Funding is...a matter of collective experimentation – and even of historical creation or invention.”

This quote – from Brazilian academic and activist Marcelo Lopez de Souza – sums up one of the key lessons we’ve learnt from working with a diverse range of community development practitioners and academics from across the globe who are grappling with the pitfalls and possibilities of using different funding models: there are no easy answers to the dilemmas associated with resourcing egalitarian social and economic change. Instead we have to name and deal with the complex ways in which power operates through different funding arrangements, and experiment with new ways of generating resources while holding firm to the principles of participatory democracy.

Throughout history, community-based organisations and social movements have served as a seedbed for popular democracy, egalitarian change, and social transformation. From the workers co-operative movements of the 19th century to the Zapatistas of today, community-based struggles have been crucial to building democratic institutions and creating new forms of democratic life. A healthy participatory democracy relies on forms of community development that support effective mobilisation at the local level and encourage advanced capacities for democratic decision making and critical thinking.

Greek and North Macedonian Prime Ministers Pose For Historic Selfie After End To 30-Year-Long Name Dispute

Skopje, Apr. 3.– For the first time since Greece’s northern neighbor became independent in 1991, the Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras visited the newly renamed North Macedonia on Tuesday, April 2. He stood smiling next to the Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev for a selfie outside government buildings, sealing a moment that appears to mark their improved relations.

“I met my friend and colleague Alexis Tsipras. First Prime Minister of Greece to visit the North Macedonia. A truly historic day,” wrote Zaev on Twitter beneath a photo of the two leaders embracing outside a government building.