This volume, based on fieldwork by the Inter-American Foundation, examines whether grassroots activities are more efficient and effective in implementing development than conventional development programs. Included are oral histories of participants in seven different IAF-supported organizations that vary widely in purpose, membership, structure, and geographic distribution. Grassroots Development in Latin America & the Caribbean shows that impoverished people will use rural credit and other resources in ways not anticipated by development planners, and that these recipients often know how to make more efficient use of aid than the planners do. It concludes that innovative methods of development are best left not to government agencies, but to the people who will carry them out and who will ultimately gain or lose from the outcome. Read Less