Co-Constructing Knowledge through NGO-Driven Circle Work: A Venue for Rearticulating North-South Development?

This presentation revolves around the question of what degree of control, if any, the users participating in NGO-driven development programs may have over their own development. Based on a multi-sited ethnography of NGO organizing and communication that I conducted in the period of 2010 to 2015, and with a special analytical focus on the facilitating role of frontline NGO workers in rural East Africa, this presentation discusses enabling and constraining aspects of using circle work to co-produce knowledge in international development. More particularly I am focusing an approach to circle work called REFLECT (Regenerated Freirean Literacy through Empowering Community Techniques).
While structural challenges remain severe, I maintain in this presentation the working hypothesis that if strategically used as an opportunity for co-constructing knowledge from both local and international perspectives, then participatory approaches such as REFLECT can be used not only to drive changes locally but also bolster the global participatory agenda of defining development practices and politics from the bottom and up