Home Revolutionary Development: Why Humanitarian and Development Aid Need Radical Shifts

Humanity is at a crossroads. It will need to determine which approach to take to combat the numerous intractable issues facing the global community.

A new vision for international development is needed; to counteract broad fragmentation around issues of priorities, challenges and ways forward. The sector has most notably struggled to share power with local and national counterparts and truly embody the principles of participatory development.

To replace deeply entrenched, unhelpful patterns (assumptions, behaviours and values), a new kind of thinking is required, inspired and informed by transcendent learning processes that simultaneously lead to individual and collaborative action and transformation.

This paper provides an argument which stresses the need for a seismic shift, from the still dominant underpinnings of modernism mindsets and patriarchal thought-forms towards a relational or participative consciousness that reflects feminist values and the deeply interconnected world that we live within.

Experience tells us that it is not possible to challenge the conditions which abet rampant gender-based violence, abject poverty, ecological destruction and inequality by working within existing legal, regulatory, political and bureaucratic structures.

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