1. Collaboration: decision making; identifying problems; formulating alternative planning activities

2. Execution: implementation; in carrying out activities; managing and operating programs/events/projects

3. Equality: economic, social, political or other benefits individually or collectively

4. Evaluation: feedback; making adjustments; partaking in efforts of growth and change

Remember in school how they always used to tell us to be “active listeners,” that we had to be “engaged” and open to learning. Participating in class extended beyond doing the bare minimum of facing forward, answering a question when called on, or doing your homework; it was a creative process—participation was taking an active role in shaping and forming the life of the class room by contributing your knowledge and opinions to the collective mind of the class.

If this is the case, then why is that we cannot uphold the same standards globally in the context of developing countries? We western first-worlders see ourselves as proctors to peoples and nations that are “less fortunate” or who seem to have gotten stuck between the cracks of modernization. With global networking—and no doubt, marketing—we are becoming more unified in our efforts to aid one another into a state of development. Now, the level of interconnectivity we have reached makes it so that the weakness of any one node is no longer isolated, but can drastically affect the progress of several other nodes that share ties with it.

Yet still, even with all our efforts of crusade, all the cash we have guzzled into Africa, Southeast Asia, and South America, these countries seem in no better conditions than they were decades ago—in fact, many of the inhabiting countries are progressively doing worse. In modern day we are allegedly in the hindsight of the failure that ensue neoliberal international policie, which attempt to completely re-route the structures of developing nations to resemble those of the modern west, using capital finance as incentive. Although, the rather recent example of the United States denying aid to Haiti—ravaged by a devastating earthquake and an outbreak of Cholera—until the country had agreed to the adoption of “necessary democratic legislation” would argue that we have escaped this modern colonial mindset.

Change cannot happen over night.

And, if change is to occur, it absolutely must come from the ground-up. Only through grass-roots movements can we work together to create sustainable structures and policies that are unique to each country, population and environment. Furthermore, our role as foreign aid, is to help in whichever way we can to allow the voices on the ground be heard up in the heavens. Participation, in its full capacity (see definition above), must manifest at the lowest tier—the poor; the sick; the hungry; the victimized; the gendered; the voiceless—and recognized (inter)nationally in order for true success to occur.