Report of the Regional Workshop - Escap

Stakeholder participation in micro-level planning for social development
• Purpose – expected results/impacts;
• Parts – stakeholders;
• Rules – roles and incentives; and
• Rules acted upon – by the stakeholders.
A video entitled, ‘The Power of Partnership’ was screened at the conclusion
of the presentation. The video gave the history of the Five Ps Project
(Pro-Poor Public and Private Partnership) which emerged out of the Johannesburg
World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD). The video documented
the way in which public-private partnership has benefited disadvantaged
communities in the Asia Pacific region. He finished with a group activity
designed to assist participants to understand the link between stakeholders,
their incentives, project sustainability and the goals of the project.
G. Stakeholder participation in micro-level
planning for social development
In his follow-up presentation, ESCAP Regional Adviser led the workshop
in a discussion of stakeholder participation. Key elements of stakeholder
participation are behavior and attitudes.
Empowering behaviors are:
• Moving away from dominance
• Abandoning ‘holding the stick’ – exercising authority
• Eschewing wagging the finger – arrogance
• Self-aware and self-critical
• Abandoning the search for a blue-print
• Not lecturing
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To demonstrate the above, he displayed a series of pictures which each
represented a form of disempowering behaviour. The intent of the first series
of images was to demonstrate how subtle dominance could be. He emphasized
that it was important for governments or donors wanting to work in partnership
with poor or disadvantaged communities not to use dominant behaviour,
instead they should have empowering attitudes.