Powerlessness, marginality, and dispossession are found in all corners of the world. The aim of this book is to enable facilitators from inside, as well as outside, communities to empower those people who are frequently omitted from the decision-making process. The book explores participatory approaches to development and offers innovative, collaborative tools for working with local groups and communities. The tools described here, are sensitive to cultural and social differences, and have been designed to increase the capacities of local communities, NGOs, and public sector agencies by integrating applied and analytical methods for consciousness-raising, data-gathering, community decision-making, advocacy and development activities. The book focuses on participatory capacity-building in ways that address the practical needs and strategic interests of the disadvantaged and disempowered, and it pays particular attention to gender issues. Other issues examined by this book include how differences in class, ethnicity, race, caste, religion, age and status may also lead to the "politics of exclusion" that this book aims to avoid. In addition to being a tool book, the contributors also address some of the issues raised through working in a participatory way, such as: the ends and means of participation, uneven relations of power among participants, temporal context, spatial scale, and the array of organizations involved.