“Good governance” is one of the core values that PCD holds in its programme work. We strive to promote the concept in the community-based projects carried out by our local partners and by community facilitators.

There are nine characteristics associated with PCD's notion of “good governance”: responsiveness, effectiveness, efficiency, consensus, transparency, rule of law, participation, accountability and equity. While the term looks rather new to most of our partners in China, its essence ensures a meaningful participation and ownership by the local people participating in the development projects.

What is challenging to PCD is not just to “talk” about the concept, but to “act” on it. A PCD pilot initiative since December 2003 seeks to explore how the concept of “good governance” can be put into practice in a rural context, and to encourage our partners to integrate the principles into community-based development projects. The initiative is in collaboration with ActionAid in China (AAC) and four partner groups which work in four different rural project sites, two from the network of PCD and two from AAC.

The pilot had three stages from December 2003 till May 2005:
1) Introduction of the concept “good governance” – this was done in the very first workshop in December 2003. Around 30 people from the four partners participated, including Gong county in Sichuan, Wangmo county and Leishan county in Guizhou, and Huaian county in Hebei;

2) Action planning and implementation – after this workshop, participants were encouraged to draw up their action plan/s on how they might apply any of the nine elements of good governance in their work. After sharing such action plans in the 2nd workshop, held in March 2004, participants were then given about a year to put it into action;

3) Sharing and mutual learning – around 35 participants from the four rural partners attended the 3rd workshop, held in May 2005, for sharing and mutual learning. This workshop was held in Gong county, Sichuan, and a field visit was made to learn about how the county team had implemented good governance principles in their work.
This 18-month pilot project basically adopts an approach to encourage participants to ACT and REFLECT. This process is important because people learn more effectively and are more likely to change if they have direct experience on a subject.