A Practical Guide for Co-Designing Community Development and Management Project

The Toyota Foundation  ISBN 978-4-600-01125-3

Shirai, Yuko, Ninchaleune, Bounheuang and Simaraks, Suchint

The 21st century is a century of complexity and increasing societal vulnerability. There are many challenges the world is facing including climate change, economic competition alongside economic integration, challenges to food production and energy availability, and more. If this world is to be navigated in a positive way, we need to become more fluent at understanding human conditions at the grass roots level, because ultimately, all of these challenges are played out at a local level. Previous development research and projects mostly followed a top-down process that ignored local voices. It is clear that new forms of development and management, including joint development efforts by local people, are needed. This manual aims to increase the capacity and awareness of local people so that they move from being passive to active participants in development. Through sharing and developing co-learning methods for
facilitating meetings, situation analysis, problem identification and finding solutions, and by applying Participatory Rural Appraisal approaches, we hope that this manual encourages local people to play a leading role in improving
their situations.