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By Katherine M. Scaife
B.A. honors thesis in Anthropology, University of Chicago June 2003
Research on Community Participation in Peruvian Non-Government Organizations
The offices for the Peruvian Society for Youth and Adolescents (Sociedad Peruana de Adolescencia y
Juventud, or SPAJ) are a small cluster of rooms located near the Catholic University’s campus in Lima, Peru. There are a few staff members, but much of the energy is exuded from the director, Liliana La Rosa Huertas. La Rosa
Huertas is a quick-thinking and charismatic woman whose sense of humor can sometimes border on the cynical, but mostly because her idea of human character—and especially of the characters and mindsets of the youth with whom she works—captures the ironies of Peruvian society. As part of a series of interviews on non-governmental organizations in Lima, Peru and their approaches to participatory development, La Rosa Huertas would spend the next three hours describing to me her organization, their intentions and the kinds of work they do—frequently veering off into related subjects about the government, typical Peruvian attitudes, and popular culture.
SPAJ is a growing group of academics, professionals, and community members from poor neighborhoods in Lima unified to work in the promotion of adolescent rights and empowerment. The projects the organization undertakes are varied, from working directly with youth in extreme poverty on the streets of Lima to accompanying and guiding other local NGOs—at their own behest—in development projects across Peru. Although SPAJ’s main goal is to promote awareness and understanding in youth whose poverty is criminalized before they even commit a crime, the organization also strongly promotes skill-building and knowledge-sharing among all groups, across age, gender, class, physical ability and sexual preference. By joining people—instead of dividing them into different needs groups—La Rosa Huertas says, beneficiaries become more aware of their common deficiencies and are mobilized as a community to demand their rights. This concientización—consciousness-raising among beneficiary groups to promote their own development—would be a common theme for thirteen Peruvian NGOs interviewed regarding their approaches to participatory development; in their view the ultimate aim of development is to empower people to determine their needs and how they would achieve them. This stance is in contrast to what they recognize as the current situation, given by La Rosa Huertas as one in which “everyone arrives at empowered leaders of a community. So that those empowered leaders constitute a closed circle.” (Casi todo el mundo llega a esos empoderados. El vaso de leche llega a los líderes empoderados, el comedor… los ONGs… el estado va a estar con los líderes empoderados. Entonces, esos líderes empoderados constituyen un círculo cerrado.”) 1 La Rosa
Huertas’ “empowered leaders” become the points of connection between development organizations and the beneficiary communities. They join groups that can be clearly identified in communities that lack defined boundaries and they learn how to reach above and below themselves to link up donor aid with recipients. In their attempts to deliver much needed services to beneficiaries, NGOs recognize and try to support such groups that have actively formed to work for their own development. “Most consider working with locally constituted groups not only a matter of efficiency in the scale of services but also a commitment to collective empowerment as an independent value” (Carroll 26). In working with leaders who represent a community that is otherwise difficult to define or reach, NGOs such as the ones interviewed are finding ways to reaffirm their commitment to sustainable development by reinforcing local empowerment and community groups that might one day replace them in the development world.
Within this paper, I will explore these linkages between NGOs working in development, the communities they are working for, and the “empowered leaders” of a community who go between. I seek to problematize these connections and to question the celebrated ability for NGOs to reach all socio-economic levels—and indeed the
“poorest of the poor” (Carroll 68)—with a philosophy of empowerment and community mobilization via these leaders. Moving outside the theory and rhetoric that can sometimes confine, sometimes create nuances within development projects on the ground, I posit that NGOs recognize the pitfalls and shortcomings in their relationships with beneficiary communities, and try to counteract these problems while nevertheless continuing in
1 Interview with La Rosa Huertas; August 2002

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Page 2 of 18 much needed development projects. For them, the importance of creating an ideal relationship with a local group and a participating and empowered community comes second to the importance of providing basic services in the first place.
The field work for this paper was carried out in Lima, Peru over the summer of 2002, during which time thirteen NGOs were interviewed concerning their practices incorporating participation into development programs.
Most of the organizations focused efforts on the sexual and health rights of women and youth, though two organizations (Oxfam America and Instituto del Bien Comun) focused work primarily on conservation and the rights of indigenous populations.
2 About half of the groups worked in rural areas, the others focusing efforts on
Lima and surrounding neighborhoods; some organizations carried out programs in urban and rural locations. Chart
1 on the next page identifies and provides an overview of the organizations interviewed. Notably, all organizations choose to work with what Kahn Segura, of Population Concern, would call nuestras contrapartes las organizaciones de
base, or local counterpart organizations (and as I will refer to them, community-based organizations, CBOs). The connections with the CBO and methodology for carrying out a development project working alongside these counterparts are topics I explore here beginning with a brief history of NGOs in Peru, helping us to contextualizes the work that development organizations are currently doing, and to identify some historical issues to which organizations are still responding. I then return to La Rosa Huertas and SPAJ, as well as another NGO, Population
Concern, giving detailed descriptions of each, their methodology and philosophical approaches to development work. Though these organizations are not representative of all the NGOs interviewed (there was much variation even among the thematically linked group I interviewed) they are useful in bookmarking several approaches that
NGOs have in undertaking participatory development. Next, I juxtapose analysis of NGO linkages and networking in the development world with the interviewees own experiences with those relationships to help define how development projects are implemented by those charged with carrying them out.
2 Since Oxfam America and the Instituto del Bien Comun are outliers in this study, their presence in my discussion is marginal.
Similarly the Red Peruana de la Promocion de la Mujer as a network organization of other NGOs has much to say to this project, but it is beyond the scope of this paper to say it.

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Chart 1
Non-Governmental Organizations in Peru
Name
Asociacion Pro-Derechos Humanos
(APRODEH)
Interviewee
Mario Rios, Responsible, Area de Derechos Economicos y
Sociales
Type of Development Work, as communicated by Interviewee
A national NGO advocating human rights through work with the government and marginalized populations
A national feminist organization in the promotion of women's health, sexual and reproductive rights
Centro de Investigacion y
Promocion Popular (CENDIPP)
Carmen Valverde, Directora
Ejecutiva
Centro de la Mujer Peruana Flora
Tristan
Centro de Promocion y Estudios en
Nutricion (CEPREN)
Fomenta de la Vida (FOVIDA)
Instituto de Educacion y Salud
(IES)
Instituto del Bien Comun
Oxfam America
Pathfinder International
Population Concern
Proyecto ReproSalud, Movimiento
Manuela Ramos
Red Nacional de Promocion de la mujer (the Red)
Blanca Fernandez, Responsible del Programa de Desarollo
A national NGO whose focus is primarily on rural women and their greater empowerment through education, health, rights, and marketization.
Nair Carrasco, Directora
Ejecutiva
Gladys Via, Coordinadora del
Proyecto por el Cuidado de
Nuestra Salud Sexual y
Reproductiva
A national NGO focusing on child and mother nutrition, especially in Lima. Research is complemented by promoting popular orgs.
A national NGO whose work covers agriculture, health, and education for beneficiaries at varying socio-economic levels
Alicia Quintana
Dick Smith
A smaller national NGO focussing on the health rights and awareness of children in urban and rural areas
A national NGO promoting the territorial rights and conservation concerns of indigenous peoples in the Amazon
Igidio Naveda
Milka Dinev, Representante para el Peru
An international NGO with primary emphasis on conservation work in rural regions and the development of professional rural NGOs
An international NGO (American) with a focus on reproductive an dsexual health rights of rural populations
Maria Kahn Segura,
Coordinadora Nacional, Peru
Edita Herrera, Presidenta
An international NGO (British) with a focus on reproductive an dsexual health rights of rural populations
Susana Moscoso, Sandra Villena
A USAID sponsored project within MMR to promote safer reproductive practices among poor women in the Amazon and Andes
A national network of professionals, organizations, and individuals working for feminist issues
Intermediary/Direct
Contact
Intermediary and Direct
Intermediary
Intermediary
Intermediary and Direct
Intermediary
Intermediary and Direct
Intermediary and Direct
Intermediary
Intermediary
Intermediary
Intermediary
Intermediary
Sociedad Peruana de Adolescencia y Juventud
Liliana La Rosa Huertas,
Directora Ejecutiva a national NGO working with youth and communities in Lima's poor districts
Intermediary and Direct
A History
SPAJ stood apart from other NGOs during the course of the interviews for its inclusive and mobilizing philosophy. I would posit, though, that SPAJ does not emerge solely from the very charismatic and innovative mind of La Rosa Huertas, but rather is reacting to a history of NGOs and development projects in Peru. To better understand La Rosa Huertas’ convictions and stance toward the government, participatory development, and
NGOs in Peru, it is beneficial to first explore how the current development situation emerged from the last thirty years. Although non-governmental organizations were present in Peru before the 1970s, it is safe to say that beginning in that decade such groups began to consciously organize around philosophical stances that advocated a more pro-active role in development and social change, and in opposition to the authoritarian military regime that took control of the Peruvian state.
In most of Latin America, NGOs emerged in reaction to repressive authoritarian governments that—in an attempt to gain more access and power over citizens’ lives—were also fairly interventionist in terms of development and service provision. This is true of Peru as well. The military coup d’etat that overthrew Peru’s oligarchic rule in
October 1968 was comparable to similar takeovers in Latin America in the 1960s and 70s and especially under Juan
Velasco the regime maintained a progressive and inclusive stance toward the general population and social welfare

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Page 4 of 18 initiatives (Carroll 185). Influenced by populist development strategies, the government attempted land reform projects, the nationalization of industry, and similar socialist reforms. Since much of its time and money went to debt servicing that financed such plans—in addition to the huge debt Peru already sustained—despite much rhetoric the military regime was incapable of carrying through on its goals (Wise 82-83).
While the authoritarian regime was unsuccessful in an attempt to forward Peru on the international economic stage or even in seriously affecting development implementation, the government was instrumental in mobilizing social movements at the grassroots level, though somewhat unwittingly. In an attempt to create a corporatist body that would mobilize in aid to state projects, the Velasco regime promoted neighborhood organizations and other community-led movements, which would send information upwards to governments while governments would send aid downwards. In her research on Lima’s squatter settlements, Susan Stokes notes that government organizations entered communities to mobilize them around issues of housing, health, and education, with dubious results especially because many communities had already formed grassroots groups around similar issues. Though unsuccessful, in organizing or disrupting the organization of communities the Velasco government’s intention was to build mass loyalty to the project of the state by incorporating the population into their development programs (Stokes 60-62).
What backfired for the Velasco government was the assumption that it could provide for all the demands that the poor organized themselves around, as well as their underestimation of the ability of poor communities to organize so well. If and when government organizations succeeded in mobilizing communities to demand aid from the state, it was not successful in creating loyal legions to the Velasco regime, precisely because the government was financially incapable of carrying through on all its intentions. In fact, the new interventionist arm of the state proved just as successful at mobilizing communities in protest of its appearance and ineffectiveness at the local level as in support of government endeavors.
“What happened in Peru was that the state lost control of the mobilization process it had unleashed, and the bureaucracy was soon overwhelmed by radical new demands. Popular classes found expression for their demands not in the schemes designed by state bureaucracies but in new leftist (and especially Maoist) political parties, unions, and federations that emerged in the early 1970s. In the race to meet the demands for revolutionary change being made by Peru’s popular sectors, it was all but impossible for the Peruvian military—a hierarchical, corporate, and authoritarian institution—to compete with openly anti-system opposition” (Mauceri 14).
By the 1970s, then, a sense of social consciousness was emerging even among the lowest economic and social sectors of society; communities were mobilizing and being mobilized to demand from an interventionist state basic rights and needs. That these needs remained unfulfilled only further enkindled communities to action.
In this milieu, NGOs “emerged as claim-making, alternative development organizations, resisting the state and supporting popular sectors” (Bebbington 1758). In addition to the more historic presence of the Church and
(foreign) groups committed to charity or economic and agricultural development initiatives, NGOs began forming as grassroots and community-based organizations with the goals of community mobilization in politicized causes.
They saw it as their duty to demand services and fair treatment from the state, using whatever means possible and most productive (Stokes 43, 72). Mass participation was seen as a key instrument in raising awareness at both the government and the local level; participation was an effective political device, but was also a way activists encouraged community members to no longer passively accept government handouts. With increased participation communities would begin to determine their own needs and mobilize for a solution. In practice, though, the rhetoric of participatory methodologies were not always successful. Eduardo Ballón, a member of one of Peru’s oldest NGOs, DESCO, recognizes participation in non-governmental development projects were used primarily in the cast of a mobilizing force, and not so much in the promotion of “gestión,” or democracy at a local level (Ballón
55).
Though military rule was authoritarian and essentially repressive, the worst repression and abuses of human rights in Peru can be attributed to the 80s, when a democratic government was unable to provide for basic needs of the population or appropriately counter the leftist (and somewhat popular) terrorist organization Sendero
Luminoso. Furthermore, while during the 70s the state took on an interventionist role in service provision, the new

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Page 5 of 18 democratic state of the 1980s adopted a neo-liberal stance to service provision, preferring to privatize resources and services, and out-source development project implementation (Wise 78). In the meantime, local governments in poor communities were transformed, as activists formerly involved in social movements and grassroots-based organizations entered government. Stokes observes that activists during the 70s, trained on the efficacy of protest and the power of community organization and mobilization, did not depart from those strategies while in office.
“Some municipal leaders used marches and other protest actions against the national government as a way of deflecting attention away from their own failure to improve conditions of poor people… But others who worked energetically for local improvements also continued to lead marches at the national health ministry, sit-ins at the office of the central water utility, and public demonstrations against national economic policy” (Stokes 53). When local governments of former squatter settlements had little recourse to attract government attention for their needs, public demonstrations were still vivid memories and viable solutions. In Peru the use of popular participation and mobilization can be seen as a recognized and appropriate option for a variety of institutions promoting civil society and development at any level.
The 1980s saw an explosion of NGOs in Peru 3 at the same time that the advantages of NGOs became apparent to those in the development world. As intermediary NGOs (INGOs) emerged globally in the 1980s, actors in the development world quickly recognized their capacity to flexibly and dependably carry out development goals with a participatory style. INGOs act as middlemen, connecting large (international) donor organizations that are far removed from populations with local groups that are constrained in their reach due to their very locality and oftentimes poverty. Though they also raised questions of accountability to base populations and were perhaps not as efficient or transparent in implementation as private businesses might be, development agencies preferred NGOs as their middle man in promoting development (Bebbington 1759). In the 80s, the state also turned to NGOs to become implementers of development projects, with the argument that organizations based in communities were more capable of accessing the poorest parts of the population effectively and efficiently.
The new agenda had two significant repercussions for the development of NGOs in Peru: first, it turned
NGO accountability away from its beneficiary population and more toward state or international development agencies that provided funding for projects. Second, by accepting this new role for NGOs proffered to them by the state, NGOs were accepting a change in assumptions and expectations of the state as service provider. “NGOs were initially hesitant to fill these spaces on the grounds that they would be freeing the state of its social responsibilities, and effectively endorsing the structural adjustment programs and the implicit rewriting of social contracts underlying state reforms—policies and social changes of which these NGOs were highly critical”
(Bebbington 1756). Indeed, the transition to democracy placed development NGOs in an extremely difficult position. They had emerged as an alternative to the state in the 1970s, opposed to the authoritarian regime and its top-down policy initiatives. Now the state was offering them control in implementing that policy, in lieu of the state doing so itself. While NGOs had built themselves on the supposition of an interventionist if authoritarian state, now they had to shift to deal with a democratically elected government with neoliberal tendencies.
Fujimori’s government continued the progression towards neoliberalism, privatizing industry and services and outsourcing development projects. However, in the 1992 move toward authoritarian rule, Fujimori also returned the Peruvian state to a situation similar to the military regime of the 1970s than the democratic advances of the 1980s. After the “Fujigolpe” that took over the state in an attempt to provide more social, political and economic stability to the nation, Fujimori’s neoliberal agenda remained the same, making it clear that the point of the coup was to ensure that policy initiatives would not be compromised or backlogged in a democratic space (cf.
Mauceri 1995 for an a broader analysis of the autogolpe’s origins and implications). Peruvian NGOs had to once again realign their stance toward the state after Fujimori’s takeover. By opposing the authoritarian government, did
NGOs implicitly declare sympathies with Leftist Sendero Luminoso, which menaced the nation both with its terrorist attacks and its ability to convert disadvantaged populations to its Marxist and violent philosophy? How could they offer alternatives to the state without releasing the state from its commitment to serving the poor?
3 Carroll estimates 350 INGOs working in Peru in the mid-1980s. This number does not include grassroots and other community-based organizations (186).

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Finally, as development agencies were also turning to NGOs to provide assistance to needy communities, how could NGOs maintain legitimacy and accountability to beneficiary populations?
Sociedad Peruana de Adolescencia y Juventud (SPAJ) – A Reactionary NGO
With this history in mind, we can turn again to SPAJ and its mission to promote alternative development strategies for youth and sexual health rights within Lima’s poorest communities.
4 Though Liliana La Rosa Huertas emphasizes the distinction between her organization and classic NGOs in Peru, the history of Peruvian NGOs would imply the opposite: that SPAJ emerges from and reacts to social conditions and movements that are distinctly Peruvian, and the form that the NGO takes is one that is informed by NGO attitudes in the 70s and 80s.
The grassroots-based qualities of La Rosa Huertas’ SPAJ seem remnants of the strong community mobilization that the military regime encouraged but could not control.
La Rosa Huertas describes her organization as a radical departure from the structure and methods employed by other NGOs in Peru and in Latin America in general; they emphasize a diverse grassroots membership and strong participation at all levels of project creation, implementation, and evaluation. As mentioned, one of SPAJ’s basic presumptions is that the leaders of a community are not the only ones who should take part in development activities. For example, women who involve themselves in Glass of Milk programs or other community groups are already aware of the needs of a community, and know where to go to respond to those needs. These women become leaders, if not officially, since their empowerment aids them in gaining greater access to resources; other community members turn to them for help, as do NGOs who wish to reach the less capable. SPAJ aims to incorporate more people than the already-mobilized in its programs and to widen the circle of empowered people within a community. La Rose Huertas identitfies two strategies for doing this.
First, SPAJ will sometimes work directly with communities. It is important to remember here that SPAJ’s work is in Lima—though SPAJ professionals may not be community members themselves, travel to development sites is not far, nor costly, so SPAJ can spend more time in the community than organizations whose work is in rural areas with poor access. In working with communities, La Rosa Huertas mentioned roundtable discussions and workshops as one way that SPAJ can join people in working for their own development. With youth, SPAJ will sometimes hold contests—such as dance competitions—that reward those who can overcome stereotypes and learn the dance styles of groups with whom they do not associate. The goal is to begin a conversation between people who would otherwise allow difference to cause separation, leaving commonalities unsaid and never capitalized on.
In organizing such events, La Rosa Huertas emphasizes that participants should be from broad backgrounds and come to the group with different needs. That way, individuals may join together to see common needs across demographic lines, and learn to see the ineffectiveness of “vertical programs” that treat effects rather than causes.
5
These comments are reminiscent of Stokes’ observations of what she terms radicals (as opposed to clients) in
Lima’s neighborhoods in the democratizing era. “Radical activists believed that participation should change the attitudes of people toward their social and political surroundings in addition to allowing the poor to acquire the material services their communities needed… These changes in consciousness also implied shedding an individualistic understanding of one’s problems, coming to see one’s personal difficulties as connected to broader social problems” (Stokes 73). SPAJ reflects this philosophy that emphasizes fomenting social movements over specific service delivery. It is another way we may see SPAJ and La Rosa Huertas’ goals for the organizing emerging from and reacting to Peru’s history. In both roundtable discussions on adult health and breakdancing contests for youth, SPAJ is uniting the historically marginalized to promote their shared needs.
The second approach to working with the community SPAJ takes is by going through community-based groups. La Rosa Huertas emphasized that any person may approach SPAJ with a project goal and indeed that
CBOs often came to them for help or guidance in implementing a project. SPAJ prefers this approach, since it
4 Information and descriptions in this section taken from an interview with La Rosa Huertas; August 2002
5 Another example was a program for tuberculosis that provided all the necessary drugs for fighting the disease without addressing causal factors. When people are joined together to speak about a number of programs with similar faults, what comes out of that discussion is demand for a program on adult health, which views the person and community as a whole, not by parts.

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Page 7 of 18 emphasizes the autonomy and independent decision-making of the CBO. Other times, SPAJ itself will help set up organizations within a community. La Rosa Huertas’ example drew from work in one of Lima’s pueblos jóvenes, where the organization had set up an alternative health post for high-risk adolescents in protest of poor treatment found in the government’s health post. In this effort, SPAJ’s effort was two-fold: raise awareness among the population about the services they might expect from government health posts and the integral role a health post may play in a community while demonstrating to the Ministry of Health a working alternative model. Hence SPAJ also does work in a community while working through other organizations, either ones that approach them or that they help to create.
6
In emphasizing the importance of consciousness-raising and mobilization for change among communities,
La Rosa Huertas notes this objective often puts SPAJ at odds with government-initiated programs. Notably, almost all of SPAJ’s staff comes from a government position, but she comments that this history only makes them more conscious that a centralized directive force in development work is contradictory to efforts of sustainability. Such comments certainly refer to the period of military control over Peru, when participatory action was most encouraged, but only in the limited sense of mobilizing groups to inform the government of needs and to create loyalty to the Velasco regime. Their stance toward the government is not always but frequently in opposition, since as La Rosa Huertas emphasizes SPAJ does not support all government policy initiatives in order that one beneficial aspect of those initiatives might be preserved. This attitude, though more specific and thorough a position toward the government than many NGOs take, also places SPAJ in constant contradiction with the government, since it is very unlikely that the state will ever fulfill all of SPAJ’s policy demands.
Even more important to SPAJ is building local movements that are able to take charge of politics at a local level, and from this position demand change from the national government (“y vinimos cada mes más consciente de que tener este poder central no te guarantiza que las cosas son sostanibles a nivel local… Entonces, nuestra elección de sostenibilidad es instalar políticas en el gobierno local. Por eso hablamos de cogestión social de las políticas locales”). The idea of building social cohesiveness as the solution to gaining more autonomy in one’s own development—and even effecting a better development strategy—also emerges from lessons Peruvian NGOs learned from an ineffective central government that could not answer to the needs of poor communities, or was too removed from them to offer viable solutions. The emphasis on entering politics at the community level resonates with Stokes’ observations of local governments during the 1980s: when democracy returned to Peru, communities recognized that local administrations still had little power to affect national policy through political routes, so local governments were used as bases for organization around the needs of the locality (Stokes 52).
When La Rosa Huertas emphasizes her organization’s uniqueness among “traditional” NGOs, she is comparing SPAJ to foreign development organizations or national groups whose ties with the government make them quasi-governmental organizations. However, in the sense that SPAJ has sprung directly from the unique circumstances that was Peruvian history over the last few decades, SPAJ is about as classic an NGO as we can imagine. Despite its self-declared radicalism and contrasts with other NGOs in Peru, SPAJ is actually a good starting point in a discussion on NGOs precisely because it exemplifies some of the classic qualities attributed to
NGOs in discussions on development: a grassroots base, alternative approaches to development, and an emphasis on pure democracy and equality. These characteristics, though not always reflected in the organizational structure of other NGOs in the same ways as it is in SPAJ, are in fact present or at least strived for--leaving some if not most of SPAJ’s uniqueness as an NGO to be somewhat imagined or created.
Population Concern: A British Development Organization in the Highlands of Peru
Leaving aside SPAJ for the moment, I turn now to Population Concern, an international NGO from
Britain, which works primarily with rural populations on issues of health, sexual, and reproductive rights for women
6 In a similar approach to working with CBOs, Oxfam America solicits applications for development projects from rural
CBOs, requiring that each group demonstrate its organization, internal democracy and previous success before awarding funds. If an organization is shown to be lacking, Oxfam will assist in capacitating the CBO in appropriate and successful management techniques. In its work, then Oxfam gives aid (in the form of money) to both those who are capable of carrying out development projects on their own and aid (in the form of assistance) to those who have not had opportunities to develop as an organization. These nuances will be discussed further.

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Page 8 of 18 and youth. A much larger organization than SPAJ, Population Concern in Lima is part of a hierarchy of offices that connect to Population Concern Andes and finally Population Concern International. Even at the scale of Lima, their office was much larger and more professionally oriented than many NGOs interviewed. I spoke with María
Kahn Segura, National Coordinator for Population Concern - Peru.
7
Clearly, the organization’s own history is much different than SPAJ’s, or any other national NGO that I interviewed. Population Concern was founded over two decades ago with the interest of alleviating poverty and stabilizing populations by promoting family planning and women’s awareness of their sexual and reproductive health rights (Population Concern website: About Us). They share a similar history with Pathfinder International, whose founder, Clarence Gamble of Procter & Gamble, it could be suggested had strong interests in promoting stabilized populations through increased access to and use of contraceptives around the world. Population Concern and Pathfinder International, then, grow out of a development history which has been criticized for promoting the economic interests of first-world donors and for the assumption that poverty stems from over-demand on resources. As Gita Sen notes, development agencies have historically viewed women as reproductive vessels; booming populations in the Third World were to be blamed for intense poverty, and women became the targets— knowingly or unknowingly—for “reproductive re-engineering” to harness the population over-production (Sen,
Gita 1994). Denoting this past to Pathfinder International and Population Concern are conjectures on my part; more research on their personal trajectories and historic perspectives on development is needed.
Regardless of the history from which these international NGOs might have sprung, we must note that today both organizations are well-aware of and avoid any essentializing rhetoric on women; their websites promote a holistic approach to women and development, including their rights to health, safety, education, and empowerment.
The projects they undertake with smaller NGOs on a local level stress the participation of community members to ensure more sustainable projects and developed—in the sense of empowered—communities. Kahn Segura also considers one of the objectives of Population Concern to be working with the government in improving and extending services for women in rural areas. In contrast to SPAJ’s oppositional stance toward the government,
Population Concern seeks to cooperate with government programs in an attempt to better them and affect policymaking.
8 Population Concern’s position as an outsider NGO, one which is not as closely bound up in Peru’s specific history, may offer it the advantages of a distance that does not require it to respond to past relationships between the government and NGOs. This is one way that Population Concern’s international and foreign status creates differences with national organizations like SPAJ—though ones that are not altogether problematic.
That Population Concern’s primary focus is on rural communities is another major difference from SPAJ.
Though Population Concern’s staff is Peruvian, they are also primarily Limenos; hence knowledge of a development site and the community is often rudimentary. For this reason, Population Concern like all other
NGOs interviewed comes to depend on CBOs to provide crucial links between the development organization and the beneficiary community. Kahn Segura discussed with me a specific project Population Concern was carrying out in Ayacucho, Peru, as part of Population Concern’s Andean Reproductive Health Initiative and implemented though local “counterparts.” These organizations work directly with communities and health posts to respond to the needs of adolescents and youth in rural and marginalized areas. The CBOs first convene interested students in fora at schools to discuss their health concerns, interests, and needs; they also worked with women of child-bearing age to determine their needs and preferences during pregnancy, and with fathers and older men whose sense of sexual taboo limited their ability to gather knowledge on the subject and caused them to curtail their wives’ and children’s participation in the workshops. Having gathered information from the community, Population Concern, their local counterparts, and health post professionals from the Ministry of Health develop and implement changes in the approach to sexual health awareness in the rural communities. As a concurrent goal, their work with the
Ministry of Health in this project emphasizes that it was the responsibility of the health post professionals to continue educating the population and sustaining the program; Population Concern and local NGOs aimed at
7 Information and descriptions in this section taken from an interview with Kahn Segura; July 2002
8 Proyecto 2000, a project sponsored by USAID and carried out by Pathfinder International jointly with Peru’s Ministry of
Health is one such program. (Proyecto 2000 website)

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Page 9 of 18 capacitating health professionals in carrying out respectful and open discussions with all members of the community in order to open lines of communication between these two social actors.
Population Concern was like most NGOs interviewed, especially those working in rural areas, in that they preferred to work with a local, counterpart organization, accompanying them through the process of participatory development; Population Concern, Pathfinder International, ReproSalud, Flora Tristán, Oxfam America and
FOVIDA—indeed the larger of the organizations I worked with—worked exclusively with local grassroots groups or small NGOs.
9 In this effort, organizations send out teams into localities to make connections with communitybased organizations with whom they would be willing to work on a specific development project. Other groups, such as SPAJ, IES, and sometimes Flora Tristán, encouraged community-based organizations to come to them with project proposals seeking funding or accompanied assistance in carrying out the project.
10 Finally, organizations like
CEPREN that were more intimately connected with communities in Lima worked directly with beneficiaries, or worked to organize beneficiaries into community-based organizations; CEPREN helped set up Glass of Milk programs and popular dining halls in poor communities in Lima.
11 After setting up a relationship with an organization, the NGOs work diligently in capacitating the community-based organization to carry out program initiatives as independently as possible and involved CBO members in all decision-making processes.
Each of the NGOs interviewed worked with a “counterpart” organization in some sense, and are most appropriately defined as “intermediary” NGOs (INGOs). Since they are removed from the community that they seek to benefit, and indeed acting as linkages between these communities and international donor agencies, INGOs build up a variety of relationships with local groups that help ensure their connections with local populations without having to be directly involved on a daily basis. Considering Peru’s historical context in which the interviewed development organizations work, as well as the descriptions of SPAJ and Population Concern that bookmark two —though certainly do not cover all—strategies toward implementing development alongside counterpart organizations, I now turn to a more careful consideration of INGOs and their role in development work. I argue that Peruvian INGOs—indispensable actors in the development world—are motivated to undertake development projects that promote consciousness-raising and behavioral changes; to this end they work with CBOs creating a mutually beneficial relationship in which the community communicates their development needs through the CBO to the INGO, while the INGO continues to capacitate local organizations to develop and lead development endeavors by themselves in the future.
In this discussion it is important to remember La Rosa Huertas’ comments on working with such organizations and their members: certainly, participants in CBOs of any nature are groups of women and men already mobilized around an issue and aware of the need to promote it. However, they can become gatekeepers between NGOs with development packages and less-empowered recipients of the program; when everyone arrives at the few community leaders, does everyone in the community truly benefit in more than a material form, such as handouts? Though there are a number of styles of forming and maintaining a relationship with CBOs—which we will explore further—does an inclusive and participatory approach to project implementation reach through and beyond grassroots groups or assistance programs, or does development only arrive at those who already know the pathways to access it? How do the NGOs interviewed work to ensure that project goals reach those that need them most? These are points I attempt to flesh out in the remaining discussion.
INGOs: Linkages Between Donors and the Grassroots
As we have seen in these few examples, in their role as bridge-builders and advocates intermediary NGOs prove crucial to current development work.
12 As mentioned earlier, in the early 1980s mainstream development
9 interviews with Kahn Segura, Milka Dinev, Susana Moscoso and Sandra Villena, Blanca Fernandez, Igidio Naveda, and Gladys Via, respectively; summer 2002.
10 Interviews with lA Rosa Huertas, Alicia Qunitana, and Blanca Fernandez, respectively; summer 2002.
11 Interview with Nair Carrasco; July 2002
12 One of the challenges on researching INGOs is precisely because they are not always termed “intermediary.” Mario Padrón, a Peruvian researcher and commenter on NGOs as they emerged in the late 1980s preferred the term non-governmental development organizations (NGDOs) (Padron 71, quoted in Alger 158) while Thomas Carroll’s Intermediary NGOs: The

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At the same time, INGOs are clearly middlemen in the development world, one more stop where money is siphoned off and not sent on to the beneficiaries; they are removed from communities and in their role as mentors to smaller organizations while answering to the goals of donor agencies they can promote top-down communication within the development industry. Further, though they are ostensibly entities that wish to promote greater enfranchisement and broader democracy, NGOs become very problematic in the decentralizing endeavors of states.
As private organizations and the site of the devolution of the state’s former responsibilities, the NGO can sometimes become an enclosure and division between common resources and the public (Ribot 30). The project for INGOs, then, is to find ways of ensuring a connection with communities (and a commitment to the ideology of social empowerment from which they emerged) while simultaneously answering the newer calls of the development world.
An INGO’s basic legitimacy among the community with which is works is through the CBO; a strong relationship with a local group or groups helps to ensure that development work is a community—and not a private business—endeavor. Most concisely put by Mario Padrón of DESCO-Perú, “Grassroots sectors and their organizations (GROs) have proved to be a necessary presence in any self-sustained development effort … if they are not present and interested in the project from its conception, such a cooperation should rather be called aid”
(Padron 69). Indeed, if an INGO does not have a CBO connection, they are simply performing more classic programs of development assistance. When the INGO is only capable of sending teams of two or three—as most of the interviewees did—to the site of development, the power of the development project and the capability of carrying it out to a successful finish lies mostly if not entirely with the local organization.
Yet as Padrón notes, a local or grassroots group needs to provide more than a space for the INGO to set up camp if its partnership is to be really productive and the project to be considered sustainable development. The challenge of such a partnership—in which clearly one organization is considered better capacitated for a job, more highly connected and knowledgeable—is maintaining a sense of equality and mutual learning. Historically NGOs termed their role in the development effort as one of asistencialismo or aid in the form of basic needs. NGOs provided as communities needed, a role reflecting the paternalism and clientelism rampant in the government, workforce and a highly classist society (Stokes 70-71). As theories of sustainable development—including consciousness-raising at the individual and community level—gained in popularity, the new role NGOs saw for themselves, and which NGOs in this study reiterated, was of acompanamiento or “supportive partnership” (Carroll
32). In this sense, INGOs act as knowledgeable guides who would help lead local NGOs to a new and better understanding of their roles in providing development. In other words, though the partnership is not equal per se, in their relationship with local groups INGOs are attempting to enable CBOs to take up a more pro-active stance which should promote communication and accountability from the bottom-up instead of the top-down.
Kahn Segura’s consideration of local NGOs as “counterpart organizations” goes a long way in emphasizing a symbiotic relationship rather than a hierarchy. Nevertheless, that Population Concern and similar organizations approached CBOs with a project in mind that the organization would help carry out, not help to develop, strongly
Supporting Link in Grassroots Development (1992) terms them grassroots support organizations (GSOs) and membership support organizations (MSOs). Carroll defines the first as directly involved with linking individuals and households—the smallest units of community organization—in development endeavors, while the second, MSOs, work to link up smaller membership organizations under it. While GSOs can be marked outsiders and their ability to faithfully united communities questioned, they can also be more democratic and incorporating, since an MSO has accountability limited to its members alone, and not to the entire community (Carroll 10-12). Though I find the terms GSO and MSO a useful and descriptive distinction in exploring the functions of development NGOs in the field, throughout this paper I will continue to use the umbrella term
INGOs, since most of the discussion will involve both types of organizations.

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Page 11 of 18 reinforces a continued sense of hierarchical structure between the two organizations. This is especially true when the INGO offers much needed funding or organizational capability that the CBO might not see otherwise; in such a situation the INGO would seem to hold all the cards. In contrast, the very reason that Oxfam and SPAJ emphasize that organizations come to them with project proposals is to assume a relationship in which the INGO is contracted to work with the CBO. In this instance, while the INGO may offer funding and advice to the project, it is at the behest of the community group and for their own project.
13
The strategy for working productively with local organizations that Oxfam and SPAJ undertake seems ideal in its approach to relationship-building with the CBO, while we can easily say that other INGOs play too domineering a role in determining how development is carried out. However, this line of thought forgets the situation in which CBOs in Peru and many other developing nations find themselves, i.e., they are idealistic, interested and willing participants in the development project, yet can be poorly organized and often lacking in basic resources. Indeed, organizations in the most destitute regions of Peru would be hard-pressed to make contact with
INGOs in Lima, if they were aware of the possibility of such a supportive relationship at all. The most organized, empowered (and probably not the poorest) communities gain access to the services that intermediary NGOs can provide. It then becomes the responsibility of the INGO to seek out communities in isolated and poor areas (cf.
Carroll 87). In this light, the roles that Population Concern et al. continue to undertake in identifying and capacitating communities are much needed in many situations, while the services SPAJ and Oxfam offer are appropriate to a different set of grassroots groups.
In working with CBOs, then, INGOs are striving to ensure that CBOs do reflect the grassroots, participatory democracy for which they are known, while also empowering them to take more control over development implementation at all levels. To this end the Pathfinder International interviewee, Milka Dinev, repeated often that her goal as director of Pathfinder International’s Peru office was to “close the door” of
Pathfinder in Peru. She would do this when she felt Peru’s national NGOs were capable, organized, and mobilized enough to take the project of development into their own hands.
14 Though Dinev tended toward persuasive rhetoric, it was clear that she considered her role to be one of capacitating Peruvian groups to no longer need
INGOs like Pathfinder International. Her statement raises interesting questions, though, of the state of development the whole nation needs to realize before community organizations in the poorest and most extreme communities are empowered and mobilized to no longer need connectors between themselves and donor agencies.
Viewed from this perspective, the martyr-like statement Dinev makes seems less threatening.
Furthermore, in celebrating CBOs and other grassroots organizations, we easily overlook the social nuances that occur at the community level. Though it is too broad a discussion for this paper, we must recognize that the
“community” is neither a clearly defined group nor an inherently egalitarian one. Indeed, one main reason INGOs work with CBOs is because communities are hard to define and delineate; it is assumed that CBOs know the population better, know where communities begin and end.
15 In addition, the personal ties CBO members have with their community should increase participation, social cohesion and mobilization around a specific project— more so than INGOs have any hope of doing. However, a person or group acting as representatives of a community or people in no way ensures that the representative always speaks the opinion of the group—or even in its best interest. Especially at sites of development, a number of different interests converge, and actors do not always share a common goal (Mazonde 77) nor can we be certain that decision-making that is local is necessarily community participative (Ribot 31).
13 This example is similar to a Peruvian INGO, CIPCA (Centro de Investigación y Promoción del Campesino) which Carroll cites. The organization was called into an area by a base organization to aid in organizing and staffing their health post.
Having first been called to the site, with a program clearly developed by the beneficiary group, CIPCA retained accountability to this organization from the start and could build on this relationship in future development projects (Carroll 86).
14 Interview with Milka Dinev; July 2002
15 Or it can be argued that INGOs and the development industry opt to work with CBOs since organizations help to make tangible a “community” which may not be there. The caveats in “organizing the organizations” and regarding CBOs as representative and inherently democratic organization are expressed in Mosse 2001 and Mehta 2000, to name a few.

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With this conditional understanding of the CBO in mind, I now turn briefly to a discussion of the
ReproSalud Project for an example of strategies INGOs use in making contact with organizations that are both capable of working in a development project and that stand to benefit from that partnership. A five-year project initiated and sponsored by USAID to promote women’s sexual and reproductive health needs, the ReproSalud project was awarded to Movimiento Manuela Ramos (MMR); it was given a five-year extension in 1999 (Coe 8). At the beginning of the project ReproSalud established a connection with rural communities by sending teams into villages to hold “contests” among various local organizations to take part is the project. The judging is on both a written application and production of a socio-drama that reflects community needs; in choosing the CBO,
ReproSalud teams emphasize the need for a commitment to both the community and to issues of women’s health.
The CBO should also demonstrate leadership ability (Coe 16). Though the selection is certainly skewed towards more highly organized groups (whose demographic make-up might not reflect that of the entire community and whose decisions might not mirror community needs) we must also note the ReproSalud project as USAID presented it to MMR has limited time and resources; as with many development projects, a highly capable CBO that is sure to carry out a successful project can often be chosen over CBOs that may reflect alternative community needs but need more assistance.
16
The members of the chosen CBO then take part in an “auto-diagnóstico” of women’s needs in the community. Notably, this group covers as wide a demographic spread as possible, but only members within the
CBO take part. The themes decided upon by members may or may not reflect the themes that USAID recognized as aims of the ReproSalud project (Coe 14)—a difference that should reflect on the autonomy and responsiveness of the project to its beneficiaries. When a main sub-project is determined, a steering committee is trained in organizational basics, such as management, administration, and accounting while another group—elected by
ReproSalud and including men, adolescents, and women from runner-up organizations—become community promoters on the determined issue and other topics of anatomy, health, and healthy relationships. After an evaluation period, a new sub-project is decided upon and the process is repeated several more times.
17 The third and final intermediate project goal for ReproSalud (with the ultimate project goal being increased use of health interventions for women) was to mobilize female CBO members in effective policy-making at the local level on issues of reproductive health (Coe 20). Once again noteworthy: CBO members are capacitated and mobilized for policy-making under the ReproSalud project; community women in general should be more capable as health consumers at project’s end.
A final important observation from the ReproSalud project: Though initially the project was to be implemented in the Amazon and the Andes of Peru, by 2001 USAID and MMR jointly decided to focus solely on the Andes. Though some health indicators from jungle regions like San Martín suggested that work was less needed there, other areas like Ucayali were too difficult to access and to track (populations are nomadic) making work at this site a poor investment (Coe 18). Hence despite the success of the ReproSalud project, its varying commitment to mobilizing larger groups outside the chosen CBO is striking, while its inability to reach the “poorest of the poor” is truly significant. Regardless of the format that development takes (participatory or no), the strong and democratic relations a CBO maintains at the grassroots level, or the idealism of the project: that INGOs can fall short of reaching the neediest demographic is a real shortcoming for INGOs and the structure within which they work.
18
16 I refer once again to Carroll’s cautions that NGOs are often unable to reach the poorest of the poor. This is yet another reason why NGOs cannot be expected to take the place of governments in ministering the basic needs of communities. While
NGOs are still reliant on donor funding, they will necessarily invest that money in parts of the population with the greatest likelihood of returning dividends. Also, again due to limited resources, NGOs begin to rely on a self-selecting process among the population, such that those individuals or groups who are “experienced, active, and willing to take risks”—La Rosa
Huertas’ empowered leaders—are included in a development program (Carroll 68). The “poorest of the poor” may not be able to afford the day of travel to the project site, may not be informed of it, or may not be able to afford the initial loss for a longer-term gain. This is where NGOs argue that governments should be providing services, since they are more able to take the financial loss that providing for the poorest of the poor entails.
17 Except where noted, summary of ReproSalud’s process taken from Coe 2001, pg 12.
18 In urging this for INGOs, I am not ignoring the stress placed on organizations that are dependent on outside funding meant for development projects, and less so research and development. See Carroll 64 for the difficulties INGOs face in

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Taking this into account, I’d like to move beyond that shortcoming and, in a final section, consider the impact participatory development outside the INGO/CBO relationship. How does the general population benefit from participatory rhetoric that, as we can see from the ReproSalud project, is not aimed fully at them?
Participation: Process and Results
As we have kept in mind all along, those who work in and participate with community-based organizations are community members with a basic level of empowerment, such that they know how to connect themselves with groups that can provide aid and help improve lives. When the partnership between INGOs and CBOs is a positive one, members of CBOs should also have a sense of increased empowerment and knowledge in knowing how to affect and even determine development in their community. Is the same true for the community in general, indeed those groups that are not already aware and empowered in regard to change and development in their community?
A number of interviewees noted that, just as CBOs from poor communities may have a hard time making contact with INGOs, in the same way community members who live far from community centers (and indeed may not associate themselves with that community) will find it difficult to advocate themselves as beneficiaries in development projects, though they need services as much if not more than fully incorporated community members.
Blanca Fernandez of Flora Tristán commented that a program teaching micro-enterprise skills along with rightsawareness to groups of rural women was challenged to reach women who lived far from town and could not afford travel time.
19 La Rosa Huertas recognized that members of hard-to-reach communities were often left behind in development, while stereotypical ideas that places them at the margins of society (such as ignorance, poverty, high pregnancy rates etc.) are further used to explain their absence in projects.
20 In recognizing these conflicts, and recognizing that development is hardly development if it does not benefit the most needy and in fact only reinforces unequal power structures, I argue that INGOs seek to incorporate a broader community into development projects through processes of evaluation and feedback carried out by CBOs. Participation by the community is used as a method of accountability in the process of implementing development, if not a mobilizing force in development endeavors from start to finish.
The ReproSalud project certainly reflects this approach: participation by the broader community only truly entered the development dialogue during monitoring and evaluation—and usually after the project was completed.
To some observers, monitoring the process of project implementation—seeking out feedback from participants,
NGO members and fieldworkers from the INGOs—helps keep communication open about the various objectives, understandings and commitments of different stakeholders. David Mosse emphasizes that the point of feedback is not to forecast or record outcomes but rather to advocate and facilitate a structure of communication between all parties so that the work of development—the “underlying relationship between information and power”—is transparent at all levels (Mosse 9, quote pg 26). In this sense we can view participation the way Carroll suggests it is used by INGOS, i.e. as both a process and a result (Carroll 78). In attempting to incorporate their communities into the process of development (at any level) INGOs seek to raise consciousness as a result. With greater community consciousness around an issue, INGOS and other development actors hope to see greater participation in the creation, implementation, and response to development projects in the future.
Other analysts reject this approach as obscuring power relations while not successfully promoting change.
In Paul Francis’s opinion, the uptake of participatory development at the World Bank and in the development industry in general denotes a dangerous slide from using the methods for community mobilization as originally intended by Paulo Freire and Robert Chambers to an emphasis on process that celebrates communication between various actors but no longer mobilizes actors in response to that communication (Francis 75). Participation looks good on paper, in other words, in mentioning consultations with beneficiaries and in measuring project goals. balancing the heavy investment of staff and time needed to research beneficiary communities with their awareness that such research is inherent for a successful and sustainable project of development.
19 Interview with Blanca Fernandez; July 2002.
20 Interview with La Rosa Huertas; August 2002.

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Including participation at the stage of evaluation need not threaten the outcome of a project (it is over or about to be over) and taking responses “into account” can have a number of superficial meanings.
21
But for a marginalized community, to whom development means the paternalism of past decades and handouts from governments, INGOs must first bring about participation as a result, before participation in the creation of development projects. This often means simply participation in the implementation process, which should increase community participation (and for that matter community awareness) as a result. While frustrations with participatory methods certainly ring true, and can be seen within interviewed organizations, we must also realize that many NGOs implement participatory methods for use in simpler project goals than inciting grand social movements; participation as a process becomes a pathway for more mobilized participation and social cohesiveness.
22 It would be unfair to overlook achieving this sort of participation among a wider community; though perhaps not the lofty goal that it was originally held up to be, it lays foundations for more revolutionary or to say the least empowered ways of dealing with development in the future.
Participation as a mobilizing force has been a historical goal, one that we can see reflected in Stokes observations of Lima and La Rosa Huertas’ calls for today. In some ways it seems to be the same idealistic rhetoric in both eras, with limited results.
23 But in addition to the stress on INGOs to provide the services of development—which can limit their ability to mobilize communities—it also becomes a question of whether populations can be mobilized without seeing those services first. Can we continue to argue for putting off of a revolution of participation in development until they are developed enough to do so? Or, are the words of La Rosa
Huertas more true, that basic services such as “food cannot replace being human, and poverty is a much larger issue than just not being able to eat. It’s something that has to do with lifestyle and living” (la comida no gasta por ser humano, la pobraza es un tema mucho mas grave que solo no comer. Es un tema que tiene que ver a la vividad)?
Conclusions
William Fisher notes that many anti-development theorists—some of whom view NGOs as the way to counteract the development industry in its search to draw countries into the project of development—see INGOs as “capable of transforming state and society” by giving voice to indigenous, alternative, and subjugated voices within the Third World (Fisher, William 444-45). In practice I noticed very few organizations with this explicit understanding of their role in affecting the development community; notably only SPAJ, our constant reference point for radical approaches to development, spoke repeatedly of promoting voices that were ignored or not heard within civil society. All other organizations did promote community mobilization, but specifically around the issue they were advocating, such as health or basic rights. INGOs are interested in creating a community that demands more of its government while not implying an overhaul of all structures in society; the voices that would be heard would be voices capacitated by the NGOs to challenge authority along appropriate pathways, and less so voices of indigenous or marginalized dissent towards unequal structures in society at large. Though this is certainly not to minimize the importance of this first goal (to imply that people should not demand their rights through recognized civil structures—even those balanced against them—would do them a greater injustice than the structures themselves) we must recognize that INGO development strategies are predominantly not working toward a revolution. They are attempting development that incorporates people and capacitates them to survive within a deep imbalance of power.
And that sometimes even enlightened NGOs cannot escape that very imbalance. “No institution can be divorced form the wider context in which it operates and from the links that develop over time between actors and
21 Another argument is that participatory discourses are utilized in development in the same way they are in managerial contexts. They give the“ ‘sense’ and warm emotional pull of participation without its substance, and are thus an attempt to placate those without power and obscure the real levers of power inherent in the social relations of global capitalism.” (Taylor
125)
22 For development organizations are not looking to affect greater participation in development projects alone, but rather increased democracy on a larger social scale as well.
23 In this sense I agree with Bejár and Oakley, who are frustrated that NGOs, especially in Latin America, have changed little conceptually since the 1960s and 70s (98).

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Page 15 of 18 organizations in the same area” (Biggs 41). As mentioned, an INGO’s strategy of accompaniment can quickly turn into paternalism or clientelism, especially when Peruvian society is highly stratified and conducive to unequal relationship. Community- and grassroots-based organizations, as the hopeful successors to an INGO’s role in the development world, can often reflect imbalances of power within a community. One could easily imagine a community group mobilized to, for example, gain better access to fresh water without attempting to include, and in fact consciously excluding, other members of the community. Or, a community organization with the best interests in mind could easily leave out the most marginalized and forgotten in the population, because they are hard to reach, hard to depend on, or precisely forgotten. Though it partly rests upon the shoulders of the INGO to choose appropriate counterparts and work with them to improve community reach and implementation methods, there will always remain such patterns of inequality replicated at a small scale level; in considering the ability of INGOs to perform their development goals, these structures of inequality that run throughout society have a deep impact.
Peru’s INGOs recognize that the development industry is far from perfect; woven into interviews of development projects, goals and procedures were a great number of complaints and wishes for a different approach to development than the one offered them. Yet these INGOs opt for the pragmatic solution of working with what is possible, working within the structure to emphasize the ideologies of community mobilization and individual empowerment that began a grassroots-based NGO movement decades ago. Cynics could well say that in this pragmatism INGOs also opt for what keeps them in business, since idealists—no matter how popular among the poor—do not earn the big bucks and recognition from USAID. Nevertheless, in keeping themselves going INGOs also continue to provide for the needs and rights of innumerable poor people, without which popular mass movements would not be fathomable. It’s a trade-off, no doubt, but perhaps we could also imagine these INGOs laying the framework for future movements; referencing William Fisher’s observations that NGOs are constantly forming around new issues and then dying out, “it may be inappropriate to regard the fluidity of the NGO field as a weakness or the impermanence of any given NGO as a failure. Rather, we may look for permanence in the rebellious process from which many NGOs emerge and within which some NGOs remain engaged. NGOs and social movements may come and go, but the space created in their passing may contribute to new activism that builds up after them” (Fisher 459). That (I)NGOs continue to raise consciousness, if not action, in spite of a number of challenges from all fronts need not be considered a problem but rather a positive sign that such work continues. Could it be (could it be denied) that INGOs in their work—pushing the limits of a structure as given to them while also keeping that structure upright—are also facilitating a slow and steady transformation?

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Interviews
Carrasco Sanez, Nair; Directora Ejecutiva. Centro de Promocion y Estudios en Nutricion (CEPREN). Interviewed in July 2002.
Dinev, Milka; Representante para el Peru. Pathfinder International. Interviewed in July 2002.
Fernandez, Blanca; Responsible del Programa de Desarrollo. Centro de la Mujer Peruana Flora Tristan.
Interviewed in July 2002.
Herrera Calle, Edita; Presidenta. Red Nacional de Promocion de la Mujer. Interviewed in August 2002.
Kahn Segura, Maria; Coordinadora Nacional – Peru. Population Concern. Interviewed in July 2002.
La Rosa Huertas, Liliana; Directora Ejecutiva. Sociedad Peruana de Adolescencia y Juventud (SPAJ). Interviewed in August 2002.
Moscoso, Susana and Sandra Villena; positions uncertain. Proyecto ReproSalud with Movimiento Manuela Ramos
(MMR). Interviewed in August 2002.
Naveda, Igidio; position uncertain. Oxfam America. Interviewed in September 2002.
Quintana, Alicia; position uncertain. Instituto de Educacion y Salud. Interviewed in July 2002.
Rios, Mario; Responsible, Area de Derechos Economicos y Sociales. Asociacion Pro-Derechos Humanos
(APRODEH). Interviewed in July 2002.
Smith, Dick; position uncertain. Instituto del Bien Comun. Interviewed in August 2002.
Valverde Gargarban, Carmen; Directora Ejecutiva. Centro de Investigacion y Promocion Popular (CENDIPP).
Interviewed in August 2002.
Via, Gladys; Coordinadora del Proyecto por el Cuidado de Nuestra Salud Sexual y Reproductiva. Fomenta de la
Vida (FOVIDA). Interviewed in August 2002.