By CHRISTINA MACCULLOCH

News of the planned "town hall" meeting had been circulating among villagers in this lush part of the Dominican Republic for weeks. Although people in the area were used to community debates and had gathered many times in Villa Tapia to discuss community projects involving drinking water, health promotion and housing, this meeting promised to be exceptional.

None other than Patricio Aylwin, former president of Chile, would be arriving at Villa Tapia with a delegation of international social development and civil society leaders. Their purpose would be to learn first-hand about effective community development strategies in a country that has seen a flowering of citizen participation and civic activism over the last few years.

Aylwin's delegation got an earful--from farmers, municipal officials, congressmen, business people, labor unionists, priests, scholars, urban activists and senior government officials they encountered during several other meetings throughout the island nation. The tales and opinions they heard were as vivid and varied as the Dominican Republic itself, but the theme was consistent: how to get past traditional partisan and class-based animosities to build a national consensus for enacting lasting social reforms.

Aylwin can appreciate the enormity of that challenge better than most leaders. As Chile's first civilian president following a long military dictatorship, he had the unenviable job of building consensus in a society marked by deep ideological rifts. After he left the presidency, Aylwin played a key role in the World Summit for Social Development, held in Copenhagen in 1995. He now heads an initiative, proposed by IDB president Enrique V. Iglesias in the aftermath of that summit, to help interested countries follow up on commitments they made in Copenhagen by formalizing constructive dialogues between political parties and various interest groups and social actors.

"To ensure that interventions are effective, concrete and sustainable," says Aylwin, "it is essential to involve the various actors and sectors of a country in a social development process that is conceived with a long-term vision and based on consensus building." This, he said, is the only way to avoid short-term efforts that are dictated by political expediency.

With IDB support, Aylwin and his collaborators have already taken that message to Ecuador and Guatemala in addition to the Dominican Republic, and they plan to visit additional countries this year.