-----Original Message-----
From: Serafin Talisayon
In the Philippines, we scanned and studied 10 best practices from more than 950 anti-poverty projects. Why were they successful?
The answer surprised us: the communities concerned were successful because the projects leveraged on the wealth of intangibles that the "poor" communities already had: network of relationships (social capital), access to natural resources (natural capital + social sanction), dedicated leaders (human capital), useful linkages outside (stakeholder capital), collaborative practices (cultural capital), indigenous knowledge (intellectual capital), etc. All these are described in our freely-downloadable e-book: "Community Wealth Rediscovered: Knowledge for Poverty Alleviation" fromwww.cclfi.org/kpa_ebook our website.
Many local communities are "poor" only in tangible assets -- they are wealthy in intangible assets. People who call them "poor" are people whose development paradigm is based on financial or material mental models. They have a blindfold and I suspect many of them don't know it. "Poverty" is a concept inside their heads.
Encaminhado por Michael Gurstein.
