Undertaking people-centred development

Description

Undertaking people-centred development involves designing and implementing initiatives that prioritize the needs, capacities, and participation of local communities. This strategy empowers individuals to identify and address their own challenges, ensuring solutions are contextually relevant and sustainable. By fostering inclusive decision-making, building local skills, and mobilizing community resources, people-centred development remedies issues of marginalization, dependency, and ineffective top-down interventions, resulting in more resilient and equitable outcomes.

Context

The manifesto of a Working Group of Social Leaders, coordinated by the Synergos Institute in preparation for the UN World Summit on Social Development (Copenhagen, March 1995), notes that governments and UN agencies have lost their credibility and that the modern global market economy in its present form is working against social well-being. It calls for national governments, transnational corporations and civil society to form a new framework which strengthens community action and creates a people-centred economy.