3: Power

e: partnership

The formation of associations by rural communities forces them to clarify issues, and to learn how to access power at the appropriate level. Rural communities are often isolated and in competition with each other, which mitigates against effective association between them.

Pan-community alliances can help gain external funding; build new models; take greater political action; help retain ownership of an association or issue, and enable larger-scale collective action.

Schools often make good places to initiate partnership, having a permanent presence in the community; being very aware that they operate within a local context of governance, families and society; and being future-outcome oriented.

Partnerships can be inside a community - between various factions of a community, or can be made with outside institutions or actors.

Some issues about partnership that came up are:

• partners are colleagues, not clients
• partnerships are horizontal processes - people work with each other across a community. There are structural constraints on this.
• partnerships usually also involve vertical processes - integrating institutions within a sector [and beyond the local]
• all partners must invest something in the process, including the local community which initiated it
• formal institutions can be tasked with making formal (financial) contributions
• partnerships contribute critical mass to programmes
• partnerships involve changing cultures, culture shifts