Location: Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA

Who should attend?
Development practitioners, project directors, and volunteers working with local or international NGOs, government officials, funding agencies, community leaders, extension workers, and relief workers making the transition to development (or post disaster reconstruction) will all benefit from this course. This course is open to everyone who would like to attend (irrespective of academic or professional background).

About this course:
Using a framework of rights-based development, this course will provide participants with the tools to enhance community participation in regional/cluster, multi-sector, integrated, and intermediate development projects. This course explores both the theory and practice of community-based development, focusing on practical tools and skills for cultivating indigenous leadership, mobilizing communities for collective action, accessing resources, and developing long-enduring community-based institutions. Through dialogue, activities, case studies, and other exercises, participants will learn how to work with community members to identify their vision for the future and create the relationships, institutions, and appropriate technologies to move towards it. The techniques taught in this course are based on best practices in participatory, bottom-up approaches to development proven effective throughout the world by Village Earth and our partner organizations.

Some topics covered in the course include:

• Comparison of Development Approaches
• Basic Principles of Community-based Development
• Community Empowerment and Mobilization
• Creating Resource Access Structures
• Activities to Assess Power Dynamics
• Bottom-up Strategies for Regional Development
• Community and Resource Mapping and Clustering
• Participatory Learning and Action Activities (including PRA)
• Community Organization and Capacity Building
• Participatory Strategic Planning
• Appropriate Technology Generation
• Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation

For more information please contact Nancy Murray (nancy@villageearth.org)
Ph. +1-970-491-5754