What does participation mean? It means active involvement with others in a process. Thus it is a collective concept, not an individual one. Participation can occur at different levels. Mere presence is one sense of participation. Another is presence plus some contribution of resources to a common endeavor—time, labor, money, knowledge, or several of these. Both these forms of participation are relatively passive, and although useful and perhaps necessary, they are not the levels a project should aim for.
For participation to be real, it must involve more than providing inputs. It must include active involvement in and shared responsibility for the decisions and outcomes of a program. If a community arrives at a point at which it can manage a program and make the decisions required, calling on outside help when needed, it will have reached a level of participation at which its participation empowers it.
What is the nature of participation in early childhood development programs?
Any ECCD program involves many activities in which a person, a family, an organization, or a community might participate, from the initial planning of a project through its implementation and evaluation. Full participation by someone would mean active involvement in all these activities. That ideal is extremely difficult to achieve, but some stakeholders, particularly the beneficiaries, could be involved in at least one activity. And a community may be able to participate actively in all phases of a project even though each person in the community or each beneficiary cannot.
Participation in most ECCD programs is superficial, limited to presence or perhaps a contribution of resources. Communities are often asked to contribute a building, and parents to pay for part of a program. Rarely do parents or community members participate in implementing a program, such as through active involvement with children in a center. Child care workers and early educators often resist such participation, preferring to keep parents at arm's length—perhaps involved in constructing or painting a building, but nothing more. Parents and communities also rarely take responsibility for administering a project; this is left instead to governments or NGOs. Nevertheless, experience with local administration is accumulating, and this option should not be discarded.
Why such emphasis on participation?
An increasingly well-established literature points to the benefits of active participation by the people in planning. Fostering such participation is crucial for respecting cultural differences and for "beginning where people are." It is also crucial for building a base for sustainability in programs, through a sense of ownership and through empowerment.
But participation can be threatening to those who hold the reins of power, whether at a national or a village level. For participation to be effective and not overly conflictive, an ethos supporting it needs to be present or created. In indigenous communities this ethos is often strong. In some cases this supports democratic actions; in others, participation is compulsory.
Participation in planning
This guide emphasizes participation in the planning phase of a project by all the stakeholders, including the potential beneficiaries. This participation should involve more than simply consulting with the groups; it should include sharing responsibility for decisions with them. A variety of methods favoring such participatory planning have existed for years (see for example Bosnjak 1990; Korten 1980; and Pantin 1983. Despite these methods and despite efforts to use systems of participatory planning, most planning occurs at the center and without the direct participation of those who will be affected by the proposed program.
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