The honey bee network: voices from grassroots innovators

Abstract

An assumption behind most approaches to the alleviation of poverty is that poor people are too poor to be able to think and plan on their own. The result is that most interventions are designed by others: civil servants, technocrats and NGOs. Despite much discussion of the wisdom of participation by the poor, they have seldom been given the opportunity to articulate their own agenda and visions and to determine the terms on which outsiders could participate. Even where people have solved problems through their own ingenuity there is seldom an institutional window available to recognize, respect and reward their creativity and innovation.