Exploring participants’ experiences of and perspectives on relational development: the cases of CLARISSA SP+ and WORKFREE

There is growing engagement with “relational” approaches to community development work - interventions that give practical or even metaphysical primacy to relations and processes over identities and outcomes. But what more can we say about the nature and efficacy of such approaches? CLARISSA SP+ and WorkFREE were two major relational community development intervention and research projects that took place in Bangladesh and India respectively. In this article, I compare the experiences and perspectives of participants in CLARISSA SP+ and WorkFREE to learn more about the nature and efficacy of relational community development. My findings reveal how these projects served to meet participants’ individual and collective psychological and material needs and highlight the transformative power of unconditionality. Whilst my overall findings support the case for advancing relational approaches to community development work, I conclude that more work must be done on theoretical and operational refinement and systematic evaluation.