When I worked on community mobilization in a USAID-funded project in western Serbia two decades ago, developing ‘community social service projects’ was a challenge because of the perceptual divide between villagers and the experts in social services, education and health care. The villagers thought they didn’t know enough to develop such ideas, while the experts seemed to lack good connections to the villages to know what was most needed.

One of the projects has always remained with me. It was called “Save the Life” and it had very personal origins for one of our community facilitators, who had undergone surgery in Belgrade because the colposcope in her local community was defective. She was a brilliant facilitator and a lovely human being, who deeply understood the dynamics of her community.