Sustainable Network Management
A Landmark In Participatory Development

By Jhabindra Bhandari

THE history of participatory development networks in Nepal is not very long. The decades long practical experiences at national and international level have clearly indicated that the development efforts should realistically focus on people centered development strategy in order to reach the goal of poverty alleviation for sustainable human development.

A network, in this regards, is therefore an institutionalised process to address common issues on information, communications, and coordination among the organisations and individuals. There was a greater realisation in the country on the crucial need of a network of development practitioners who believe in participatory development values and practices—with the hope that it would result in an effective and functional networking system to promote participatory development process effectively.

A forum of such like minded individuals and organisations having both interest and solid experiences eventually succeeded to establish a network. Later it was named as Nepal Participatory Action Network (NEPAN) in 1995. Actually, it was a major landmark in the history of a broader network in the country for sharing experiences in the area of community development initiatives at the grass roots.

Like other participatory development networks at national and international scenario, the sole objective of the NEPAN is largely to undertake advocacy to development institutions and individuals practitioners on the growing needs and importance of participatory approach in development. The ultimate purpose of participatory development is to empower people who are poor, disadvantaged and socially marginalised in most societies and hence enlarge their choices for sustainable development.

Right after the growing recognition of NEPAN, there was a significant development of other networks at the regional and district levels to promote the similar philosophy of participatory development.

In the area of network management, Nepal, like many other countries, is actually gaining momentum with the initiation, active participation of development practitioners and organisations. There has been remarkable progress in dissemination and sharing of grass root documentation on a wide range of development approaches and important issues to the policy makers and planners of both the governmental and non governmental organisations.

In this regards, the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex, UK has been launching a project named "Pathways to Participation" in different countries of the world. And more importantly, it has been interesting and useful in terms of sharing and learning experiences in participatory development prctices in different contexts. The sharing of such experiences and learning are taking place not only at local level but equally at national and international level.

Recognising the importance of networking and its sustainable management, it is interesting to note that the ERPAN in collaboration with the IDS, UK and Action Aid Nepal successfully organised a national workshop on network management in Biratnagar in November last year where representatives of various national and international networks exchanged information and experiences regarding the significance of network management.

In the course of sharing networking experiences from abroad, G.L. Pratt of the IDS, UK presented the experiences in IDS group as well as global experience of participatory network management. These, however, largely vary from one country to the other depending on the purpose and institutional framework.

On the other hand, the emerging needs of participatory approach in development were deeply raised. Example: Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) – a popular approach that has gained remarkable recognition in NGO’s community development programmes. And its quality received an important theme for further discussions.

More importantly, this was the first time in Nepal that the event was organised to exchange ideas and practices of network management at national and international level and formulate pragmatic strategies for sustainable network management. The existing status, scope and emerging issues of networking were intensively discussed to have a shared vision.

Even though, there is increasing importance of networks, there are daunting challenges to manage such networks effectively. Therefore, the focus should be on human resoruce development, advocacy, research, publication and documentation in participatory network management.

National Coordinator of NEPAN expressed the view that there are growing demands of membership in the networks. And there is wider scope of such networks in terms of facilitating participatory development process to similar networks at local level. However, effective mobilisation of the network members is still an issue for sustainability.

Until recently, such networks were viewed as a training and quality control organisation for participatory methodo-logies like PRA. But these days, it is felt that resource mobilisation is a matter of concern in network management. Among many others, commitment and motivation of network members have been crucial for institutional development of networks. More importantly, process documentation is extremely essential in sharing experiences among a number of partners for better institutional linkage.

Undoubtedly, the crux of the matter related to sustainable network management is largely to ensure people’s participation in development and meaningful exchange of grassroots experiences in a diverse range of community development initiatives.

In this way, sharing of experiences through such networks at local, national and international level plays an important role not only to promote participatory development process but also help formulate policy and plans that are more response to people’s needs and priorities. Hence, local recognition and ownership of such networks is extremely important for programme sustainability.

Other Stories

• A Lesson To Be Learnt From Afghanistan
• King Tribhuwan And His Times