Participation for Empowerment and Sustainability: How Development Support Communication Makes a Difference
Teresa Habito Stuart · Media Asia · 1994
Development Support Communication (DSC) is a term first used by the United Nations Development Programme to refer to the development project support reaching specific groups of people with new ideas, information, and technologies to get rural communities to participate in development programmes to act as the implementors. This article describes how DSC was successfully employed by the Philippines government in a three-year experimental project to transfer selected agricultural technology to small farmers, fishermen, women, and youth at five pilotbarangay sites. It is hoped that the project will help increase the participation of small agricultural producers in identifying technologies for research and quality of life, in line with the targets of Philippines 2000. This project shows that when DSC is integrated into development work, it facilitates the attainment of the project objectives for community development.