In this section, you can find a toolkit, key concepts and a strategy for promoting participation. The toolkit is based around the use of certain methods, skills and techniques that further inter-link with training, research, organisation and evaluation as described below. Even more important is the understanding that participation is a process - one stage leads on to another not necessarily on a linear basis.

Methods, Skills, Techniques

Techniques for promoting participation cannot be used effectively without reference to the vision, values and concepts that inspire them. Techniques for promoting participation also need to be seen in the context of policy-making and decision-making processes at all levels. In a background paper, VIBOSO stress that promoting participation has implications too for management and organisational development. This means that opportunities for making an active contribution have to be created at different levels: "Such opportunities should be as diverse as possible, so that more and more people feel themselves addressed. It can be a question of opportunities at management level or at the level of implementation." (See Rita L'Enfant's paper)

Members of CEBSD make further distinctions between methods, skills and techniques. The thinking from Community Development Foundation in the UK describes the first two as "referring to ways of working by community workers and other practitioners - for example that the aim is to work mainly with groups of local people on a planned/strategic basis. There are a number of guides and textbooks which cover this area." Similar guides exist in Flanders. The term 'techniques' is generally used to refer to devices used by both practitioners and agencies when working with, or seeking to work with, people and it is mainly examples of these techniques which are presented in the toolkit.

The tool-kit does not present a comprehensive kit of all the techniques used by all CEBSD members and does not aspire to present all the techniques used by others in this field. It is only those techniques in active use by partners that are presented at this stage. The techniques are not seen as the property of experts but as a means to develop skills and to mobilise people. They do, however, usually require experience and training if they are to be used effectively.

The thinking behind the development of these techniques is inclusive - there should be no space for exclusion on the basis of identity, origin, gender, age etc. To this end an interactive and intercultural approach underpins the use of these techniques. Use of any techniques should be preceded by an assessment of what is most appropriate for the situation, group, task etc. This toolkit is an open box and should be accessible to all - please offer your criticisms, additions, and suggestions to increase that accessibility.

Exchange of Experience

The techniques presented here have innovative elements combined with links to a long history of experience in the field of encouraging participation in public life. The long history of a mediating role between local people and the social structures is seen as particularly relevant to one of the partners in the Promoting Participation project, Landelijk Centrum Opbouwwerk, in the Netherlands.

The collaboration and exchange, which has produced this toolkit, is based on the acknowledgement that where it has been possible to exchange experience in the past, members of CEBSD have really benefited from these exchanges. Some of the methods and techniques have shared and developed with the members of CEBSD over the last ten years - mostly in the EU but including also Hungary and to a limited extent contact with self-help groups in Russia. In their "Techniques for Democratic Meetings", CESAM (The Centrum Foundation for Community Work and Mobilization) highlight how this collaboration has helped them develop techniques for cross-sector co-operation "in such a way that the target group participates in the formulation" of the work. An EU-funded project in 2000 made it possible to assemble some of this work from different countries for the first time.

The techniques and the thinking that has inspired them have been adapted to suit local groups in many different settings - both urban and rural. In the toolkit presented here, for example, you will find Future Workshops, Planning for Real used by several partners in different contexts. In the course of the project on promoting participation, it has also become more evident that many of the methods and techniques have drawn heavily from community development experience in the South.

The influence of thinking such as that of Paolo Freire, a radical social educator from Brazil, is frequently acknowledged by partners. Yet the direct transfer of experience and methodology is perhaps even more potent. For example, a project in Porto Alegre in Brazil has been adapted to a similar project in Sabadell, Catalunya, facilitated by Desenvolupament Comunitari, a partner is the Promoting Participation project. This project involved local people in formulating the budget for their local authority. There are reminders too from Southern Voices (a small UK-based association who have commented on the work in progress on the project) that it is not always necessary to go to the South to gain access to Southern thinking and expertise. There are many voices from the Southern hemi-sphere here in Europe on our doorsteps.

Training, Research and Evaluation

Skills in group work, communication, democratic leadership and using the creativity of a group are essential in the implementation of these techniques. If you want a specially designed training programme in your own country there are many training bodies and resources listed here. If none of them suit your needs, please look at the resources section for useful packs and contacts or contact CEBSD for information on specially tailored programmes using your skills.

There is a need for specially adapted research and evaluation methodologies, which take into account the vision, values, skills used in the practice of participation and the results achieved.

There is a lack of a coherent presentation of existing practice in this field in Europe. In the course of the project, it also became clear that there is not enough work done on follow-up to initiatives such as this in order to identify where there are links to existing work and what is the best practice that can be replicated.