In Touch l RCPLA Network 221
in March and The pulse of Egypt’s revolt,
edited by Mariz Tadros, in December.
Recent working papers from the team
include Women’s empowerment revisited:
from individual to collective power among
the export sector workers of Bangladesh by
Naomi Hossain, and Shifting power?
Assessing the impact of transparency and
accountability initiatives by Rosie
McGee and John Gaventa.
n More information is available at:
www.ids.ac.uk/go/bookshop.
October 2012 at a side event at the
Convention on Biodiversity’s 11th
Conference of Parties in Hyderabad,
India. We hope to be able to continue to
launch and promote future issues in this
way, and establish ongoing informal
learning networks to share ideas and
lessons from articles published in PLA.
Team members
The team has welcomed new member
Jerker Edstrom who works on
masculinities, HIV and AIDS, and
returning member Jas Vaghadia. We are
also pleased to have Naomi Vernon as
part of the team, working on CommunityLed Total Sanitation. After many years
with the team, we are sad to say goodbye
to Georgina Powell-Stevens who has
moved on to work on a major new project
elsewhere in IDS: we wish her well.
n The above are just a few highlights from
the team’s work – for more information
please see: www.ids.ac.uk org
Sign up for our blog:
participationpower.wordpress.com
Email J.Stevens@ids.ac.uk
News from the European Region:
update from IIED
Launching PLA
As mentioned in the Editorial, IIED held
a successful launch of PLA 64: Young
citizens: youth and participatory
governance in Africa at our new offices in
Gray’s Inn Road, following the launch of
PLA 63: How wide are the ripples? From
local participation to international
organisational learning a few months’
earlier, which had been co-organised with
the Organisational Learning Network
(OLN).1 PLA 65 will be launched in
Panel on food security in Africa
The Pastoral and Environmental
Network in the Horn of Africa (PENHA),
in partnership with IIED, launched the
Food We Want – Sustainable, Local, Fair
project at IIED’s offices in March. The
event commenced with a discussion on
Food Security in Africa: Critical Issues for
Small Scale Producers led by three
panelists: Michel Pimbert from the
Agroecology and Food Sovereignty team
at IIED, Micheline Ravololonarisoa,
former Head of the Africa section of the
United Nations Development Fund for
Women (now UN Women), and William
Lume, Director of the Centre for InterAfrican Relations (CEFIAR), based in
London. Both Michel Pimbert and
Micheline Ravolonarisoa stressed that the
majority of farmers in Africa are women,
and that there is increasing participation
by women in decision-making relating to
agricultural practices. Michel Pimbert put
forward the framework of food
sovereignty and an agricultural
production system that mirrors natural
cycles of production as a sustainable
model, and William Lume gave some
historical background to the food security
issue in Africa. The panel discussion
ended with a question and answer
session, followed by a presentation on the
project itself by PENHA staff.
1 See: www.bond.org.uk/pages/organisational-learning-network.html