PCDForum Column #6, Release Date December 15, 1990
by F. Stephen
Traditionally, each community in India had its own system
for the utilization of water, land, forest and fisheries
resources based on two principles: distribution and renewal. Although hierarchies of caste and position concentrated benefits in the hands of the more powerful, everyone
received enough to meet their basic needs […]
PCDForum Column #4, Release Date November 15, 1990
by David C. Korten
Conventional wisdom tells us that accelerating economic
growth is the key to eliminating poverty and restoring the
environment. The global crisis of poverty, environment,
and violence is real, but it will not be resolved through
actions that further concentrate economic power and
increase overall demand on environmental resources.
Perhaps our […]
PCDForum Column #3, Release Date November 5, 1990
by David C. Korten
The first ten years of my career in development were
devoted to preparing managers for the businesses that
would mobilize underutilized resources, turn them into
the products that people need, and bring the world
universal prosperity. Trained at the Stanford Business
School, a professor at the Harvard Business School, […]
A feature of the People-Centered Development Forum, Release Date November 24, 1990
by David C. Korten
In March 1988, ANGOC held a landmark workshop in this conference room on the
theme of NGO Strategic Management. The workshop focused on what was then the
cutting edge issue for Asian NGOs, the movement beyond village level projects to
a concern with focusing […]
PCDForum Column #7r. Original December 18, 1990. Updated February 24, 1992
by Anwar Fazal
According to the Chinese proverb, "If you feed a man a fish, you feed
him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a life time." In
our complex modern world it is no longer so simple. […]
PCDForum Column #5, Release Date December 10, 1990
by F. Stephen
The 1980s saw an explosive growth in the number and size
of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in India, in part
a response to increased funding from foreign agencies and
the Indian government. Youth clubs and other voluntary
village self-help organizations transformed themselves into
formalized projects and larger NGOs fragmented into
countless smaller agencies […]
PCDForum Column 2#, Release Date November 1, 1990
by David C. Korten
During the past year I have given presentations all around
the world on a basic theme. We live in a world in crisis, a
world of increasing poverty, environmental destruction, and
communal violence. This crisis is of our own making, a
result of too many people making too many […]
PCDForum Column #1 Release Date October 20, 1990
by Tina Liamzon
Six current trends are reshaping the development
roles of NGOs in the Philippines and elsewhere in
Asia in ways that are likely to have important implications for our future partnerships with Northern
NGOs.
Trend #1: Networking: We are learning to work
more effectively with one another. In addition to a
proliferation of […]
Published in Development, 1990:3/4, pp. 170-73 by the Society for International Development
by David C. Korten
The decade from which we have just
emerged, the 1980s, was a time of growing recognition that we live in a world in
profound crisis–a world of increasing
poverty, collapsing ecological systems,
and pervasive communal violence. An
awareness is dawning that these are not
isolated problems. They represent […]