Experience shows that active participation in programmes can solve many of these problems. There is increasing evidence of the inappropriate and often harmful effects of large-scale, centralized planning of nutrition interventions on local communities when such planning does not take into account the needs and resources of these communities . If an intervention is not designed to meet the felt needs of a community, it is unlikely to have much effect. For example, in the Bolivian government-sponsored Project for the Incorporation of Women in Development, in Chiquisaca, Bolivia, in which local women did not participate in identifying priority needs, government health workers trained them in environmental, sanitation, and health practices. However, the results of this training have been limited because the health personnel did not consider the women's financial constraints that prevented them from using services provided by medical clinics and from initiating and sustaining changes in their daily routines or improvements in the environment that could have resulted in better health.
Community participation is a means through which communities can identify needs and priorities.
If a programme addresses a need of the community identified by the community members themselves, it is more likely to be accepted and utilized. Fourteen literacy classes were organized for boys and girls and men and women. However, the teaching materials were uninspiring, and the teachers were unable to motivate the villagers to learn. Soon, their attendance began to fall sharply, and most of them left before the end of the school year. Some time after this initial collapse of the education programme, a more realistic approach to literacy emerged.