Just and Lasting Change: When Communities Own Their Futures - Softcover

This book is both a description and a prescription: a description of some such communities, and the process through which they achieved enviable health levels, as well as a prescription for other societies to follow suit... This is the one book I would unhesitatingly recommend to anyone interested in underdevelopment and health.

This book is a 'must-read' for those seeking to carry out or to understand true change in health equity and health improvement. This book shows us the real potential of honest partnerships between communities, governments, and technical experts. With an unmatched global reach and breadth of examples, from Appalachia to the Tibetan high plateau, the Taylors have laid out for the reader both the complexity and the underlying simplicity of principle that enables us to approach health from a systems perspective. Nurturing these resonant and self-reinforcing systems, rather than filling out the static prescriptions of past top-down development efforts, can put us on the path to a healthy world. Many of us with experience in development are scared of the 'do-gooder' syndrome which frequently lacks a sustainability and growth component. Just and Lasting Change, however, makes a unique contribution to the field by detailing how a continuous empowerment process of skill and will can realize the potential for cumulative growth in development programs.

I know of no one else in the world who has the breadth and depth of experience in international development work as Carl Taylor. In Just and Lasting Change, he and Daniel Taylor-Ide offer a perceptive analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of current development efforts and, in their SEED-SCALE model, a practical guide for those engaged in this kind of work today and a highly relevant approach to these problems in this age of globalization.

This book describes in detail a concept of community development that is not only exciting but eminently practical and capable of achieving positive results. The SEED-SCALE model for international development presented in Just and Lasting Change is based on the need for local consensus and cooperation, recognizing that when community residents, government officials, and outside experts work together, they can create the proper environment for sustainable development. Applicable to any community where growth has been lagging, whether in the developing or the developed world, SEED-SCALE has been repeatedly tested and proven successful. In spelling out so succinctly the manner in which community development can be stimulated through the SEED-SCALE concept, this book makes a valuable contribution to the literature on sustainable development.

Just and Lasting Change presents how to transform communities rapidly and inlocally appropriate ways. Daniel Taylor-Ide and Carl Taylor have been present at key events and worked with key thinkers in dealing with the large forces of inequity, environmental change, and globalization. The approach they have synthesized builds on what has worked over the last century―and can now be implemented rapidly and cost-effectively in many parts of the world. It relies on a three-way partnership of "bottom-up" initiatives from the community level, "top-down" support from government agencies, and "outside-in" ingenuity and objectivity from experts. Based on both a diverse range of case studies―from the earliest attempts to promote social development in India a century ago to current efforts in Tibet, the Peruvian Andes, China, and the American Southwest―and engaging personal experiences, this book describes, step-by-step, how SEED-SCALE can be effectively implemented.

With contributions from leading international experts in community-based development and public health, Just and Lasting Change offers a hopeful description of how people have made a difference in diverse communities around the world and a practical, accessible handbook for those trying to improve the quality of life in underdeveloped communities everywhere.