February 5, 2003—In Ambato, a province in Ecuador, a civic group was formed to fight widespread corruption at the provincial and municipal levels by pulling together a variety of political parties and social groups from diverse economic and ideological backgrounds to form a united electoral front.

Once elected, Frente Cívico members spearheaded several initiatives to strengthen accountability that have been put into place: ensuring punctuality in public meetings, setting up participatory budgeting mechanisms, and promoting accountability mechanisms such as Municipal Assemblies in which the municipal administrations present outcomes and respond to citizen queries.

In Brazil’s poor rural region of Bahia, a community group is promoting empowerment to 30 municipal councils through an alternative approach to education. Based on the reality of poor children living locally, the model aims to foster learning through self-respect and self-knowledge. The initiative focuses on local issues such as water management, and involves families, schools, and communities by providing training to rural teachers and proposing new curricular activities for children.

Both of these examples featured prominently in a regional forum held in Peru to discuss the relationships between good governance, the empowerment of poor people, and the fight against poverty in the region.

"Poor governance is present when resources do not reach beneficiaries, justice is not the same for all, markets exclude poor people systematically, corruption is rampant, and poor people’s voices are not taken into account," explains David de Ferranti, World Bank Vice President for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).

Building on this, LAC Regional Civil Society Specialist Kathy Bain notes that "Promoting the capacity of the poor to articulate their own views and express their own voices in the formulation and implementation of public policy is essential for responsive, accountable institutions."

Spread over three days, LAC’s Civil Society Team brought together Bank staff, local civil society organizations, government officials, and private sector representatives to explore the relationship between empowerment and good governance. Some of the means to bolster this relationship include decentralization to promote transparent and participatory public decisions and budgeting; supporting capacity building at the local level; participatory mechanisms of monitoring and evaluation; and tapping into the human and social capital through processes that empower the poor and marginalized.

"Latin America may lack physical and financial capital, but it is over-endowed with social capital," said Jorge Quiroga, former President of Bolivia, in his remarks at the forum, reflecting on the region’s enormous potential to build on the mutually reinforcing relationship between empowerment and good governance.

Factors that inhibit this relationship include lack of access to information; lack of trust between civil society and the state; judicial systems that do not guarantee equality; and the failure of policies and strategies to adequately reflect reality on the ground.

Several challenges emerged for all actors, especially the need for follow-up and implementation of new processes and institutional arrangements.

"It is important for the Bank and our partners from civil society, governments, the business sector, and other international agencies to understand what types of governance promote or inhibit the empowerment of the poor—and based on that, define what steps we should take in our fight against poverty," says Roby Senderowitsch, LAC Regional Civil Society Specialist.

Useful links: Click here for the LAC Civil Society Team website.

To learn more about the Bank’s work in empowerment, click here.