Rural Development as “Working With People”: a proposal for policy management in public domain

Abstract

Development concept is frequently used in recent decades to replace the term progress, which became from oldest and one-way approaches. Development of people is understood as a complex process that is usually associated to a specific policy when applying for the aids to countries in need. This document is proposed to emphasize that the aid system to developing countries did not fulfill its intended purpose. It is a problem of resources, but not only resources. It is necessary to innovate the models that have been previously applied: they have been aged and there is some “tiredness” in developed countries to keep donating funds with such scarce results. This is complemented with a model that has worked in the less developed and isolated areas of the European Union and called Leader Community Initiative. Where is the success of this model? The writers of these pages do not naively think that here they can find the “philosopher’s stone” to solve such complex problems, but that there are elements than can be adapted easily. Along the following pages these ideas synthetically presented here are developed and another way of working is suggested.