Ricardo and Wendy repeat the hard truths learned in decades of pursuing participatory communication -- development decision-makers trained in other disciplines may pay some lip service to the idea of people-centred development, but at the end of the day they are so results-oriented that an artificial time-line pre-empts the participatory approach. Development communicators from Erskine Childers to Don Snowden knew this too, but did not give up the good fight of trying to infiltrate the development business with their more progressive ideas. At the Canadian International Development Agency, in the early '80s, a progressive manager let me hang out my shingle as Specialist, Development Communication and Wendy Quarry toiled for me to write a Policy Guideline recommending that many types of projects - social as well as infrastructure - adopt, from the start, a consultation process among the "target beneficiaries." The effort was never understood or adopted and disappeared after a few years. It is still rare, and just today we read of our Canadian Government's musing about the need to win the "hearts and minds" of the Afghan people, putting stress on "development" projects (very old style, one suspects) rather than directly battling Taliban insurgents!

I find Wendy and Ricardo's pessimism a bit dark - compared to the situation 20 years ago, participatory communication has a much higher profile - thanks to efforts such as yours - and we are surely developing a critical mass of research based on a greatly increased investment by multilateral and bilateral development agencies - UNICEF & DFID come to mind. So, keep up the good fight!

Charles Morrow
Retired Director of Public Information, World Health Organization, Geneva
& former Director of Information, CIDA, Ottawa
613 241-4665
morrow2@sympatico.ca