1.0 SOME READING MATERIAL

1. Extracts from "Entrepreneurial Capacitation with Large GrouPs : Response to the Unemployment Crisis caused by Technological Progress"

Keynote speech at the Manchester Conference of 23rd March 1998 "Learning from Brazil" published in Manchester Monographs 38, 1999.

ARTICLE BY DE MORAIS

2.Personal note dated 3rd April 2001 from Prof. Raff Carmen of the University of Manchester

WHAT IS NEEDED ON TOP OF (FREIRE'S) CRITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS (CONCIENTIZATION - CONSCIENTIZACAO IN PORTUGUESE - WHICH "MARCHES PEOPLE UP THE HILL, ONLY TO MARCH THEM DOWN AGAIN" OR GETS THEM EMBROILED IN POLITICAL PROTEST/GUERILLA WAR - RE: BERGER 'PYRAMIDS OF SACRIFICE')- IS ORGANIZATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS (FOLLOWED BY ENTREPRENEURIAL LITERACY). IN THE SAME WAY AS, ONCE YOU HAVE LEARNED TO RIDE A BIKE, YOU WILL NEVER FORGET IT, SO ENTREPRENEURIAL LITERACY IS LEARNED (AND NEVER FORGOTTEN) INSIDE A METHOD -- (ORIGINATING IN THE THIRD WORLD, NOT WITH THE 'MASTERS OF DEVELOPMENT AND MANAGEMENT) -- WHICH WE REFER TO AS THE 'ORGANIZATION WORKSHOP'(OW)(1) - /..../ IF, INDEED, A MODEL DOES NOT START ON THE BASIS OF 'MASS CAPACITATION' I HAVE GRAVE DOUBTS WHETHER IT EVER CAN HAVE ANY HOPE OF TAKING OFF./..../

ORGANIZATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS (AND ENTREPRENEURIAL LITERACY) CAN INDEED NOT BE ACHIEVED MERELY BY 'MAKING PEOPLE AWARE', NOR BY SIMULATION EXERCISES, NOR EVEN LESS BY DINT OF VERBAL ("HUMAN RESOURCES") 'TRAINING' OR 'CAPACITATION BUILDING' MODULES, ALL BASED ON AMERICAN/EUROPEAN 'SMALL GROUP' SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY. WHAT WE ARE DEALING WITH IS LARGE GROUPS, MASSIVE GROUPS OF PEOPLE. WHAT IS REVOLUTIONARY IN DE MORAIS' (NOT FREIRE'S NB) 'CAPACITATION' (RE: CAPACITACAO IN PORTUGUESE) IS THAT IT IS NOT THE TRAINER, THE INTERVENOR OR THE COMMUNICATOR WHO TRANSFERS THE ORGANIZATION SKILL, BUT THAT IT IS "THE OBJECT THAT TEACHES" (OBJECTIVE ACTIVITY OR 'CAPACITATION')

'CAPACITATION', WHICH IS A CONCEPT AND A PRACTICE WHICH ORIGINATES IN THE SECOND WORLD (RE: VYGOTSKY, LEONT'EV, LURIA) AND WAS PUT IN PRACTICE IN THE THIRD WORLD(RE: CLODOMIR SANTOS DE MORAIS) IS SO GENERICALLY DIFFERENT FROM ALL OTHER FORMS OF 'TEACHING', 'TRAINING', 'INSTRUCTION', 'SIMULATION LEARNING' OR 'CAPACITYBUILDING' THAT THERE IS NOT EVEN A WORD FOR IT IN ENGLISH (NOR IN DUTCH, GERMAN, FRENCH, JAPANESE, FOR THAT MATTER - THERE IS IN RUSSIAN, THOUGH: DYAETEL'NOST - THERE IS A LOT TO BE LEARNED FROM THE SECOND WORLD, AS WELL AS FROM THE THIRD RE: CARMEN & LABRA "LEARNING FROM BRAZIL" 1999)

3. ERAZO BENJAMIN - "SACKED AGRICULTURAL WORKERS TAKE ON THE MULTINATIONALS IN HONDURAS"

(The workshop)

17,400 campesinos in total attended the capacitation Workshops, representing 39% of all the members or heads of household of the new land settlements which existed in 1976 (44,700 families in total. This demonstrates that it is entirely feasible to apply the method on a massive scale. On the other hand, such a massive cover by the method was possible only because participation in the OW learning events does not require preparatory schooling or a minimum level of literacy (7) After all, to organize oneself for survival does not require much more than the need to do so, and having an idea on how to put to the best advantage scarce resources(8). An intense level of national as well as international (Latin America) interest and participation in the workshops was noted on the part of employees, students and public sector officials, involving, in all, more than 450 persons. But the principal emphasis of this form of formation of adults was on the capacitation of the capacitators in the method. This formation goes to the roots of the workshop and demands that one experiences it in practice; this, alone, will allow a proper, experiential knowledge of how it works. In this way 300 persons were trained on behalf of National Agrarian Institute (INA) of whom a quarter came to occupy positions of direct responsability in the capacitation of the campesinos. Eventually 500 persons in total were appointed.

(The OW and the Private Sector)

By 1976 there was a marked slowing down in the Agrarian Reform process. But, at the same time, there was also a decline in the rate of occupancy of new land; land settlement nevertheless remained main arm of INA strategy, until the beginning of the eighties, which meant that the methodology remained in use, albeit not on a massive scale as before. This also meant that the method was able amply to demonstrate what it was capable of. As from 1977 a start was made with transferring the method to the private sector. There it was used principally as a working model in the development and strengthening of enterprises, cooperatives and peasant groups. This happened principally in two ways: through the new practices the personnel trained on behalf of INA brought to other institutions, and by the method being adopted as an institutional practice. A leading institution in the application of the method was the Honduran Institute for Rural Development (IHDER), which first concentrated its technical training methods on the enterprises,groups and cooperatives of the Atlantic region, the export crop producing zone of Honduras. This lasted from 1978 to 1982.

(Strengthening of group managment)

Both public and private sector capacitation initiatives in Honduras were concentrated in the Atlantic region, where the communal settlements consisted of an average of 25 peasants per enterprise, with a person-to-land ratio of 6 hectares, concentrated in relatively compact zones (of 15 or more settlements each) with a high agricultural potential which allowed them to become bases for second-degree organizations, such as Choloma, Guanchias, San Manuel, Guyamas, Lean, M£sica, Jutiapa, Isletas and Bajo Aguan.(9) These enterprises specialized in export of agro-industrial produce and came to represent a sizeable section of the total land under cultivation in the country. This provided the objective conditions for enriching the organizational expertise of simple agricultural hand labour in coping with production processes of far higher complexity than they were typically accustomed to in their former peasant environment. Another important dimension was the ownership in common of a number of indivisible resources held in common (common resource pool) which implied the need to organize along the type of democratic principles prevailing businesses held in common. This in turn gave rise to an important inversion in the way people learn management methods. The Workshop became wellspring and basis of the process; it also led to a more selective training of administrative cadres and of technicians competent in Rural Development promotion matters. The about turns in the way productive capital is structured that were realized in those zones represent the most salient features brought about in the course of the Agrarian Reform and possibly represent most important achievements, on a national level, in the 1970's.Of these three zones, three managed to develop themselves: Guanchias, Guyamas and Bajo Aguan. Of those three, Guyamas was without doubt the most successful and noted for its innovations in terms of capacitation for conditions of collective ownership. We will come back on this later.

(The 'Centre' Workshops)

As we have seen,'centre' workshops played an important role in Honduras. They were responsible for the formation of cadres for the implementation of collectively managed enterprises. Most of those taking part in the centre workshops were ordinary peasants, and they were joined by experts and functionaries of the national public sector, the international development organizations and reesentatives from other countries in Latin America. The results of those centre wrokshops were less well documented, mainly because doing so was a massive enterprise. But we can venture the following hypotheses concerning the graduates of the workshops:

-Where participating peasants came from an enterprise that enjoyed some form of field assistance, this enterprise was intended to become a support base for others, which, in most of the cases, was what actually happened.

-Where campesinos came from enterprises or settlements that did not benefit from any form of support, their principal objective was to improve the organizational management skills of their own enterprise. However, some factors did not seem to corresond with the hypothesis. In the case of technical personnel, they made use of the workshops in a variety of ways:

-Where technicians were already involved in capacitation work, the experience helped them to deepen their knowledge of the method in a practical manner so they were able to better reproduce it for the benfit of others later. At a later stage they would add to this a better knowledge about the role of the workshop director and the different phases through which the director had to accompany the group.

-In the case of experts not attached to national institutions or belonging to national institutions not involved in development projects, the main benefit for them consisted in gaining inside knowledge of the method and in finding ways and means of applying it. In Central America the method was thus applied in many instances, based on the Honduras experience, for example in a number of cooperative contexts or in land settlement initiatives.

2.0 BIBLIOGRAPHY

The following list is reproduced from pages 218-222 of Carmen, Raff and Sobrado, Miguel (2000) A FUTURE FOR THE EXCLUDED Zed Books London, ISBN 1 85649 703 8 with the kind permission of the authors and copyright holders

COMPLETE MODEL PROJECT

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY IN ENGLISH

SOMMAIRE EXECUTIVE EN FRANCAIS

THE MICRO FINANCE ASPECTS

THE WATER SUPPLY ASPECTS

INFORMATION NEEDED TO PREPARE PROJECT APPLICATION

INFORMATIONS NECESSAIRES A LA REDACTION D'UNE APPLICATION AUX TERMES DU PROJET EN FRANCAIS