The Barefoot Guide to Exploring the Real Work of Social Change [Paperback]

This is a practical, do-it-yourself guide for leaders and facilitators wanting to help organizations to function and to develop in more healthy, humane and effective ways as they strive to make their contributions to a more humane society. The guide includes tried and tested concepts, approaches, stories and activities. Its purpose is to help stimulate and enrich the practice of anyone supporting organizations and social movements in their challenges of working, learning, growing and changing to meet the needs of our complex world. Although it is aimed at leaders and facilitators of civil society organizations, this manual will be useful to anyone interested in fostering healthy human organization in any sphere of life. In this book the authors offer a perspective on why organizations exist, the real roles they play, and on the importance of supporting the sovereignty of local organizations and social movements for meaningful social change. The manual provides some tools for reading organizations, including how organizations tend to move through various phases of development, how we might facilitate change and the challenges we face in implementing or sustaining change.
The Barefoot Guidesare an important reference for our international students in development studies. The Barefoot Guidesare chock-full of practical wisdom.