Furthermore, when the success of projects depends heavily on changes in behavior at the community level, promoting participation in community-based programs may be the only means of meeting objectives. From time immemorial, communities have organized themselves to take care of collective and individual needs. Experience provides some clear lessons about what works and what does not work in community-based development. Prominent among the failures have been attempts to achieve results on a wide scale through the infusion of external management, funds, and technology, controlled from distant places. A fundamental prerequisite of successful participatory programs at the community level is the reversal of control and accountability from central authorities to the community level.
Experience also points to a series of common elements in the design of successful programs.
The first ingredients are knowledge and understanding of local needs and of the existing network of social interaction at the household, group, and community levels. This knowledge provides the basis for defining the changes needed, both in existing local organizations and in external agencies, to meet specified objectives. Whether strengthening or modifying existing organizations or establishing new ones, steps need to be taken to ensure that these conditions are in place. What may seem an obvious point but is often neglected is that a group functions only because it is addressing a felt need of its members. A fundamental design flaw in a natural resource management project in the Philippines, for example, was the assumption that upland farmers were interested in forest management.