Publications and Resources
Southern Voices Strategy 2023-2028
Summary
Despite the mainstreaming of participatory approaches to achieve sustainable development objectives, for most, the idea of being a citizen with rights and an influential voice to demand and exercise those rights, is far from being a reality. Instead, billions still find themselves excluded from decisions that affect their lives. Their common experience is that if they are consulted, they are often not listened to. If they are listened to, they are not heard. If their voices are heard, then they are rarely acted upon. And if they are asked to participate, it is often on others terms, and about issues which may not be their own priorities to address.
Furthermore, it seems that the issues which people are least likely to be able to have a say in changing, are precisely those issues which produce and reproduce this lack of voice – entrenched power relations, inequality, exclusion, and prejudices. A lack of say about our own lives is a particularly damaging form of poverty. We have all experienced it at some point, and know how it feels when others control our lives and our environment without our consent - we can feel ignored, worthless, helpless, apathetic… as if we don’t count.
At Southern Voices, we believe that everyone counts. And we strive to ensure that everyone does in very real and practical ways. Our 2023-2028 strategic plan - ‘Including the Excluded’ - sets out our road map for making more people feel that they count. We shall do this through carrying out activities to build both civil society and government capacity to voice their aspirations and listen to others, and act; we shall advocate for people’s right to participate and help develop more participatory procedures and policies for this to occur. We shall broaden the spheres in which people have a say beyond projects and political elections. And we shall try to build mechanisms which encourage mutual trust and respect between government and civil society, the North and South – so everyone feels, that everyone counts.
To bring coherence to our strategy we have developed three key areas of focus that will help us facilitate inclusion, social justice and democratization
Capacity building of communities, civil society, the private sector and government towards inclusion, social justice, and democratization. Every capacity building is a process to unfold the power to change within the individuals and institutions. There is due emphasis on self-learning, discovery, learning by doing and ensures that is grounded in reality and is practical.
Influencing development partners and donors by using various dissemination platforms like paper publications and presence at multiple roundtables, conferences and other forums. The focus will be on innovative research engagements that will demystify participation with greater granularity, scale up the use of participatory approaches for a more equitable and sustainable development
and also support other partners to do the same.
Partnership building to strengthen mechanisms for effective and efficient communication and collaboration between communities, civil society, the private sector and governments and pursue co-creation of knowledge with communities. This will deepen research engagements as well as direct interventions and facilitate the development of an eco-system that promotes inclusiveness and participation.