

• Mainstream approaches: For the past 50 years, mainstream approaches to development have been largely service delivery oriented.

• They include activities such as government-sponsored development programs, technical assistance, foreign aid for disaster relief, or provisions of health or education by a non-governmental organization.

• The experience of South Asia shows that the service delivery approach has largely failed to truly end hunger.

• Resource limited: Service-delivery programs depend on government budgets, which are never large enough to meet more than a small fraction of the needs.

• Unsustainable: Programs stop when the funding stops.

• Insensitive to local conditions: In a region with more than 1 billion people, it is hard for top-down approaches to be sensitive to local realities. Plans are often unable to take into account changing conditions in local communities.

• Bypass the poor: The majority of South Asia’s, and the world’s, poor and hungry never have access to the programs that are supposed to provide services for them.

• Inefficiency: The late Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi stated that only 15% of government funds for the poor ever reached them. Some experts estimate that since the early 1950’s, $100 billion in aid has been given worldwide to less developed countries. Less than 1% of that money has actually reached the bottom 20% of humanity.

• Encouragement to corruption: Top-down government programs also create an opening for corruption, since money must pass through the hands of people in power before it can reach the beneficiaries. Corruption has now seeped into all levels and sectors of South Asian society.

• Mindset of dependency: Most importantly, top-down, service delivery programs create a mindset of dependency among grassroots people, rather than focusing on people's own creativity and strength. Many local people feel alienated by central planning, since they have very little say in initiatives as they are developed.

People-centered development represents a profound shift from the service delivery system. It relies on community resources and the strengths of local people—their creativity and their vision of a new future.

-Mahbub ul Haq, United Nations Development Program

-Robert Chambers in Rural Development: Putting the Last First, 1983

• The shift from service delivery to people-centered development represents a profound change in thinking about the fundamental nature of human beings.

• People-centered development is based in a belief in people's inherent dignity, and their right to self-reliance. It is grounded in the conviction that all people have the potential to be creative, strategic individuals.

• Many people have heard the cliché: "the world has a billion mouths to feed." This suggests that poor and hungry people present a problem which the rest of the world must fix.

• People-centered development challenges this conception. The world does not have one billion mouths to feed. It has one billion hard-working, courageous human beings whose creativity and productivity can be unleashed.

• Hungry people hold the solution to their own hunger.

• By mobilizing the energy, responsibility, creativity and resources of South Asia’s poor, hungry people will create a society that is truly free from hunger.

• People-centered development acknowledges that the true goal of sustainable development is progress for all humanity. The way to achieve it is through the empowerment of people.

• In 1992, the Independent South Asian Commission on Poverty Alleviation released a study where it looked at the importance of people-centered development.

• The study asserted that it is critical to ensure the direct and full participation of poor men and women, both in local organizations as well as in decentralized government bodies.

• It suggests that social mobilization depends on large scale training: the creation of cadres of  indigenous animators, catalysts, facilitators, and leaders to stimulate the process of social mobilization.

• By mobilizing local people, their creativity is unleashed for the end of hunger.

People-centered development in South Asia is deeply rooted in a century's worth of people’s movements. These stretch back to community development on an international scale, and Gandhi's struggle for India’s independence.

Across the Indian subcontinent - and the world - people have created vibrant movements which are rooted in the skills and creativity of grassroots men and women. These movements draw on the tremendous opportunity for collaboration among people as part of a team. This is key to a future free from hunger.

The principles espoused by Gandhi, and the legacy of powerful leaders and local people who followed, are at the heart of The Hunger Project and all its work. Our principles and methodology—including self-reliance, interconnectedness, and the empowerment of women—are deeply rooted in the century of hard-won experience that has come from South Asia.

This section will look at some of movements that have come out of South Asia, and the key distinctions in people’s empowerment that they illustrate.

1. Self reliance: Gandhi and the Khadi movement

2. Rural reconstruction: Y.C. James Yen

3. Local decision making: Community Development in India

4. Awakening of people and society: Dr. A.T. Ariyaratne and Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement in Sri Lanka

5. Trusteeship of resources and non-violent resistance: Chipko Movement in Uttar Pradesh, India

6. Unleashing women’s creativity: Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA)

7. Going to scale: Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC)

8. The right to credit: Grameen Bank

9. Grassroots women's mobilization: Women's self-help groups

Mahatma Gandhi was perhaps the world’s most charismatic and inspiring leader. His message of self-reliance and equality among people is at the heart of many people-centered movements around the world, particularly in India.

-Gandhi

• Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, popularly called Mahatma (Great Soul) Gandhi, was the father of Indian independence. He struggled for an India free from British rule, where there would be equal opportunities for the rich and the poor.

• The key to this struggle was self-reliance for all people.

• Gandhi passionately believed that the true India could be found not in its few cities, but in its 700,000 villages. He asserted that the future of India relied on the skills and creativity of its rural people.

When we have become village-minded, we will not want imitations of the West or machine-made products. -Gandhi

I know that, if India is to be the leader in clean action based on clean thought, God will confound the wisdom of...big men and will provide the villages with the power to express themselves as they should. 
-Gandhi

• One of the most vivid elements of Gandhi’s struggle for people’s self-reliance can be seen in the Khadi movement.

• To Gandhi, economic equality between India's people was the key to non-violent independence for the country. In order to achieve a new social reality based in economic equality for the villages, he created a constructive program, made up of 17 key areas for action.

• A critical element of the constructive program was the promotion of khadi, or home-spun cloth.

• Gandhi advocated that village people produce khadi rather than rely on foreign goods. This would give people control over economic production, as well as create an awareness of their own productivity and self-worth.

• Instead of mass production, Gandhi advocated production by the masses.

• The handloom and spinning wheel thus became a symbol of self-respect and self-reliance gained by the poor.

• Even today, khadi and village industries are supported by the India government, and khadi continues to be worn by India’s highest politicians.

• The Khadi and Village Industries sector in India employed nearly 6 million people in 1996-7 alone.

Many of the problems being addressed by these people in India [Gandhians] are no longer Indian issues. They have larger ramifications and are, in fact, global problems…They have been working for decades and represent the passing generations. 
-Professor Ishwar Harris, author of Gandhians in Contemporary India

• The words and deeds of Mahatma Gandhi are at the core of many people-centered movements throughout South Asia.

• People and organizations throughout the region have applied Gandhian philosophy to address critical social issues and to improve the lives of their sisters and brothers.

People-centered development in South Asia is linked into a global tradition of innovative thinkers. One of the most influential figures worldwide is Y.C. James Yen, who helped to found the rural reconstruction movement.

The journey of one thousand miles must start with the first step. –Y.C. James Yen

• Dr. Y.C. James Yen dedicated his life to mass education and rural reconstruction, first in China and then throughout the world.

• He committed himself to sensitizing the world’s intellectual community to the tremendous losses the world suffers by ignoring the humanity of the poor, and by not acknowledging their productivity.

• Yen was born in China in 1893, the son of a venerated scholarly family.

• During World War I, he was stationed in France to supervise Chinese laborers. While there, he realized that the people's illiteracy was no fault of their own.

• Yen observed, I began to realize that what these humble, common people of my country lacked was not brains, for G-d has given that to them, but opportunity…They had potential powers waiting for development, waiting for release.

• Dr. Yen and his colleagues evolved a sustainable, people-centered development approach that came to be known as rural reconstruction.

• The term reconstruction implies continuity as well as change in the process of development for rural villages.

• The work that Yen began in China became linked to South Asia, as Yen's colleague Spencer Hatch began a corresponding program in India.

• Yen explains, Our basic philosophy is not relief, but release. These self-respecting hard working peasants do not want relief from anybody.

• Yen pioneered an integrated program of action that was vital for enabling people to end their own poverty. The program included activities in education, health, livelihood and local self-government that would be run by people themselves.

• For Yen, local self-governance was a natural extension of people taking responsibility for their own development.

• Said Yen, What is most gratifying is this, that after people had learned to run their own people's schools, their modern farms, their cooperatives, their health clinics, they demanded that they should run their own government. Is there anything more natural and more inevitable?

• After all, what is government for? Is it not an agency for the welfare of the people…To me self-government is the inevitable result of a people who are educated and capable of carrying on their own social and economic welfare.

• After India became independent, the new government launched a series of five-year plans to shape the new country’s development process.

• In the 1950s, the first two of these five-year plans were based strongly in community development, giving local people control of the development process.

• At first, community development work began in only a few blocks in the country.  

• Within a few years, it had spread to cover the entire Indian nation.     

If we had only stayed on this path, you cannot imagine the progress India would have made by now.
-M.V. Rajasekharan, chair of The Hunger Project in Karnataka state

• In later five-year plans, the Indian government shifted away from community based development. This was partially due to cold war pressures and India's growing alliance with the Soviet Union.

• India began to focus more on industrialization, and centrally-planned efforts to eliminate hunger and poverty.

The Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement in Sri Lanka is one of the most successful self-help organizations in the world. It is based in the universal awakening of people and society, to create a just and hunger-free world.

Unless social change is brought about by people who are changed and uplifted in their hearts, they will merely be exchanging one set of problems for another, exchanging injustice for injustice, terror for terror and hatred for hatred.

-Sarvodaya worker Jehan Perera

• The Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement takes a spiritual approach to rural development, which links Gandhian philosophy with Buddhist philosophy.

• Sarvodaya’s aim is to create a no-poverty, no-affluence society based on a spiritual reawakening in individuals.

• The movement is led by one of South Asia’s most inspiring leaders, Dr. Ahangamane Tudor Ariyaratne (right). In 1958, Dr. Ariyaratne organized a "gift of labor," taking a small group of young teachers and students to a Shramadana camp in a poor village.

• From this small study-service project, Sarvodaya burgeoned into an independent development and reconstruction movement.

• Sarvodaya broke ground when it began, by listening to the people and rejecting the top-down charitable approach that fosters dependency.

• It offers the model of holistic, bottom-up development in which Ariyaratne says, the individual’s mental make-up, and the social environment in which he lives are both undergoing revolution.

• Sarvodaya is active in over 10,000 villages in all regions of the country, and commands services of hundreds of thousands of volunteers and trained workers. Women are deeply involved in the movement—composing as many as 75% of Sarvodaya voluntary workers near the movement’s onset.

• The name Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement has deep meaning.

• The term Sarvodaya, coined by Gandhi, means "Universal Awakening."

• Sarvodaya encourages awakening and liberation as a two fold process - it should bring change in the inner person as well as the outer structures of society.

• This incorporates spiritual, moral, cultural, social, economic and political development.

• According to the Sarvodaya ideology, any development effort which concentrates on only one of these factors while neglecting the others is doomed to failure.

• Shramadana means the voluntary sharing of time, resources, thoughts, energy and labor.

• Movement stands for the dynamism and momentum of people motivated from within. It draws on popular support that is essential for successful and sustainable development and change on a national level.

• Dr. Ariyaratne believes that the key to social change lies in every individual. Only through inner transformation can the outside world change.

• In order to identify targets for progress in the villages, Sarvodaya worked with 660 village people to create a Ten Basic Needs Program. Each of these needs has been subdivided and detailed, making 167 items all together.

• The Program is designed to be a self-analysis tool, that calls forth people’s mobilization for joint action.

• The Ten Basic Needs are:

  1. A clean and beautiful environment

  2. A clean and adequate supply of water

  3. Minimum clothing requirements

  4. A balanced diet

  5. A simple house to live in

  6. Basic health care

  7. Simple communication facilities

  8. Minimum energy requirements

  9. Total education

  10. Cultural and spiritual needs

The Chipko Movement was a mass movement of local women, who organized together to protect India’s forests. Their passion and commitment displays the power of local people to command trusteeship of local resources in a non-violent fashion.

Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man. 
-Gandhi

• The forests of India are a critical resource for the subsistence of rural people. In hill and mountain areas especially, they provide food, fuel and fodder, as well as stabilize soil and water resources.

• As India’s forests have been targeted for commerce and industry, Indian villagers have sought to protect their livelihoods through the Gandhian method of satyagraha or non-violent resistance.

• In the 1970s and 1980s resistance to the destruction of forests spread throughout India—primarily with its women.

• The movement began in Tehri Garwhal—a hilly region in the state of Uttar Pradesh and became organized and known as the Chipko Movement.

• The name of the Chipko Movement came from a word meaning embrace.

• When authorities came to Tehri Garwhal to cut the trees, local women joined together in a tremendous display of shakthi—or women’s power.

• The women literally hugged the trees to save them from being destroyed.

• With the confidence of being united as a group, the women proclaimed: This forest is our home, we will not let it be destroyed.

• Together, they held their ground until the contractors retreated.

• The courage of the women of the Chipko movement sowed the seeds of one of the biggest women’s movements that not just India, but the world has ever known.

• The Chipko Movement has since spread to other parts of the country. Its leaders and activists are primarily village women, acting to save their means of subsistence and their communities.

One of the most well-known movements advocating local women’s empowerment in India is the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA). SEWA focuses on the hard work and creativity of women – working in solidarity – for the benefit of society.

From a miserable passive acceptance of all the injustices, SEWA women, by organizing themselves, have attained the courage to stand up and fight, the ability to think, act, react, manage and lead. Self-reliance is what they ultimately want. There is no development without self-reliance. But there is no route to self-reliance except by organization.

- Ela Bhatt, founder of SEWA

• Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) is an organization of women working for economic justice and self-reliance.

• In many parts of India, 90% of all production takes place in the "unorganized" sector, where women do the more than half of the work.

• SEWA organizes women who work "informally" - in the home, in the streets of cities, and in the fields - where their work often goes unacknowledged and underpaid.

• SEWA was founded by Ela Bhatt, a lawyer and social worker in Ahmedabad, India. As chief of the women’s Textile Labor Association, she became aware of the conditions suffered by poor, self-employed women.

• In 1972, she set up SEWA, which she registered with the government as a small trade union. In 1974, it established its own bank, which today has 70,000 accounts. By December 1995, SEWA's members numbered 218,700, making it the largest single union in India.

• SEWA’s work is deeply rooted in the Gandhian tradition. According to Ela Bhatt, Gandhi did not wait for miracles in his work against powerful social forces, but took action to create a new future.

• SEWA women recognize that no miracles will change their lives, and they persevere in their day-to-day struggle toward self-reliance

• SEWA's primary focus is economic development, including provision of credit. It asserts that when women are economically empowered, self-confidence and self-reliance are born.

• Based on the strength of this achievement, women can then demand other rights such as health, shelter, literacy and education.

• According to SEWA, the only way to bring change is to organize, organize, and organize some more. Its members work together as equals, building their confidence and solving problems collectively that they could not address as individuals.

• Ela Bhatt (left) explains, Once a woman sees she is one of many, she comes to understand how deeply the exploitation runs in the system, and how she, along with so many sisters, should be getting a better deal for their labor.

• She then says, loudly, clearly, ‘I am a worker. Recognize me. I work at home (or in the market. Or in the fields). Recognize my workplace. Grant us the protection we need in our work. We want dignity, not desperation—our work should provide us this.’

• And from this place, her strength becomes infectious, and she stands with her sisters saying, 'We will plan the agenda for change. We will sit and decide our priorities. And we will manifest the changes!'

 The Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee is one of the largest NGOs in the world. It pioneered the concept of going to scale: making an national-level impact that goes far beyond typical small-scale NGO projects.

• BRAC works to achieve the dual goals of empowerment of the rural poor and alleviation of poverty.

• It began its operations in February 1972 after the end of the war of liberation that led to the creation of Bangladesh. It started as a committee of concerned individuals, led by Mr. Fazle Hasan Abed. They pledged to bring aid to thousands of refugees returning to their homes in Sulla, a remote rural district in the Sylhet region.

• BRAC soon realized that relief assistance, although critical in an emergency, serves to create a state of dependency.

• By 1976, BRAC shifted its approach to work directly with the underprivileged. Its target population consisted of the poorest of the poor: day laborers, small farmers, artisans, petty traders and women who were productive but whose economic contribution was not adequately recognized.

• By 1995, it emerged as one of the largest NGOs in the world, with a total membership of 1.5 million, 85% of whom are women.

• BRAC is based in the principle of going to scale.

• It believes that the alleviation of hunger and poverty cannot be achieved by charitable gestures. Rather, it requires a holistic approach that reaches throughout all sectors of society.

• BRAC's presence in Bangladesh is indeed huge.

• Health: BRAC pioneered an Oral Therapy Extension program for the treatment of diarrhea that has covered the entire country. BRAC workers visit mothers in all of the country's nearly 70,000 villages, enabling them to treat diarrhea at home.

• Education: BRAC's education program for children has been called more widespread and effective than the government's. It has established over 30,000 schools, which accommodate nearly one million students.

• Links with government: Partnership with State institutions is an important priority in BRAC's development strategy. It has forged links between its own village development organizations, and government and external support systems, enabling it to reach hundreds of thousands of people.

• BRAC works by organizing the people in a village.

• It sets up two village organizations (VOIs), one each for men and women. Only the landless are eligible for membership.

• Members are encouraged to find solutions to their own problems and to join hands to pursue these solutions. Often small credits are given to facilitate this process.

• BRAC's programs cover three core areas: education, health and rural development.

• BRAC realized through its work that women in Bangladesh played a far more vital role in production than is ever acknowledged.  

• Women are responsible for the management of households, although they are denied economic and social opportunities. When women are empowered - and have access to resources - health, education, and nutrition all improve.

• BRAC focuses its Rural Development Program on the socio-economic development of rural women through access to credit, capacity development, savings mobilization, institution building and awareness creation.

The Grameen Bank is one of the most successful experiments in extending credit to the landless poor. The vast majority of its borrowers are women, whose access to credit has led to social transformation in their communities.

A husband who beats his wife will find his wife’s borrowing group knocking at the door demanding an explanation. Often the embarrassed husband stops the abuse, and in a very short time. 
–Bank worker M.S. Musa

• Since 1976, Grameen has empowered over two million villagers in Bangladesh, mostly rural women, through provision of small loans. Its idea has been replicated in forty countries worldwide.

• The Bank began in 1975, when Professor Mohammed Yunus (right), an economics professor, began lending his own pocket money to the landless poor near Chittagong University in southeast Bangladesh.

• He realized that policy makers seldom give the landless a central place in their plans for rural investment. The majority of national bank loans go to landholders. People with no land or collateral are thought to be too great a risk.

• In 1983, Prof. Yunus received government permission to operate as an independent bank. 

• Today Grameen has more than 2.3 million borrowers, 94 percent of whom are women.  It operates in 38,951 villages, covering more than half of the total villages in Bangladesh.

• Grameen's wide reach is thanks to US $23 million of grants and loans that it receives from outside donors.  Grameen has a paid staff of 12,567. 

• Grameen forged the path in establishing the essentials of micro-credit.

•  Organizations around the world use its approach in designing their own micro-credit programs.

• Unlike other banks, Grameen goes to its borrowers, to give them the opportunity to access credit.

• From its onset, Grameen believed women are more bankable and trustworthy.

• Rather than lend to individual women, Grameen lends to groups of 5.

• That way, they can give each other collective assurance that the group’s loan will be repaid. Nearly 100% of all loans advanced to women by Grameen are repaid.

All Grameen borrowers agree to 16 decisions, which serve as a guidepost for a holistic program of human and social progress.

The 16 decisions are:

1. We shall follow and advance the four principles of Grameen Bank - Discipline, Unity, Courage and Hard Work – in all walks of our lives.

2. We shall bring prosperity to our families.

3. We shall not live in dilapidated houses. We shall repair our houses and work towards constructing new houses at the earliest.

4. We shall grow vegetables all year round. We shall eat plenty of them and sell the surplus.

5. During the plantation seasons, we shall plant as many seedlings as possible.

6. We shall plan to keep our families small. We shall minimize our expenditures. We shall look after our health.

7. We shall educate our children and ensure that we can earn to pay for their education.

8. We shall always keep our children and the environment clean.

9. We shall build and use pit-latrines.

10. We shall drink water from tubewells. If is not available, we shall boil water or use alum.

11. We shall not take any dowry at our sons' weddings, neither shall we give any dowry at our daughters wedding. We shall keep our centre free from the curse of dowry. We shall not practice child marriage.

12. We shall not inflict any injustice on anyone, neither shall we allow anyone to do so.

13. We shall collectively undertake bigger investments for higher incomes.

14. We shall always be ready to help each other. If anyone is in difficulty, we shall all help him or her.

15. If we come to know of any breach of discipline in any centre, we shall all go there and help restore discipline

16. We shall introduce physical exercise in all our centres. We shall take part in all social activities collectively.

Some of the most impressive work for the end of hunger is being done by informally organized groups of village women, participating in self-help groups or village collectives.

• Informal organizations of village people can be critical to making real progress towards ending hunger.

• The history of people's mobilization into self-help groups and cooperatives is much older even than the NGO sector in South Asia.

• Bangladesh has 20,000 local people's groups that receive government financial support, and many others that do not. The Indian state of Tamil Nadu alone has 25,000 registered grassroots organizations.

• Self-help groups provide an opportunity for women to draw on their collective strengths and take actions together that they could not take as individuals. Women in South Asia use self-help groups to access credit and build awareness, thereby improving their social and economic position in society.

• The self-help tradition is today at the basis of the activities of many non-governmental organizations as well as government programs, which realize the strength of people's own initiatives.

• The story of 22 landless women entrepreneurs in the village of Faridpur, Bangladesh displays how much can be done at the local level through women's collective efforts.

• 22 women came together in the early 1990s to manage an oil-pressing business. They realized that as individuals, they had limited power to sell their produce at a decent price.

• Together the women took a small loan from an NGO. Since they were all illiterate, they enrolled in literacy training in order to maintain their own books. Together, they learned the skills needed to buy and store seeds and sell them for the best price through collective bargaining.

• When village elites objected, the illiterate women offered the most articulate response:

• When we were dying of hunger, our children were suffering from diseases, we had no homes of our own and we lived in thatched houses, the village leaders did not feed us, nor did they help save our children from hunger and disease, nor did they give us clothes to cover our bodies. These people have no right to tell us now what to do or not to do, nor do they have any right to judge us or condemn our activities.

• The village elites could do nothing to stop them. The women continued their work, and began saving to buy their own oil-pressing machine. Together, the women accomplished their goals.

In recent years, the concept of an enabling environment has been vital to the success of local people's movements. An enabling environment takes into account the attitudes, policies, and practices that must be in place in order for local people to succeed.

The following page will look at key elements of an enabling environment and how it functions.

An enabling environment facilitates the work of local people in ending their own hunger and poverty. It includes four key elements that people need from their environment in order to succeed.

• An enabling environment is the set of attitudes, policies and practices which stimulate local people to take action, and facilitate their success.

• The concept of an enabling environment means restoring people's control over their own destiny, by putting them in control of the institutions and decision-making processes that affect their own lives.

• In an enabling environment, the players are the people themselves, and the primary resources are their own talents, knowledge and resourcefulness.

• Instead of considering what can be done for the hungry, an enabling environment considers what can be done by the poor.

• To make any significant difference in the lives of the poor, public investments must enable, or leverage, the enormous investment the poor make in themselves.

• Investment in the initiatives of local people is critical.

•  It not only enables individuals to move out of poverty, but it advances the human and economic development of nations, and indeed the world.

1. Awareness: People must have a clear understanding of the issues they face, and the possible solutions that are available.

2. Access: Whatever training, information or resources people need to succeed in their own action must be physically available in the community. It must be unencumbered by social barriers that could stop people from having it.

3. Affordability: In taking their own actions, local people depend primarily on their own resources. Therefore, they must be able to afford what they need. To a family living in hunger and poverty, the issues of price gouging, bribery and exploitation all have the same effect of preventing the family from being able to purchase what it needs.

4. Accountability: While people themselves are the primary source of action, at some point they must trust and depend on others - teachers, health workers, well diggers and other public officials. People must have ways to hold these officials to account.

• A century of struggle has led humanity to greater clarity on the key principles of development.

• People and organizations throughout South Asia now realize that the creativity of grassroots people will carry the day in revitalizing rural areas and ending hunger.

• Yet an enormous gap remains between the recognition of this truth, and the assurance that it is implemented in practice.

• The Hunger Project is committed to catalyzing steps to bridge that gap, and to ensure that grassroots people are at the forefront of efforts to end hunger - in their communities, and in our world.

Congratulations on finishing unit 3 of the online briefing program.  This unit has given you an understanding of the great legacy of people-centered development in South Asia.  

• Breakthrough in development: a paradigm shift from service-oriented programs

• Top-down programs: service delivery "provides" for the poor

• People are key: people-centered development relies on people's strength and creativity

• Long tradition: a century's worth of people's movements

• Gandhi's legacy: self-reliance, interconnectedness and empowerment of women 

• Universal awakening: personal and social transformation is key

• Women's creativity: women are leading change agents

• Going to scale: people's movements are sustainable - more than individual projects

• Access to credit: economic empowerment brings social progress

• Local initiatives: self-help groups can make the biggest impact

• Enabling environment: supportive policies and practices are key to success

• Rhetoric vs. reality: THP is dedicated to bridging the gap and empowering local people