Social Development: Synthesizing Theory and Practice

Introduction

This paper traces the trajectory of my thinking on social development shaped, initially, by the huge changes that swept South Africa in the 1990s, at a time when there was very little understanding of what it entailed. My early optimism regarding its potential soon gave way to a more critical analysis, as it proved extremely difficult to translate to, and seemingly ineffective in, practice (Gray, 2010, 2020; Gray & Ariong, 2017). Crucial to this critical turn was my move to Australia in 1999, when it was in the throes of neoliberal welfare reform. I describe my switch in thinking and reflect on shifting concepts, theories, approaches, and models in the social development discourse arising from its increasing adoption of neoliberal thinking. I discuss aspects of neoliberal social development, three influential models, and critiques, and end with my thoughts on a critical developmental practice model to embrace its structural–political, cultural–contextual, critical–developmental, and environmental–spiritual dimensions.

Early Influences on my thinking on Social Development: 1990–2000

The dramatic changes that swept South Africa in the early 1990s shaped my perspective on social development introduced through the White Paper for Social Welfare (RSA, 1997). At the time, there was very little understanding of social development and the way in which it differed from social work and social welfare, and related endeavors, such as rural community development, primary healthcare, and adult education. As I saw it, there were three aspects to this policy transformation in need of unpacking. They were the theory of social development; the way in which it informed the transition to a developmental welfare system; and its implications for developmental social work. My early focus was to discern what these policy changes meant for social work, hence my early writings in this area (Gray, 1996a, 1996b, 1997a, 1997b, 1997c, 1998a, 1998b, 2002; Neilson & Gray, 1997). I drafted my tentative ideas into a paper entitled Towards an Understanding of Developmental Social Work to provide my thoughts on the way in which social development might shape developmental social work in South Africa (Gray, 1996a). Further, I began to introduce these changes through social work education (Gray, 1994; Gray & Simpson, 1998; Gray, O’Brien, & Mazibuko, 1996; Travis, McFarlin, van Rooyen, & Gray, 1999).

Internationally, social development had been conceptualized as an alternative to conventional welfare that, by marrying social and economic goals, constituted a more comprehensive approach to social problems. Acknowledging poor people’s right to development, it promised an equitable distribution of the benefits of economic growth (Gray, 1992). At the 1995 World Summit on Social Development, South Africa had committed itself to the eradication of social inequality, in so doing, creating the need for national anti-poverty strategies in line with global development policy. Influenced by Midgley (1995), who, like me, started his social work career in South Africa, I saw social development as a macro-policy perspective. I saw its counterparts, community development and developmental social work, as forms of strategic intervention that developed as practitioners attempted to apply social development theory to social work practice in contexts where poverty and under-development were a major concern (Gray, 1989, 1996a, 1996c, 1997c, 1998a, 1998b, 1998c). Its policy blueprint, the White Paper for Social Welfare (RSA, 1997), stated emphatically that developmental welfare should contribute to poverty eradication, using approaches that, among other things, discouraged welfare dependency, promoted the active involvement of poor people in their own development, involved a multifaceted and multisectoral approach, and encouraged partnership between welfare stakeholders. Its key proponents claimed that social development differed markedly from conventional consumption-based welfare (Midgley, 1995; Patel, 1992, 2005, 2008). To move to a social development paradigm, the government had to provide a concrete plan to support its development policies and resource their implementation, while removing institutional obstacles to a developmental welfare system. Thus, social development demanded a high degree of moral and political commitment based on ideals of equity and justice, and on the notion of rights that went far beyond human needs (Gray, 1992).

The guiding policy framework of the South African Bill of Rights contained clauses on social and economic rights but did not refer to the right to development. There was some resistance to a rights-based approach around concerns that the concession of rights, whether social, economic, cultural, or welfare, would lead to claims that the government could not honor. Why institute a right to development if the government could not deliver the entitlements it promised? However, this logic reflected a misunderstanding of the meaning and intention of rights-based development (Gray, 1994). It resulted from confusion between human rights bills as statements of intention and judicial law protecting legal claims. Human rights bills reflected moral and political ideals that guided the framing and application of law and social policy. They provided direction to respect, protect, and promote human rights to the maximum extent that available resources would allow.

However, there was no denying that human rights were central to social development, which acknowledged the relationship between social, political, and economic rights. Past failures to recognize this relationship had resulted in the perpetration of injustices in the name of development—the displacement of people, destruction of the environment, disempowerment of communities, and deterioration of land. Development did not automatically bring benefits; it required careful planning, adequate resourcing, and human rights observance. The final chapter of the short-lived Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) (RSA, 1994) had described its goals of democratizing the state and society. Part of this meant ensuring accountability for, and accessibility to, development that transferred power to ordinary people. In terms of these goals, people had individual and collective rights to participate in development, if they were to flourish, and the state had to create a responsive environment for the enjoyment of human rights; therefore, a human rights culture was essential if the macro-policy perspective of social development were to succeed. Further, being a multisectoral approach to poverty alleviation, social development required government sectors to work in concert for social upliftment and improvement and a massive infrastructure for the provision of employment, housing, electrification, water, roads, and sanitation that most of the population lacked.

Theoretically, development and economic growth were, until the advent of social development, synonymous. Social development theorists were at pains to shift this economic focus to an approach that recognized the social implications of development, arguing that it was a much richer concept than economic growth (Gray, 1992). Social development required those making economic policy and generating resources for development and social sectors involved in housing, education, and welfare provision to work in tandem for poverty alleviation and social improvement. It required comprehensive statist interventions to ensure integrated economic and social policies would result in tangible, positive gains for the poor. This was a positive step, given the trend in the Global North to reduce social expenditure and shift responsibility for welfare onto the private sector. As Midgley (1998) had observed, social development offered a “new rationale for government involvement in social welfare” (p. 90).

My early theorizing on developmental social work affirmed the profession’s role in poverty eradication and recognized the link between welfare and development. Developmental social work diverged from the residual, service-oriented approach directed at special categories of people in need that used conventional resources, such as money and power, depleted through usage. Instead, it advocated holistic, people-centered, rights-based interventions that drew on vast non-conventional, nonmaterial resources, such as support networks, social solidarity, and local knowledge, depleted by nonusage. It had much in common with, but was not the same as, related endeavors, such as rural community development, primary healthcare, and adult education. Rural community development referred to a context (rural areas) and method of practice (community development) concerned with, among other things, agricultural and infrastructural development. Given the centrality of local community involvement and participation in the new developmental welfare policy, it seemed logical that community development, with its grassroots, bottom-up approach, would be the intervention of choice, empowering people through capacity building and community organizing (Gray, 1996c). Other sectors, like preventive primary healthcare, had used community development strategically to bring healthcare services to the poor, while adult education had used popular education approaches to empower people through adult literacy programs.

In theory, community development fit developmental social work’s people-centered philosophy, human rights perspective, focus on prevention, and use of populist forms of intervention to create awareness through education, and to equalize the distribution of services and resources. Local people’s participation in all stages of development from planning to evaluation, along with multisectoral and interdisciplinary cooperation, were essential to social work’s new developmental perspective. In practice, then, developmental social work drew mainly on nonmaterial resources, such as local participation, self-help, community support, and naturally occurring networks. Social workers drew on and enhanced these strengths and assets in small-scale community initiatives organized around issues of concern.

To conclude this section, my experience in South Africa was colored by a great deal of optimism about the transformational shift to developmental welfare. At the time of the transition to a post-apartheid government, the South African welfare system was unique in Africa and, indeed, the world, as it was a product of 40 years of apartheid. As such, it was the most highly developed institutional welfare system in Africa but only for a minority of its racially diverse population. No other country in Africa had a comprehensive welfare system in the early 1990s in the aftermath of structural adjustment. Going against this trend, South Africa was, to the best of my knowledge, the only country in the world to attempt to implement social development policy as a statist, institutional, whole-of-government response to its unequalled racially unequal welfare system. However, like its reconstruction and development forerunner (RSA, 1994), its White Paper for Social Welfare (RSA, 1997) would never be implemented as intended, though, admittedly it would lead to a more inclusive distribution of welfare resources. As I noted in my assessment of the progress of social development in South Africa in 2006:

It soon became clear that the new welfare system could not be driven solely by social ideals or social development theory. Economic realities forced policy makers to take the market into account in welfare provision … and it became apparent that welfare was being market (economically) rather than development (socially) driven, especially once the RDP [Reconstruction and Development Programme] gave way to the more conventional Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy. (Gray, 2006, p. S57)

Rather than reshaping welfare, social development merely entrenched direct cash transfers through pensions and grants that had always constituted over 90% of the welfare budget. Reconceptualized as a social investment and poverty alleviation strategy, cash transfers became the main method for the redistribution of welfare resources (Gray, 2006; Lund, 2007, 2008), while underfunded services continued to deteriorate (Gray, 2006; Hölscher, 2008; Lombard, 2008; Patel, 2008; Patel & Hochfeld, 2013). Further, despite the growing discourse on developmental social work and the importance of community development, social workers remained trapped in statutory work in under-resourced government departments and nongovernment organizations (NGOs) rendering individualized casework interventions (Gray, 1996c; Gray & Lombard, 2008). The workforce changes it wrought left the social work profession in disarray (Gray & Lombard, 2022). When I left for Australia, I was already expressing my concerns about the transformation of the social service professions and its implications for social work (Gray, 2000).

My Switch in Thinking on Social Development: 2001–2010

The situation I encountered when I moved to Australia in 1999 was quite different to that I had experienced in South Africa. As a field of study, social development had not gained much traction in Australia then, and it is no different even now (Gray & Crofts, 2003, 2008; Pawar, 2000). When I arrived in 1999, Australia was undergoing a period of massive welfare reform firmly embedding neoliberal privatization policy. This included the promotion of social enterprise as “a broad set of approaches that use[d] business acumen to address social goals … including community economic development, profit generating activities undertaken by nonprofits to support service initiatives, cross-sectoral partnerships and private sector social responsibility programs” (Gray, Healy, & Crofts, 2003, pp. 141–142). This had spawned social entrepreneurs, less bound by regulation, whose diversity, innovation, and creativity enabled them to operate “outside the box” of government funding and to seize on opportunities to respond flexibly to changes in the external service environment (Crofts & Gray, 2001; Gray et al., 2003).

There is a clue here as to how my Australian experience began to reshape my views on social development as neoliberally aligned (Gray, 2010; Gray et al., 2003). As such, it was too conservative for Australian social work, with its theorists “highly critical of neoliberalism and capitalism and … not eager to engage and harmonise with the tune of market economics – capital, investment, enterprise, growth, market, profit and stakeholder” (Gray & Crofts, 2008, p. 98). Given its failure to gain traction internally, the few Australian advocates of social development had aligned it to international social work (Cox & Pawar, 2006; Pawar & Cox, 2010).

These Australian influences, as well as the trajectory of South Africa’s developmental welfare system, which I followed closely, informed a subsequent paper Social Development and the Status Quo that reflected my thoughts on its neoliberal cooptation 15 years on (Gray, 2010). Based on my South African experience, I had begun to see social development as a massive undertaking, which had spawned a multitude of organizational forms, yet, nevertheless, remained an ambiguous term and ill-defined area of work. While acknowledging that some social work practitioners had succeeded in making small-scale, local differences, in particular situations, for the most part, coopted by neoliberal politics, social development was fast becoming a tool of the status quo, rather than a transformative paradigm for confronting economic inequalities and social deprivation. Further, with the creation of professional and educational structures and the Inter-University Consortium for Social Development (later the International Consortium for Social Development (ICSD), a professional association targeting scholars worldwide to spread knowledge of social development), it had, like social work, become increasingly status quo oriented, despite arguments to the contrary (Pawar & Androff, 2021; Raymond & Cowger, 2011). As Mohan (2008) observed, social development was the offspring and bore the imprint of social work. Two respondents to Pawar and Androff ‘s (2021) ICSD membership survey attested to this observation, noting the council’s express purpose to “create a platform for engaging social workers globally and making international [development] central to social work pedagogy in [the] US and Europe” (p. 8) and to engage US social work faculty to increase “their global awareness and … networking” (p. 8). Unlike the US (and Australian) alignment of social development with international social work, my South African experience had led me to equate it with developmental or pro-poor social work. In the next section, I reflect on the social development discourse to show how I perceived its transformation from a statist-developmental to a neoliberal-privatized welfare approach.

Reflecting on Shifting Concepts, Theories, Approaches, and Models

Like social work, theoretically, social development was a product of modernity, part of the modernization process as nations in the Global South moved from an agricultural to an industrial economy (Chambers, 1983). In the Global North, along with liberal capitalism, industrialization and modernization had brought with them the detraditionalization and secularization of society. Hence, as nations industrialized and modernized, they embedded liberal capitalism and democratic governance, and urbanized rapidly (Inglehart, 1997). The need for services and professionals arose as most northern countries developed highly bureaucratized planning, educational, welfare, legal, commercial, transport, housing, and health services. In the Global South, urban development became an extension of centralized government planning delivered through highly bureaucratic systems seeking to extend modernization. Social development was top-down and met a great deal of resistance from the local people, who held fast to their traditional ways of life, and thus it was, for the most part, ineffective in solving the poverty problem. Population mobility and structurally induced inequality saw the rise of urban poverty with development no longer merely a rural activity. Social development emerged in these conditions as an alternative to consumption-based welfare built on cash transfers and individualistic professionalized services; it had a broader focus than social work.

Advocates of social development were especially critical of institutionalized services and extolled developmental community-based solutions as superior to remedial welfare. However, as social development became increasingly formalized, through professional organizations, educational programs, international conferences, and scholarly literature, it drew heavily on neoliberal theories that made it ripe for cooptation by welfare reform policies similarly resistant to conventional approaches that spawned passive welfare dependency. Its emerging discourse of productive economic engagement through human and social capital formation and micro-enterprise development reflected this neoliberal shift (Harriss, 2002; Midgley, 1999; Sherraden, Sanders, & Sherraden, 2004; Sherraden, Ssewamala, & Sanders, 2003). In the process, it forsook its institutional, statist ethos; critical edge; and structural focus for strengths-and-empowerment approaches that lauded self-help, personal and community responsibility, and downsized public services. It differed markedly from the transformative “pedagogy of the oppressed” (Freire, 1972) that sought to bring power and self-determination to liberate communities withstanding the worst of capitalist-induced inequalities. Importantly, the under-theorization of social development had resulted in little attempt to interrogate the critical discourses that constituted its “theoretical mix” from four related sources: welfare, social development, neoliberalism, and social work.

From welfare came the talk of social rights and social justice that it shared with professions like social work. From social development came its positioning as a whistle blower on the fallout from economic development associated with measuring the rise in people’s standard of living and stance against economic development as the best solution to poverty, highlighting its selectivity and cost. However, as social development began its alignment with neoliberalism, its focus on structural inequality and statist interventions gave way to notions of active citizenship, productive participation, privatized services, and communitarianism (Harriss, 2002). From social work came the professional model, professional organizations, and university-based professional education. Social development juxtaposed itself against social work as its nearest role model, taking pains to demonstrate how it differed from remedial, individualistic interventions, instead advocating holistic, integrated practice models, when, in fact, it had sought to influence, and forge closer links with, social work (Billups, 1990, 1994; Elliott, 1993; Gray, 2006; Midgley, 1995). Social work had done likewise with its successive Global Agendas of Social Work and Social Development (IASSW, IFSW, & ICSW, 2010, 2020) built on what Mohan (2008) referred to as the delusion of development.

For me, social development’s diverse theoretical and ideological roots had coalesced into a confusing discourse of rights, redistribution, and participation. Linked to rights and justice, it intimated a statist response that carried a mixed message in contemporary neoliberal environments of minimal state intervention and increased family and community responsibility. This had led to a decreased focus on structural “redistribution” and less talk of centralized economic planning to “nongovernment” (community) solutions in the social development discourse. High on the list was community-based social and micro-enterprise development supported by micro-finance rather than government funding. Its strong communitarian “participatory” ethos was also in danger of tainting by neoliberal devolution of responsibility onto families and communities as community development became synonymous with self-help. Rather than “participation as citizenship,” wherein participants had a real voice, participatory approaches were overly volun-tarist and failed to engage with structural causes and issues of power and politics (Hickey & Mohan, 2005). In the Global North, subjective well-being and quality of life related to individualized choices rather than citizenship participation, while individuals and communities became primarily responsible for social inclusion (Beresford, 2001; Carey, 2009; Stepney & Popple, 2008). This form of communitarianism was very different from the emancipatory community action needed for real local empowerment South Africa’s developmental policy had portended. Thus, for me, social development had lost its transformative, critical edge and morphed into an extension of neoliberal governance that divested national governments of their welfare responsibilities and failed to transfer real power to the people. Instead, neoliberal welfare reform had reshaped statist notions of planned social development, brought a complete shift to the notion of responsibility, and ensured a major restructuring of public welfare that bore strong similarities to the prior structural adjustment agenda.

Interrelated Aspects of Neoliberal Social Development

This neoliberal turn was visible in several interrelated aspects of social development that used the language of social investment, human and social capital formation, micro-enterprise and assets-based development, an anti-professional stance, and strengths-and-empowerment approaches, as discussed below.

Tracing the Changes through Three Influential Models

There was a discernible shift over time from a focus on economic development to the centralized planned model of social development used in the South African experiment. However, with the influence of neoliberal welfare reform, this gave way to a social enterprise model built on minimal government investment, as the Australian example showed. Likewise, the critical development model identified a shift away from comprehensive development and universal public services to a targeted focus on poverty alleviation visible in international development policy. The following discussion summarizes this trajectory in the development discourse.

Critiques of Neoliberal Social Development

Because social development was a largely undeveloped, untested theory, it too easily adopted the language of neoliberalism and its communitarian discourse without recognition of its largely economic focus. These uncritical theoretical shifts weakened its influence and pointed to the need for a more critical model that embraced the multidimensional aspects of social development.

Toward a Critical Model of Developmental Practice: 2011 to Present

My subsequent scholarship on indigenous, environmental, and decolonizing social work intensified my concerns about social development already outlined (Gray, Coates, & Hetherington, 2013; Gray, Coates, & Yellow Bird, 2008; Gray, Coates, Yellow Bird, & Hetherington, 2013). I was equally critical of the subsequent poverty alleviation and sustainable development discourses and their focus on human development (Gray, 2020; Gray et al., 2017). This work led to the development of a critical model of developmental practice to address the weaknesses identified above (Gray & Lombard, 2023). This model has four core foci and approaches reflecting the structural–political, cultural–contextual, critical–developmental, and environmental–spiritual dimensions of social development.

Structural–Political

The structural–political dimension focuses on the structural causes rather than the individualization of social problems and makes analyses of power central by recognizing the dominance of certain groups over others and the flows of disadvantage and oppression from gender, cultural, ethnic, and race-based inequalities. It suggests strategies to address power imbalances through the elimination of discrimination, political representation of marginalized groups, and removal of unjust policies and practices. Such strategies take human rights and social justice seriously and suggest empowering, transformative, political, and anti-oppressive interventions that increase political recognition and representation, social equality, and economic well-being. They involve critical policy analysis and representation in development planning and policy execution processes. Recognizing the impossibility of achieving transformation merely through nonmaterialist strategies to build human and social capital, their effectiveness depends on government funding to bolster community-driven, income-generating, livelihood-sustaining strategies.

Cultural–Contextual

The cultural–contextual dimension attests the importance of context and culture and suggests culturally appropriate interventions responsive to local cultures, values, and cultural practices. Such interventions strengthen insider perspectives and acknowledge the resilience of culture. Through their critical praxis, they involve inter alia dialogue around unjust cultural practices that discriminate against certain groups, especially women. They involve making knowledge comprehensible to local community groups and embracing indigenous approaches and interpretations, accommodating local worldviews, and responding to day-to-day social issues.

Critical–Developmental

The critical–developmental dimension focuses on poverty alleviation through inter alia reducing inequities in service provision and enhancing people’s access to government resources and support. It recognizes that the increased reliance on nonmaterial resources, like participation, self-help, mutual support, cooperation, and human capital formation (capacity building), of people-centered community development will not lift people out of poverty and that only strong institutional support for income-generating and livelihood-sustaining initiatives can foster economic inclusion. It is critical of contemporary strategies to build and strengthen community self-reliance that implicitly hold the poor responsible for their predicament rather than focus on the structural causes of poverty. Recognizing the importance of direct experience and local knowledge about pressing community issues, it is critical of top-down interventions that overlook grassroots needs and interests, and calls for grassroots participation in political decision-making structures, where people can make a difference. It recognizes that NGOs have the potential to represent and advocate for the interests of marginalized groups that lack a say in community decision-making and calls for large-scale, income-generating, livelihood-sustaining strategies that contribute to real change and sustainable development.

Environmental–Spiritual

To some extent, the millennium and sustainable development goals displaced social development as a poverty-alleviation strategy, while economic imperatives overrode social and environmental concerns. Gray et al. (2017) argued that the relationship between issues of economic growth and environmental sustainability had not been resolved and the dismal progress toward this resolution was attributable to the intransigent focus on development in “sustainable development”:

Industrial progress, increased productivity, unrestricted trade, economic growth, market integration, overconsumption, and scientific and technological advancement remained embedded in development policies promoted by international financial institutions and foreign aid and development organisations, despite their devastating environmental consequences. (Gray et al., 2017, p. 143)

For Bullard (2011), development had lost its moral and practical content, given its “routine failure … to feed, house, clothe, educate and care for the invisible majority” (p. 141). This was evident in the prioritization of growth and production over social and ecological justice and the lack of political will to make decisions that would serve to lessen uninterrupted environmental degradation (Sneddon, Howarth, & Norgaard, 2006). Balancing economic, social, and environmental concerns remained an intractable problem, with the anthropocentric focus of social and sustainable development overshadowing ecocentric concerns relating to environmental degradation and resource depletion. Thus, the environmental–spiritual dimension highlights ecocentric concerns and the interrelationship between humans and their physical environment. In its focus on environmental justice and sustainability, it assumes that religion, spirituality, and people’s relationship with the land are an important part of their life-world. As Cox-Shrader (2011) observed, “the transition to sustainability is a transition to a worldview grounded in ecological justice, in which humans are part of our ecosystems” (p. 270). Living in harmony with the environment as a condition of survival has long been a central tenet of indigenous cosmologies, where “sustainability is circular, complex; it is about harmony, relationships and rhythms. It is not an accounting exercise for rationing … [Earth’s] resources” (Bullard, 2011, p. 142).

Conclusion

Though this critical developmental model offers a more comprehensive focus to extend the theory and practice of social development, the foregoing discussion reflects my skepticism about its potential to alleviate contemporary social problems, not least poverty. Human ingenuity has always trumped statist and foreign intervention shown by diasporic remittances now surpassing overseas development aid and national social protection measures as poverty-alleviation strategies. This shows a dramatic shift in the development landscape with diasporic organizations firmly positioned to influence international and national interventionist policies. Decades of colonial and postwar development intervention have done little to reduce poverty and inequality in the Global South. Nearly 80 years of postwar colonial and independent state intervention, with international financial institutions and NGOs heavily influencing national development policy, leaves me with more questions than answers regarding the relationship between development, foreign aid, and poverty alleviation. Gray and Ariong (2017) argued that the tripartite relationship between these three domains hinged on the way in which each was conceptualized and defined, and shifts in understanding of exactly what each sought to accomplish. What was the purpose of development, for example? Was it modernization, economic growth, poverty reduction, or an enhancement of people’s quality of life, for example? Historically, development policy has focused primarily on economic growth with foci shifting from modernization, industrialization, and urbanization to human development and poverty reduction with the millennium and sustainable development goals. We might ask the same question of foreign aid. Is its primary objective the embedding of modern Western systems of economic management and political governance, or the reduction of poverty to increase people’s quality of life? The argument has been that economic growth was the best way of achieving these outcomes, but history has proved that instead it has brought gross inequality with millions of people still mired in poverty worldwide. Predominant ideas on the best way to reduce poverty have hinged on ideas about the purpose of development and foreign aid, which, for the most part, hinged on countries in the Global South having the seemingly unattainable goals of strong systems of governance, sturdy social infrastructures, and sound economic management. The theory of social development needs to grapple with these broader questions to be effective in contemporary environments. To return to the beginning, it has not replaced consumption-driven welfare in South Africa and, if anything, for all the rhetoric of cash transfers being social investment and poverty-alleviating strategies, passive-welfare dependency has increased dramatically. Perhaps, it is best to think of welfare and development as parallel streams working to promote human betterment and social improvement, recognizing that one cannot replace the other.

A critical developmental perspective questions individualistic theories and the idea that poor people can lift themselves out of poverty merely through strengths-and assets-based capacity building. It focuses attention on structural disadvantage, highlighting issues relating to class, race, ethnic, and gender inequality. Its overtly political focus raises awareness of structural inequalities and agitates for policies to equalize the distribution of resources, and reduce inequities in service provision. Finally, it calls on national governments to fund community economic-development and income-generating initiatives to lift people out of poverty.