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Working Well with Vulnerable Communities: Reflections from a Recent Workshop

  Last week I ran a three-hour workshop on participatory research titled Working Well with Vulnerable Communities and Non-Academic Stakeholders. Participants came from different disciplines and contexts. Most were already committed to participatory approaches. Their concern was not whether participation matters, but how difficult it is to sustain in practice. We structured the session around […]

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Beyond the Buzzword: Five Persistent Errors in How Community Development Is Understood

Community participation has become a routine expectation in development policy and practice. It appears in funding criteria, evaluation frameworks, and professional guidelines across sectors such as infrastructure, health, energy, education, and governance. The underlying idea is widely accepted: people should have some say in decisions that affect their lives, and doing so should lead to

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Mubarak Village

The Role of Communication and Information in Successful Rural Energy Innovations

Effective communication and two-way flow of information are essential in ensuring the success of rural innovations, for example clean energy and electrification projects. In regions such as sub-Saharan Africa and other LMICs, where access to energy remains a significant challenge, promoting strong communication channels between governments, energy companies, and local communities is key to achieving

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