Conclusion

The chapter looks at what can be learnt and done using the model of development analysed in the book. It also examines the theoretical and practical implications of an approach such as Tostan’s for indirect development. Most importantly, this chapter details a theory of change that emerged from the analysis in the other chapters (motivation – deliberation – action). In addition, the chapter looks at other programmes, including Abriendo Oportunidades in Guatemala, SASA! In East Africa, and VAMP in India. Their models, field methods, and results are explored and compared with Tostan’s. This comparative analysis offers to the reader solid evidence of the results that indirect development programmes can achieve in various contexts and through various approaches. Finally, the chapter offers to the reader a look into the future, and how advocates for a rapid shift in development practices, calling for implementing genuine people-centred approaches.

Galle Toubaaco before the Programme

Chapter 4 pictures the rural community of Galle Toubaaco before the Tostan programme. It looks at three aspects of community members’ life that are tracked throughout the HRE part of their participation in the Tostan program. This chapter examines in particular how community members constructed gender relations, made decisions or had access to the decision-making process, and fulfilled roles available to them. It also uncovers existing social norms before the programme began, showing that some human-rights-inconsistent norms and practices were in place and offering an analysis of the reasons for it.

Dynamics of Social Change: A Model for Indirect Development Practitioners

Chapter 7 explains why and how behavioural and social change happened. It investigates how in the HRE classes, participants contextualised the abstract human rights knowledge within their local understandings of the world and traditional values. That contextualisation fostered revisions in participants’ understanding of themselves and others and expanded individual and collective aspirations and capabilities. This chapter also analyses the role of the programme in creating a space where gender segregation could be overcome, where men and women could sit and talk together, sharing decisions, and how that affected the aspirations, perceived freedoms, and capabilities of the entire community. The theory described in chapter two is critically reviewed and expanded.

The ‘Now-Women’ and Other Changes: A Wider Horizon of Possibilities?

This chapter analyses community members’ experiences during and after the programme. It uncovers a shift in participants’ attitudes, knowledge, intentions, and behaviour. The chapter also provides evidence of how human rights education contributed to empowering the rural community as a whole. It looks at how the new knowledge about human rights expanded participants’ capabilities, especially as they created new social norms and abandoned ones that they found hindered their growth and development.

Human Rights Education in Action: The Programme Unfolds

Chapter 5 analyses in detail what happened during the HRE part of Tostan programme in the village. It analyses the different learning strategies used in class and show how they allowed participants to ground the abstract human rights knowledge into their concrete daily life. This chapter also gives an understanding of classroom dynamics and analyse how participants made sense of their experience in class. Chapter 5 might be particularly relevant for practitioners interested in implementing indirect development programmes through HRE, and to scholars studying what works in human development.

Rethinking Development Interventions: Potential and Challenges of Human Rights Education

Advocates for new approaches to development have increasingly called for people-led implementations. However, many models have failed, being both weak in the theory framing them, and in the practice that actualised them in the ground. This chapter weaves together theories to analyse critical flaws in how human rights and human development are enacted in the field. It advocates for human rights education interventions that engage people’s imaginative collaborative potential as they aspire toward the common good. Chapter 2 investigates the challenges of integrating human rights, as international instruments, in the local (especially non-western) setting. It is suggested that Human Rights Education (HRE) can play a key role in their contextualisation. The chapter also explores how individual and collective behaviours are influenced by both cognitive and social factors, drawing on two social science theories, cognitive schema theory and social norms theory. Drawing on key literature on gender and power, the last section offers an analysis of the structural conditions that shape what people think to be possible and achievable; that is: their aspirations and capabilities.

Introduction

Mainstream literature in international development has focussed either on advocating for ‘direct’ interventions (changing developing countries following western models) or on the dangers of intervention (for instance advocating for neoliberal trade as a solution to African poverty). Until recently, this dichotomy has obscured a possible third way, that of ‘indirect’ interventions, an approach that has gained increasing consensus in the last decade. While indirect development offers a solid approach, no models are analysed in the literature that can help scholars and practitioners advance this field further. This first chapter introduces the reader to the need for exploring models of indirect interventions and explains how each chapter contributes to grounding such a model on ethnographic evidence. This chapter also briefly provides the reader with critical information about research methodology and the characteristics of the ethnographic study, introducing Tostan communities as appropriate sites for a case study.

Modernisation at Work: Senegal, Tostan and the Fulɓe

Chapter 3 investigates how local, national, and international events intertwine in influencing people’s life, so that it makes little sense to look at development as if it were happening in a vacuum. In particular, it briefly looks at the wider social, political and cultural context of the community where the intervention took place. The chapter looks at the emergence of the human rights discourse in Senegal, examines relevant features of Senegalese culture, explains the structure of NGO Tostan and its educational programme in Senegal, and describes the ethnic group that was studied in the research (the Fulbe), with its moral values and code of conduct.