5th IFAD/NGO Consultation, Rome, Italy, 1994

Rural People's Organizations

The fifth Consultation, held in April 1994, was attended by 31 NGOs, of which 22 were from the south, 5 from Europe, 3 from North America and one from Japan. Three case studies on people's participation were drawn from the experiences of NGOs working at grass-roots, national and international levels. An IFAD background document, "Partnership and Participation: Necessary Elements for Poverty Alleviation", was circulated to provide illustrations of IFAD's experience in this area.

Among the points emerging from the discussion, the most important were:

• If long-term sustainability is the goal, institution-building has to be a main NGO/project objective.
• In promoting NGOs, IFAD and other institutions need to avoid damaging small farmers' organizations that are already well established (e.g., cooperatives).
• Incorporating people's participation can help reduce project costs, improve sustainability and provide greater opportunities for replication.
• Two of the prerequisites for successful participation were that the groups involved had analysed the existing power structure, paying particular attention to the possibility of interaction with other institutions, and that NGOs should not duplicate existing services.
• To ensure the removal of dependency, NGOs should be cautious about accepting outside financing, except perhaps when it is proposed as seed money for group formation or similar activities. Delegates to the Consultation had the possibility of meeting with representatives of IFAD's regional divisions and discussing how NGOs could become involved in the IFAD project process.