Responses to the realities reflected above are not new to NRM or community-based development. There have been significant changes to the methods and theoretical underpinnings of all kinds of community development over the past 30 or so years. Much of this change is the result of reflection on experience, coupled with, and sometimes forced by, the insistence of local voices like Freedom’s, to be heard and reckoned with. During the 1970s, practitioners working with rural communities began to be disillusioned with the lack of progress, the failure of many development activities, and all too often, worsening conditions for the poor. It can be assumed that the communities themselves were.
