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VALUES DELIBERATION
& COLLECTIVE ACTION
Community Empowerment
in Rural Senegal
Beniamino Cislaghi,
Diane Gillespie, and Gerry Mackie
Values Deliberation & Collective Action
Beniamino Cislaghi • Diane Gillespie • Gerry Mackie
Values Deliberation &

Collective Action
Community Empowerment in Rural Senegal
Beniamino Cislaghi Gerry Mackie
London School of Hygiene and University of California, San Diego
Tropical Medicine San Diego, California, USA
London, UK
Diane Gillespie
University of Washington Bothell
Bothell, Washington, USA
ISBN 978-3-319-33755-5 ISBN 978-3-319-33756-2 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33756-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016948400
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-
lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the
material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.
Cover illustration: © imageBROKER / Alamy Stock Photo
Printed on acid-free paper
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG Switzerland
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We are grateful to the Wallace Global Fund; UNICEF Child Protection;

Lowell and April Blankfort of San Diego for support; and to the University
Center for Human Values at Princeton University; the Center on Global
Justice at the University of California, San Diego; the University of
California, San Diego Academic Senate; and the University of Washington,
Bothell. We especially thank Francesca Moneti of UNICEF for advancing
this project in multiple ways, from inception to completion. We thank
Tostan, its director Molly Melching, the anonymous participants and
Tostan facilitators in the three Senegalese villages we studied; project
interviewers Cheikh Moussa Kane and Korka Sow; and transcriber and
translator Hassana Diallo. Michael Gillespie helped us intellectually and
socially. Authors are listed in alphabetical order. They contributed equally
to the work.
v
CONTENTS
1 Introduction 1
Methodology 7
Pilot Study 9
Setting of Study 10
Respondents 10
Entry into the Field 11
Data Sources 12
Sources of Bias 14
Mitigating Bias 16
Field Irregularities and Their Effects on Data Collection 19
Coding of Data 19
Citation Format 23
Sensitizing Concepts 24
Schema Theory of Cultural Meanings 25
The Capacity to Aspire 29
Social Norms and Their Change 31
2 Community Values and Aspirations as the CEP Arrives 41

Beyond the Individual 41
Family and Community 41
Commonly Shared Personal Values 42
Being Lost and Finding the Right Path 42
Honesty and Forgiveness 43
Working Hard 44
vii
viii CONTENTS
Helping Each Other 44

Being Men and Women 45
Caring for Children 47
Commonly Shared Aspirations 48
Education 48
Better Future 49
Health 50
Working Together 51
Being in Public 52
3 Tostan’s Instructional Strategies 53

The Local Context 53
Experiential Learning 55
Active Learning Through Discussion 56
Interactive Instruction Strategies 58
4 Learning and Values Deliberations During the Democracy

and Human Rights Sessions (DHRS), 2010 63
Public Deliberation 64
Organized Diffusion 67
Better Future 68
Self-Understanding 70
Working Together 73
Why Work Together? 75
Justice and Rights 77
Equality 80
Peace 84
Changing Understandings 86
Education 86
Health 87
Being Women and Men 92
Ending Bad Habits, Starting Good Habits 98
5 One-and-a-Half Years After the Democracy

and Human Rights Sessions, 2011 103
Ending Bad Habits, Starting Good Habits 104
Tostan Instructional Strategies in 2011 106
CONTENTS ix
Public Deliberation 108

Organized Diffusion 110
Better Future 112
Self-Understanding 113
Working Together 116
Justice and Rights 120
Changing Practices 123
Education 123
Health 127
Being Women and Men 129
6 Long-Term Program Results 137
7 Analysis: How Values Deliberations Lead

to Community Empowerment 143
Another Sensitizing Concept 143
The Basic Social Process 146
Self-Sustaining Status Quo 148
Variations Appear 152
Community Enabling Conditions 154
Program Enabling Conditions 156
Program Pedagogy 160
Unsettling Experiences 166
Changing Self-Understandings 169
Sustained Deliberations of Schemas Among Participants 172
Resettling of Schemas Motivates Taking Change from
Class to Community 175
Participants’ Resettled Schemas Unsettle and
Resettle the Community’s Schemas 179
Seeing Is Believing 181
Individual, Collective, and Community
Empowerment 183
8 Conclusion 187
A Selection of Findings 187
Limitations of the Study 189
Future Research 191
x CONTENTS
Appendices 193
Appendix 1. 2010 Individual Interviews 193
Appendix 2. 2011 Individual Interviews 195
Appendix 3. 2011 Focus Group 196
Focus Group Protocol 197
References 199
Index 205
LIST OF FIGURE
Fig. 7.1 The basic social process 147
xi
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1.1 Tostan sessions studied 13

Table 1.2 Actually videotaped sessions 19
Table 1.3 Coded categories and their changes through three periods 22
Table A.1 Questions asked at each interview 194
xiii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
• “The best kind of help to others, whenever possible, is indirect, and

consists in such modifications of the conditions of life, of the general
level of subsistence, as enables them independently to help them-
selves.” John Dewey and James Tufts (quoted in Ellerman 2006,
p. 1).
• “Learning about [human rights] has helped us a lot because we are
now able to do so much more than we were able to do before. We
can go to school, we can go to meetings, and there is much more
unity amongst the community.” Participant in a focus group near
the end of the Tostan Community Empowerment Program (11: W,
C, FG).
How do we advance child protection and human development in

the world? The scope of challenges and responses is vast. One approach
is to help people to help themselves. Ellerman (2006) defines and
defends the idea of indirect, capacity-enhancing, autonomy-respect-
ing help. Such help does not treat humans as objects who must be
directed to outcomes imposed by an external power, but works indi-
rectly by enabling human actors to pursue their well-considered aims.
By autonomy he means the moral concept of respecting the freedoms
of individuals and communities. He recommends three do’s to aspiring
helpers.
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 1

B.F. Cislaghi, D. Gillespie, G. Mackie, Values Deliberation &
Collective Action, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33756-2_1
2 B.F. CISLAGHI, D. GILLESPIE AND G. MACKIE
• Do start from where the doers are

• Do see the world through the doers’ eyes
• Do respect the autonomy of the doers
In an autonomy-respecting program, the motivation to change comes

from within, from the evolving values and aspirations of the people them-
selves, and not from coercion, material rewards and punishments, or
manipulatively one-sided information. There is a range of contexts, per-
haps wider than now acknowledged, where internally motivated change is
more effective and sustainable than external prods.
An indirect program is not values-neutral. For one thing, the program
itself values both helping others and enhancing human capacities. There
are differences in values between human groups, but many people believe
that groups have enough in common that most of them would be enlight-
ened by conversations with one another (Appiah 2010). One ongoing
conversation is international human rights discourse, a provisional sum-
mary of human values and aspirations that guides the programs of United
Nations’ agencies. International human rights discourse has been appro-
priated and adapted, in further conversations, by local groups across the
world, for example, to help overcome discrimination and violence against
women (Merry 2009).
The NGO Tostan, headquartered in Senegal, conducts an indirect
Community Empowerment Program (CEP) in African communities.
The Tostan CEP is primarily a nonformal human rights–based education
program that encourages its participating communities to envision their
future and engage in values deliberations, especially the understanding
and realization of human rights. The CEP aims to develop the capacities
of individuals and communities so that they can on their own reflect, think
critically, plan, and alter or retain inherited practices. Program outcomes
are much remarked upon, among them widespread abandonment of
harmful practices and realizations of children’s rights, but how the pro-
gram develops the capacities that lead to these results has not been for-
mally studied. The goal of our research is to better understand the ways in
which its values deliberations contribute to the enhancement or adoption
of beneficial individual and social practices.
Because the likely mechanisms of change are values deliberations which
enhance individual and collective agency and because there is little pub-
lished knowledge about the living content of such processes, we deter-
mined that the best use of our opportunities and resources was a qualitative
INTRODUCTION 3
case study. We used the “grounded theory” method, which relies primarily
on the reports of participants: what do they say about their course experi-
ences, how do they think and feel about the changes that they make, what
matters to them? From the reports of participants sparingly supplemented
by middle-range theory, basic social processes are identified and traced in
the case under study.
The importance of values deliberation for sustainable abandonment
of harmful social practices was recognized in a comparative study of
female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) abandonment programs in
five countries commissioned by UNICEF’s Innocenti Research Centre
(Mackie 2009; UNICEF 2010). The comparative study identified com-
mon factors that distinguish more effective from less effective programs.
The two most important factors were organized coordination of abandon-
ment within communities of reciprocal expectation, as predicted by social
norms theory (Mackie 1996, 2000); and values-based education that trig-
gered reevaluation of old and new alternatives in the communities.
The idea of coordination on abandonment of harmful social norms
and on group adoption of beneficial new ones has gained some visibility
in development policy analysis (UNICEF 2007; Donors Working Group
2008). The community values deliberations essential to such change, what
they are and how and why they work, are rarely reported, so far as we
know not in as much detail as we provide here, and those processes of
change are largely untheorized. Community human rights education pro-
grams aimed at beneficial revision of social norms are found in a variety
of development settings and are claimed to yield powerful results (Indian
middle schools, Bajaj 2011; women’s rights in Turkey, Ilkkaracan and
Amado 2005; FGM/C abandonment and other capacity enhancements
in Senegal by Tostan, Diop et al. 2008; Gillespie and Melching 2010;
Mackie 2009; HIV/AIDS destigmatization in multiple countries through
the Community Capacity Enhancement—Community Conversation
[CCE-CC] program of the United Nations Development Program,
Gueye et al. 2005; CCE-CC widened to multiple harmful practices, see
for example the Ethiopian NGO KMG [kmgselfhelp.com] or among a
group of the Maasai, USAID 2012).
Systematic case studies, as well as comparative and controlled stud-
ies of such programs and their contents and results, would be a wor-
thy line of research. Any journey begins with a first step, however, and
our first step is the study of Tostan’s nonformal education program in
Senegal. Tostan’s results are well-known and are attested by independent
evaluations; its program is already the subject of academic reporting and

analysis; some of its curricular materials were available to us in English;
it is open to researchers; and study sites in Senegal were comparatively
accessible.
Tostan’s participatory, nonformal, human rights education program,
the Community Empowerment Program (CEP), is delivered in a given
community for 30 months over a 36-month period. It is nonformal
in that its curriculum is structured, but the classes are offered outside
the formal education system in remote African communities. Most of
the adults and adolescents who attend the classes have never attended
public or state-sponsored schools. The CEP is taught in local languages
within local cultural contexts (Easton and Monkman 2009; Gillespie and
Melching 2010). The curriculum is organized into modules, and the
modules in turn contain a number of sessions. The first module is called
Kobi, a Mandinka word meaning “to prepare the field for planting.” The
content of the two-hour long Kobi sessions is shared orally since most
participants beginning the program cannot read or write. Two classes of
30–40 participants each—one for adults and one for adolescents—meet
three times a week for about a year. In Kobi I sessions participants discuss
their visions for the future, the importance of participation, living in the
community and the world, democracy, and human rights. The remainder
of Kobi I is about problem-solving. Kobi II covers hygiene and health.
The second module is called the Aawde, a Fulbe word meaning “to plant
the seed.” Devoted to economic empowerment, this phase is composed
of basic literacy and mathematics lessons, and small-project management
training.
In addition to the nonformal education classes, Tostan also provides
training for a Community Management Committee (CMC), which forms
when Tostan begins its classes in the given community. The CMC helps
organize community projects that originate from the class; seventeen
members are elected, some of whom are from the class. Readers should
know that our study did not examine the crucial knowledge-to-action
content taught in the last half of Kobi I, in Kobi II, and in Aawde, or
material on the formation and operation of the CMCs; these elements are
almost certainly essential to the CEP’s results.
Participants are informed of the learning objectives of the CEP
(Kobi I manual, Session 1, April 2009): “By the end of the program,
you will:
INTRODUCTION 5
• Have confidence in yourself and be able to express your ideas in

public;
• Understand and be able to apply the fundamental elements of
democracy in your family, in organizations, within the community,
and on a regional and national level;
• Know your human rights and responsibilities and be able to apply
them in everyday life;
• Understand and be able to apply a process for solving problems and
conflicts;
• Know the importance of hygiene and health and how to improve
your own personal hygiene and health, as well as that of your family
and community;
• Have acquired good organizational skills for self-management;
• Be able to read, write, and do basic math operations;
• Write and receive SMS messages on your mobile phone;
• Have skills needed to initiate and manage community projects;
• Be able to sustain decisions and activities initiated during the
program.”
The nucleus of Tostan’s approach to values education is the first

half of Kobi I, the first 31 sessions of its 30-month curriculum. Our
research centers on eight of these sessions in the adult classes, ses-
sions especially devoted to discussion of local values, democracy, and
human rights and responsibilities. We call them the Democracy and
Human Rights Sessions (DHRS) in this document. We studied the
eight sessions so that we could investigate, in depth, the meanings that
participants attached to their educational experiences and how their
experiences with an indirect approach to development evolved over
time. We sought to discover the basic social processes that led them
to take beneficial new actions on behalf of themselves and their com-
munities. We were also able to interview participants 18 months after
the DHRS, which allowed us to examine individual and community
changes near the end of the CEP.
The CEP has been revised over decades of practice, community partici-
pation, and theoretical reflection. For example, the program changed from
an emphasis on women’s and children’s rights to the rights of all humans
(Gillespie and Melching 2010). The Interagency Gender Working Group
(Greene and Levack 2010) observes a trend in this direction, conceptualizing
it as “gender synchronization,” working with men and women, boys and

girls, on “a cooperative model for improving reproductive health and trans-
forming gender relations” (see also Chant and Gutmann 2002). Another
major change over time was that the human rights approach necessitated
development of new educational forums to meet the needs of its partici-
pants—community management committees and empowered community
networks—designed to help communities coordinate and carry out wide-
spread social reforms in and between villages, during the program and
beyond. The establishment of child protection committees to monitor the
well-being of children (e.g., to monitor FGM/C, domestic violence, child
abuse) was another notable revision.
We conducted interviews in 2010 and had them transcribed and trans-
lated in order to investigate participants’ understandings of what they
were experiencing and learning as they moved through the sessions. What,
for example, would they report as memorable, surprising, and important
for their learning? How did they speak about their individual and social
practices during the various human rights sessions? What gender differ-
ences, if any, surfaced in their accounts? How did men perceive women’s
participation in the classes and women men’s? A year-and-a-half later
(2011) we conducted one more set of post-session interviews and added
one round of focus groups to understand how participants reflected on
their experiences over time. Our approach needed to be sensitive to the
lay discourse of participants, as we wanted to build our account from the
layers of meanings in their descriptions. We sought to describe their think-
ing and feeling and any changes in their thinking and feeling in order to
understand the basic social processes of changes they were making in their
communities. We wanted to understand how they brought about such
changes. We did not seek to summarize whole-population attitudes about
Tostan’s program or any of its content.
In addition to working from their reports of what mattered to them in
the classes they were attending, we arranged observation of participants
in actual class sessions so that we could examine the content of what was
said during the class and any changes in the nature and types of interac-
tions over time. Also we needed to have a context for their post-session
descriptions of their experiences. For this purpose we videotaped classes
and had them transcribed and translated so that we could examine pat-
terns of speaking, interruption, agreement, and disagreement. We were
also interested in gender; for example, did women speak as frequently as
men; did they initiate interaction with men? Was there gender segrega-
INTRODUCTION 7
tion (e.g., seating during class) and, if so, did it change? How did women
speak at the beginning and at the end in terms of tone of voice and length
of contributions? Finally, we scrutinized session and interview records for
instances of values deliberations and how they framed participant’s under-
standings of their practices before and during the program, their expres-
sion of intentions for the future, and realized changes in their community
that they reported to us.
METHODOLOGY
In Tostan’s nonformal education program, Kobi I lasts about three months
and includes sessions on human rights and democracy. The purpose of the
research was to understand the experiences of participants during these
sessions and how individuals and communities changed over time. From
respondents’ descriptions of their experiences, we aimed to create a theo-
retical model of how value-based education contributed to their under-
standings of the social changes they were making in their communities,
including any shifts in social norms. We explored how they identified val-
ues they were learning in class, and how they linked them to their personal
and social practices and their understandings of themselves and others. We
examined, especially, how they connected their understanding of values
to their motivation to learn new practices and undertake action to bring
about positive social change. Our interest in the process of change and
the meanings participants assigned to their experiences led us to choose a
qualitative research method—grounded theory.
A well-established tradition in qualitative research, grounded theory
allows researchers to collect and analyze descriptive data systematically,
construct a model of the conceptual structure of processes from the data,
and generate mid-level theories from those structures. Henwood and
Pidgeon (2003) said that grounded theory studies “focu[s] on problems
and issues that have to do with people’s substantive activities, interactions,
sense-making, and locatedness within particular settings” (pp. 133–4).
Grounded theory allowed us to find patterns in the meanings respondents
assigned to their classroom experiences and to identify connections they
made between what they were learning to actions they intended to under-
take or were taking to enhance the well-being of their communities.
Because the field research needed to be coordinated with the onset of
Tostan’s 30-month education program, we chose communities in rural
areas near Kaolack in the southern part of Senegal, where the program was
initiated in March 2010. The research involved collecting two data sets:
one was collected during March–July 2010 and a second during December
of 2011. The 2010 data included videotapes of eight Democracy and
Human Rights Sessions (DHRS) from the Kobi I and their transcripts and
230 interview transcriptions with male and female participants soon after
each session ended. We provided program-specific training to videogra-
phers and interviewers. They were native Senegalese speakers of Pulaar,
the language in which the program was offered. The 2011 data included
30 interview transcripts from male and female respondents in the same
communities after a session near the end of the program and five focus
group transcriptions. The videotapes of the classrooms allowed us to see
what Tostan participants and respondents in our research said and did
during the classes. The interviews conducted after the videotaped class
allowed participants to describe what they had learned, how they under-
stood class dynamics, and what they would do with what they had learned.
In the 2011-videotaped focus groups, respondents were asked to reflect
on their experiences in the Tostan program, especially with human rights.
They allowed us to test the dependability and accuracy of the coding cat-
egories that emerged from the main set.
Prior to data collection activities, we secured approval from our respec-
tive Institutional Review Boards (IRBs): Cislaghi was approved by the
Leeds IRB, Gillespie by the University of Washington IRB, Mackie by the
UC San Diego IRB.
In collecting the DHRS data, videographers taped each two-hour class
and after the class five men and five women class members were inter-
viewed using a semi-structured interview protocol. In collecting the 2011
data, the same interviewers returned to the same three villages and inter-
viewed five male and five female class participants after a session near the
end of the Aawde, the second and last part of the Tostan Community
Empowerment Program, at about Session 96 of the Aawde. They repeated
the same semi-structured interviews used during DHRS. The interviewers
also conducted focus groups. In two villages, the interviewers conducted
gender-segregated focus groups and in the third, a gender-integrated one.
(The protocol for the focus group is in Appendix 3.)
The research procedures were set up to ensure the trustworthiness of
the data.
Prior to data collection, we took the following steps: (1) secured and
studied the English version of Tostan’s facilitators’ manual so that we had
an understanding of the curricular sequence being used by the facilita-
INTRODUCTION 9
tors for each session; (2) reviewed the baseline data Tostan collected on
the communities in our study; conducted a pilot study before undertak-
ing data collection; (3) secured Pulaar-speaking interviewers and camera-
men; and (4) tested interview protocols. After collecting and analyzing the
2010 data, we examined the trustworthiness of our initial coding catego-
ries by having the same interviewers conduct 2011 interviews and focus
groups in the same communities toward the end of the program. Finally,
we interviewed the interviewers about their experiences and observations
after collection of the 2011 data. These various sources of data allowed
us to cross-check or triangulate our data to ensure dependability in our
categories and their interrelationships.
Pilot Study
In Fall 2009, the research team conducted a six-week pilot study to bet-
ter understand the logistics that would be needed to carry out the larger
research project and to test out the research design. Specifically, the
team (1) developed a cooperative relationship with Tostan’s Monitoring,
Evaluation, Research, and Learning Department in its international office
in Dakar, Senegal, so that relevant personnel in Tostan would be informed
and willing to help the team gain access to the communities and the facilita-
tors of the classes in those communities; (2) consulted with Tostan’s coun-
try coordinator for Senegal and regional supervisors about the project and
discussed curricular and pedagogical issues with experienced facilitators;
(3) conducted interviews with participants who had already participated in
the Tostan program in order to refine the team’s interview questions; and
(4) determined that the project could be carried out in a way that would
respect the rights of those participating in the study and thus meet ethical
standards. The findings of the 2009 pilot study assured the research team
that the chosen methods would allow for timely collection of relevant
data. The program was to be inaugurated in 200 villages in January, but
funding difficulties delayed the start date until late March 2010. The team
met in March in Senegal in 2010 to further refine logistics, including
training of Fulbe interviewers and videographers and hiring of translators.
We wrote and tested the interview protocol. To inform facilitators and to
seek volunteers for the study, the team attended the facilitator training
session in Kaolack in March. We subsequently secured permission from
three facilitators (who volunteered to participate in the research) to have
their classes videotaped.
Setting of Study
Senegal, a country located in West Africa, is composed of 14 regions
divided into 34 departments; departments are subdivided into arrondisse-
ments, and arrondissements into either communes or rural communes.
The research was carried out in the Kaffrine region. Originally a depart-
ment within the region of Kaolack, Kaffrine became an administratively
independent region in September 2008. As a consequence, a new admin-
istrative internal structure was created (previous arrondissements became
departments, previous rural communes became arrondissements, and new
rural communes were created). The new administrative configuration not
only reorganized the internal bureaucratic hierarchy, but also is slowly
enhancing the political importance of the villages in the area, since their
votes came to count more in electing the members of the rural council of
the community—the first grassroots structure of democratic power. New
political incentives increase government accountability to more vulner-
able groups, and those groups in turn are motivated to improve their
understandings of democracy and human rights. Thus, the Tostan train-
ing in democracy and human rights may come at a propitious time for the
communities.
The three Fulbe villages that we studied were located far from paved
roads and were connected to the bigger center of Birkilane only through
a long, sandy road. The villages differ from one another in size and infra-
structure. They were also located in an area where there are many villages
of the Wolof ethnic group. Village B, for instance, was an important cen-
ter for storing peanuts. According to Tostan’s 2010 baseline data about
the region, the population of these villages varied between 200 and 500
people. At the time of the research, none of the villages had electricity,
running water, latrines, a hospital, a bank, or a school. Three weekly mar-
kets in the area attracted mostly male members of the local communities
who attended, bought and sold merchandise, and enhanced their social
networks. Battery-powered radio was the main connection to the rest of
the world.
Respondents
Research respondents were members of three Tostan classes in the Fulbe
communities near Kaolack. Although Tostan was implementing its
INTRODUCTION 11
program in a number of communities in this region, only villages where

the leaders, and the Tostan facilitator, would consent to the research pres-
ence were available. Additionally, interviewers and videographers had to
be able to travel to the classes so that they could gather data on the same
session within a short time frame. In the end, five villages were logistically
convenient, far enough away from one another to be different, but close
enough to manage. Of the five villages, the team selected the three most
distinctly different given the descriptive data available.
In 2010, Sessions 1, 3, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, and 23 from Kobi I were
videotaped (see curricular chart below). Class size ranged from 20 to 40.
After the classes, five men and five women who had participated in the
class were interviewed by the trained Pulaar-speaking interviewers. Ages
of the respondents varied from 20 to 55, as estimated by the interviewers.
Respondents’ educational level was minimal. Only two interviewees refer
to healthcare training, either their own or someone else’s in the commu-
nity; one respondent had a son in college. Most had never been in school
or had left school at an early age.
For the 2011 study, two of the same interviewers took a refresher
training course for the interviews and used the original interview pro-
tocol. For the focus groups, they were given new training, including
how to engage multiple respondents. Each gender-segregated focus
group included five respondents; the gender-integrated group was to
aim for equal numbers but one included five female and only three male
respondents.
Entry into the Field

In 2009, researcher Cislaghi visited ten different villages in the Kaolack
region where community leaders (especially the village chief) and the
Tostan facilitator had asked for the Tostan program and already agreed
to participate in the research. Following village selection, Cislaghi met
with village chiefs and local imams, bringing gifts of sugar, red cola beans,
and rice, as is stipulated by the Teranga (hospitality) tradition. He also
gave thanks to the community publicly. The interviewers entered the vil-
lage on their own, meeting with the village chief in each community. In
2011, under Cislaghi’s supervision, interviewers gained access through
their connection with the village chief and the Tostan participants, who
knew and remembered them.
Data Sources
Facilitators’ Training Manual and Curriculum Guide

The researchers had English versions of Tostan’s curriculum document,
Kobi I. The CEP is taught orally in local languages. A training manual in
the local language, used during facilitator training and retained in their
possession, guides their interactions in the classroom. The guide consists
of sessions on human rights and responsibilities and democracy, where
the initial and most basic values deliberations take place. In 2010, we
could not afford to videotape all 22 sessions of the module, so we asked
Tostan leaders and facilitators which were the most important. We vid-
eotaped the eight DHRS sessions they identified as critical to the success
of the CEP. The first videotaped session, Session 1, served as a pilot to
test the equipment. The next videotaped session was Session 3, on vision-
ing: what do they want their village community to be like in five years?
The subsequent videotaped sessions were on: human rights international
instruments (Session 11), the human right to be free of all forms of dis-
crimination (Session 14), the human right to peace and security (Session
15), the human rights review session (Session 16), the human right to
health (Session 17), and the human right to vote (Session 23). (Table 1.1)
Videotapes
In 2010, we collected 24 videotapes of eight classroom sessions, and in
2011 we collected videotapes of five focus groups. Understanding that the
camera would have an effect on the class, we asked the videographer to
station the camera in the corner of the classroom so that it had as minimal
a presence as possible. Videotapes varied in length from 20 minutes (in the
first session, where misunderstandings about what should be filmed short-
ened the duration) to two hours. Most averaged one-and-a-half hours.
Two Senegalese videographers were trained to set up the camera in the
corner of the classroom, facing the participants and to make sure that the
camera recorded the full session. The facilitator was generally not visible in
the film. When plays occurred in the classes, videographers were asked to
ensure that the play could be seen. They were instructed not to call atten-
tion to the video camera during the classes and usually the camera was left
stationary. For the focus groups held in 2011, a Senegalese videographer
moved the microphone from speaker to speaker for ease of transcription.
All videotapes were translated by native Pulaar speakers (the language spo-
ken by Fulbe in Senegal).
INTRODUCTION 13
Table 1.1 Tostan sessions studied

# Title Summary of content
1 General Introduction Sitting in a semicircle, village hopes, program goals,

to the Program relevant African proverbs, story (traveling to village of
knowledge)
3 Our Goals for the Large group activity on community goals, the role that
Future everyone plays in achieving those goals, the role of
education
11 Human Rights: The Large group discussion on the Human Right to Life;
Human Right to Life conducting a survey of the community
14 Human Right to be Human rights image of discrimination; discuss importance;
Protected Against All identify violations; apply in everyday life, responsibilities for
Forms of fulfilling right; promote awareness; what other villages have
Discrimination done
15 Human Right to Similar to 14; skit—an argument between two groups of
Peace and Security people; responsibility to support and promote the right;
contact community law enforcement
16 Human Rights Class pretends to be a People’s Council, and facilitator
Review presents stories containing rights violations; some
participants are assigned to defend the violators, other
participants judge and make action recommendations for
promotion of the right particular to the story
17 Human Right to Human rights image of health; discuss drawing; discuss
Health specific scenarios, apply to family, community, country;
what can be done, who is responsible; responsibility
scenario; what other villages have done
23 Right to Vote and to Human rights image of voting; discuss drawing; role of
be Elected (1) elected official, obligations of an elected official; qualities
of a good elected official
Interviews
Four trained Pulaar-speaking interviewers, two men and two women,
were instructed to conduct ten interviews in each village after the two-
hour class session. The women aimed to interview five female participants
and the men five male participants. They conducted a total of 220 inter-
views, 107 with men and 113 with women. (There were 72 in Village A
(35 men, 37 women), 79 in Village B (40 men, 39 women), and 69 in
Village C (32 men and 37 women)). The interviewers asked participants
about their general learning experiences. Five questions remained con-
stant across interviews: why they came to class, what they discovered, what
surprised them, what they would share with their family and friends, and
what they learned. Two sets of questions alternated. The first set of ques-
tions asked them for reactions to their participation in the class, explored
who they talked to in and out of their community, and what they hoped
for in their future. The second set of questions asked about their under-
standings about gender relationships in the class and in the community
[See Appendix 1 for interview protocols].
In the 2011 study, we asked all participants in a slightly altered format
the same 14 questions about their learning and what they remembered,
especially in terms of gender participation and what they would share with
family and friends (see Appendix 2 for the protocol). In this study, the
interviewers conducted 30 interviews, 15 with men and 15 with women
(5 men and 5 women in each of the three villages).
After the 2011 data had been collected and read, we interviewed the
interviewers about their understandings of what the respondents had said
and claimed.
Focus Groups
In 2011, interviewers conducted five focus groups: one of each gender in
Village B, the same in Village C, and one mixed-gender group in Village
A. Focus groups were audio- and videotaped. In the single-gender focus
groups, a total of 20 participants were interviewed: five men and five
women in each of the two villages. The mixed-gender group included
five women and three men. The protocol included questions about their
experiences in the Tostan classes; how they have interacted with others
in the class, their family, and community; how others from within and
without their village perceived their participation in the Tostan classes;
and how human rights have been important to them and their community
(see Appendix 2). We instructed interviewers to encourage answers to the
questions from everyone, calling on participants if necessary. We trained
them to explore participants’ answers by looking for evidence of beliefs
and feelings and encouraging them to detail any descriptions of actions
undertaken as a result of the Tostan classes.
Sources of Bias
Researcher
This project began in 2009 when Gillespie finished her research on how
human rights came to be integrated into Tostan’s nonformal curricu-
lum (Gillespie and Melching 2010). She had partnered with Melching,
Founder and CEO of Tostan and Gillespie’s sibling, to document the evo-
lution of Tostan’s nonformal education program as it was carried out in
INTRODUCTION 15
the field between 1985 and 2003. A scholar of multicultural and educa-
tional research, she was interested in the process of transformation that
had occurred with the introduction of human rights into the curriculum.
Archival data and anecdotal stories from the field contained abundant evi-
dence of such transformation. What was missing, she felt, were carefully
designed studies that would track this transformation from the inside out,
from the perspective of those who participated in the program. Mackie,
a social and political theorist, proposed the collective abandonment of
female genital cutting in a 1996 journal article; in 1998 he discovered
that Tostan participants had independently devised the same strategy, and
then made a field visit. His ideas influenced Tostan, and he has continued
to research and publish on the NGO. He came to understand the cen-
trality of human rights education to community transformation and was
eager to understand how it worked, as were others in the FGC research
and policy communities. Cislaghi was recommended to the project by a
UNICEF official familiar with his prior internship at Innocenti Research
Centre and history of field work in Africa. At the onset of field research, he
was a PhD candidate in International Development at Leeds University.
He agreed to work on this project and simultaneously conducted research
for his dissertation, an independent ethnographical case study of a Tostan
class in a nearby community. After receiving his PhD in 2013, he served
as Director of Monitoring, Evaluation, Learning and Research at Tostan,
and is now appointed Lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and
Tropical Medicine.
As researchers, then, we had considerable familiarity with the Tostan
program and at the onset of the study two of us had witnessed, firsthand,
positive community events organized by Tostan.
The researchers were White, privileged educators and scholars from the
North studying nonliterate participants living in resource-poor communi-
ties in the South.
Respondent
Because research took place in resource-poor rural communities, educa-
tional opportunities were scarce. If respondents connected the research to
the Tostan program or the Tostan facilitator or to their community being
able to continue in the program, they would likely express positive views
about their experiences, especially if they valued having access to such
educational opportunities.
Respondents also had little experience with research procedures and

with being interviewed; they might rely on well-rehearsed responses used
in daily interactions with outsiders.
Tostan facilitators lived in the communities. Respondents might refrain
from stating anything critical of someone in a “teacher” role.
Respondents who volunteered for interviews might be more engaged
in the classes and more positive about them than those who did not
volunteer.
Interview/Focus Group Questions

The questions asked might be misunderstood or answered with a different
context in mind. The 2010 questions involved experiences that they were
having in the middle of an educational process; they might not yet have
absorbed fully what they were learning and how they felt about it.
Interviewers
The Senegalese interviewers were outsiders to the communities. Their
role was unfamiliar to respondents, especially during the earlier interviews.
Respondents might desire to please them as outsiders. Respondents might
falsely assume that the interviewers had access to resources or had control
over the continuation of the program in their community.
Translation from Pulaar to English

Any translation can involve the loss of meanings, missed connotations, and
inaccuracies, all of which misrepresent the experiences of the participants.
Mitigating Bias
We took what steps we could to mitigate potential biases, and acknowl-
edge that those efforts could have been insufficient.
Researcher
The interdisciplinary research team was trained in methods to reduce bias.
Recognizing the bias that our association with the organization would
present, we designed the study as exploratory and appreciative, to capture
participant descriptions as they attended classes in the first part of the
Tostan curriculum. We hired and trained Senegalese research assistants,
videographers, and a translator/transcriber to collect and transcribe all
data. These assistants had no prior knowledge of the Tostan curriculum
INTRODUCTION 17
and were not associated with the program in any way. Only Cislaghi
entered the villages to answer interviewer/videographer questions.
We worked closely with the research assistants as we developed inter-
view and focus group protocols, carefully trained them, and piloted all the
data collection tools before initiating the research. The interviewers and
the translator/transcriber were trained in key terms used in the Tostan
curriculum (e.g., the Wolof words Tostan uses for human rights and other
related concepts in the curriculum) so that they would recognize the terms
and be able to follow up on their meanings. We frequently consulted the
interviewers when the translator had questions or concerns.
We cross-checked each other’s analysis, creating memos and coding
charts, checking back with interviewers and the translator in places that
we were uncertain about.
Respondent
Tostan communities and class participants are not paid a stipend to attend
classes. Neither Tostan nor the facilitator places negative consequences on
those who are absent from class although attendance is taken. [Sometimes
the classes create negative sanctions on their own.] To receive the Tostan
program, communities have to build their own classroom, provide room
and board for the facilitator, agree to attend classes, and elect a CMC with
at least nine women serving as members. Communities also select those
interested in taking the classes from a list of people who can devote the time
to attending the classes and represent different parts of the community.
During training (in 2009 and 2011), the interviewers practiced explain-
ing at the beginning of every interview that they and the researchers were
not working for Tostan and that no one in Tostan or on the research team
would know their identity or their responses; only the researchers knew
the identity of the villages. We assured them that we would not show the
videos to anyone in Tostan and that they would be destroyed after analysis;
only the researchers saw the videos. We trained them to say that we were
not studying the facilitator but the whole class.
We also trained interviewers to tell respondents that the researchers
were interested in all their views about all their experiences in the pro-
gram, so that everyone could learn about what was working and what was
not.
Because the Tostan facilitators live in communities during the class
sessions, we did not ask direct questions about the facilitators or their
facilitation.
Although we encouraged interviewers to seek out the same respon-

dents, we realized that they might not always be available, so interviewers
sought out different class participants. Over the eight sessions we inter-
viewed a variety of men and women.
We were aware that those who volunteered for the interviews might
have been more likely to be positively influenced by program content;
thus in our data analysis we paid special attention to negative statements.
Interview/Focus Group Questions

We carefully constructed questions that allowed respondents to describe
their experiences. Several of our questions were designed to elicit unre-
hearsed answers (“What surprised you in class today?” “What stood out to
you in class today?”) We trained interviewers to refrain from any judgment
about what they were told, to look curious and interested (but without
signs of approval/disapproval) and to follow up with neutral questions
such as “Could you tell me more?”
The focus groups also allowed us to check for bias in our analysis of the
2010 data. We compared and contrasted respondents’ earlier descriptions
of changes emerging or taking place with later descriptions of the changes
that had not taken place, were further along, or had happened. We also
interviewed our interviewers to learn what they saw and heard during
their stays in the communities and to further check on claims made by the
respondents.
Interviewers
The interviewers entered the community a week prior to conducting the
interviews and arranged the interviews so that the facilitator and class
members would be familiar with them. They shared personal information
about their lives, as respondents shared information with them. They cor-
rected misunderstandings that arose about the research and the interviews.
Transcription/Translation
We worked closely with the translator as he transcribed the interviews,
training him to transcribe everything he heard and encouraging him
to mark places that were unclear either because of equipment difficul-
ties (e.g., wind in the background) or the nature of respondents’ state-
ments. We double-checked places where meanings were unclear with the
interviewers.
Another random document with
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during the Lybian campaign, stung Italians to the quick, was the
promoter of the scheme, and that the shelving of M. Pichon, who
was a friend of Italy’s, was its corollary.
Italy was made to feel that France’s attitude towards her was
systematically semi-hostile. No one act, excepting the concentration
of the French fleet in the Mediterranean, was deemed radically
serious, but the endless sequence of pin pricks was construed as
evidence of a disposition which was as unfriendly as seemed
compatible with neighbourly relations. Among these things, the
protection of Italian religious communities in the East was taken by
the Germans as the text for repeated diatribes against France for her
unfriendly conduct towards her Latin sister. Atheistic France, it was
sneeringly remarked, insists on protecting in the East the very
communities which she has driven from her own territories in
Europe, not because of the love she bears them, but by reason of
her jealousy and hatred of Italy.
I remember one dispute of the kind which arose about the house
of an Italian religious congregation in Tripoli of Syria. All the
members save one being Italians, and having demanded the
protection of their own Government, were entitled to have it, in virtue
of a convention on the subject between France and Italy a few years
before. The French Ambassador in Rome was anxious to have the
question put off indefinitely, although at bottom there was no
question at all, seeing that the case had been provided for. During
the negociations and discussions that needlessly went on for fully
two years, Germany lost no opportunity to rub France’s
unfriendliness into Italy’s memory, and to prove that Italy’s one
natural ally is Austria-Hungary.
These things are of yesterday, and it needs some little time to
deaden the recollection of them.
When the present war was on the point of breaking out, one of
the first misstatements spread by the diplomacy of the two
Prussianized allies was Italy’s promise to co-operate with them
against France, in return for the stipulated cession to her—as her
share of the spoils of war—of Tunis, Savoy, and Nice. That this
proposal was to have been made is certain. Whether the intention
was actually carried out I am unable to say. But the archives of the
French Foreign Office possess an interesting and trustworthy report
on the subject, only one item of which is erroneous, to the effect that
Italy had succumbed to the temptation.
Writing in the first half of June last on the subject of Italy’s foreign
policy, I expressed myself in the following terms:
The problems with which Italian statesmen have for several

decades been grappling are uncommonly difficult and delicate.
Probably no European Government has in recent times been
confronted with a task so thorny as that with which the
responsible advisers of the three kings of United Italy have had
to deal. And the tact, resourcefulness, and suppleness with
which they have achieved a set of results which theoretically
seemed unattainable and incompatible with each other
command the admiration of competent judges. Italy’s foreign
policy resembles nothing so much as one of those egg-dances
which Pope Leo X. delighted to witness after his Lucullan
banquets. And the deftness and rapidity with which the moves
are made and steps taken that seem certain to crush this egg or
that, yet do no damage to any of them, are amazing. But unlike
the papal dancers, the statesmen of the Consulta can look
forward to no prize, to no popular applause. Abroad they are
accused of double-dealing, and at home of pursuing a costly
policy of adventure. France charges them with ingratitude and
perfidy. In Great Britain they are sometimes set down as
schemers. In Vienna they are mistrusted, while Berlin indulges in
scepticism or holds its judgment in suspense. And to crown all,
they are blamed or repudiated by a certain section of their own
people, whose welfare they have been laboriously endeavouring
to promote.
Italy’s policy in its general lines has been imposed by
circumstances and tempered by statesmanship. Far from
embodying Utopian notions or manifesting herself in dubious
ventures, she has kept well within the limits of the essential, the
indispensable. By making common cause with the two military
Powers of Central Europe and forming the Triple Alliance, she
steered clear of a conflict with Austria-Hungary which, so far as
one can discern, there was no other way of avoiding. Italian
irredentism in the Dual Monarchy and the rivalry of the two
States in the Adriatic had confronted them both with the dilemma
of choosing between a formal alliance and open antagonism.
The decision took the form of a bold move, but a necessary one.
Italy’s adherence to the League gave deep offence to France,
and led to their estrangement, which was followed by several
press campaigns and one damaging tariff war. And in spite of
the subsequent reconciliation, the relations between the two
Latin nations have never since been marked by genuine
cordiality. The press of France and many eminent politicians
there resent it as a sort of racial treason that Italy should be
bound by treaty to Germany and Austria-Hungary. Russia, who
for a time cultivated a close friendship with the Italian people,
was surprised and pained by the seemingly needless and
ostentatious renewal of the Triple Alliance in the year 1912, a
twelvemonth before it had terminated. Even British publicists
have found much to condemn in the attitude of the Italian
Government during the Balkan war and down to the present
moment. During all this time the cultivation of rudimentary
neighbourliness, to say nothing of friendship between the Italian
and the Austrian peoples as distinguished from their
Governments, has been for the statesmen of both countries, and
in particular for those of Rome, a work of infinite care, ingenious
expedients, and painful self-discipline, openly deprecated by an
influential section of the Italian press.
The alpha and omega of Italy’s foreign policy in the present
is the maintenance of her actual position in the Mediterranean,
and in the future the seasonable improvement of that position,
and in every case the prevention of a shifting of the equilibrium
such as would alter it to her disadvantage. To attain these
objects is an essential condition of Italy’s national existence, and
calls for the constant exercise of vigilance and caution
alternating with push and daring by her responsible rulers. It
behoves her, therefore, to be well affected towards France,
friendly with Austria, amicable with Great Britain, to hold fast to
the Triple Alliance, and to give no cause for umbrage to the
Triple Entente. In a word, it is the prestidigitation of
statesmanship. And her diplomacy has acquitted itself well of the
task. The sum of the efforts of successive Governments has
been to raise Italy to a unique position in Europe, to make her a
link between the two rival groups of Powers, to one of which she
herself belongs, to bestow upon her the second place in the
Triple Alliance, and to invest her with enormous influence for
peace in the councils of Europe. To grudge her this influence,
which has been uniformly exerted for the best interests of
Europe and her own, implies imperfect acquaintance with those
interests or else a leaning towards militarism. Every
development which tends to strengthen Italy, diplomatically and
politically, tends also to augment the safeguards of public peace
and to lessen the chances of a European conflict. On these
grounds, therefore, were there none other, a violent domestic
reaction against the policy that has scored such brilliant results
would be an international calamity. Happily, there is good hope
that the bulk of the nation is wiser and also stronger than the
section which is answerable for, and in secret sympathy with, the
15
recent excesses.
As the Mediterranean State par excellence, Italy cannot
contemplate the present distribution of power on the shores of
that sea with genuine complacency. The grounds for
dissatisfaction are rooted in the history of her past and in her
apprehensions for the future. None the less, the status quo in
Europe being hallowed must be respected under heavy pains
and penalties. And the policy of the Consulta is directed to its
maintenance, because any modification of it in favour of another
State, great or small, would infallibly drive Italy out of her
quiescence and strain her to press with all her energies and at
all risks in the direction of a favourable readjustment. That is why
seventeen years ago the Austrian and the Italian Foreign
Secretaries concluded the so-called noli me tangere Convention,
by which each of the two allies undertook to abstain from
meddling with Albania, to uphold Turkish rule there, and, failing
that, to establish self-government. It was in virtue of the same
principle that during the Balkan war Italy supported Austria-
Hungary in frustrating Servia’s attempt to divide up Albania
among the allies and obtain for herself access to the Adriatic. As
long as the Adriatic continues to present the same essential
factors as to-day, the Italian Government will not swerve from its
present attitude. But if once those factors or their relative
positions towards each other underwent a change, the whole
scaffolding of self-denial and everything that rested upon that
would fall to pieces like a house of cards. And that scaffolding
supports the peace of Europe.
On her Eastern shore Italy possesses no port capable of
serving as a thoroughly suitable base for naval operations.
Brindisi is at best a mere makeshift; Venice is no better. Italy’s
rival, Austria, on the other hand, is luckier. Cattaro, Sebenico,
and Pola serve the purpose admirably, giving the Austrian navy
a distinct advantage in this respect. It must, therefore, be gall
and wormwood to Italian politicians to think that an ideal port,
Valona, on the Albanian coast, a few hours from Italy, lies
unutilized because each State grudges it to the other on grounds
which cannot be reasoned away. Valona, incorporated in the
Habsburg Monarchy, which is already so well equipped on the
Adriatic both for defence and attack, would turn the scale against
Italy, upset the equilibrium which is at present accepted as a
stern necessity, and might even unchain the forces of war. The
prospect of kindred eventualities forbids Austria to allow that
magnificent naval base to fall into the hands of her rival, who,
holding the key to the Adriatic, could close the Otranto Canal
and immobilize the fleet of the Dual Monarchy.
It would be unfair, therefore, to contend that the mainspring
of Italy’s seemingly anti-Slav policy is racial bitterness or political
narrow-mindedness. A natural instinct of self-preservation
underlies it which neither argument nor sentiment can affect. Her
present wish and the object of her endeavours is to enable
Albania to maintain her independence and to keep the
equilibrium in the Adriatic intact. And it is sheer inconceivable
that any Italian Government should deviate from this line of
action....
It is entirely misleading, therefore, to assert that Italy’s
alliance with the two military Powers of Central Europe is the
result of eclectic affinities or to fancy that by cajolery or threats
she can be moved to sever the links that bind her to the concern.
I entertain not the slightest doubt that the French Ambassador in
Rome, M. Barère, whose infinite patience and marvellous tact
drew France and Italy very close together for a while, would be
the first to recognize that the breaking-up of the Triple Alliance is
a hopeless enterprise, and an aim of questionable utility from
any point of view. Outsiders, whose opinions are moulded by the
daily press, may be excused for thinking otherwise. The renewal
of the treaty in the year 1912, a full year before its expiry, has
been uniformly construed as an indication of Italy’s resolve to
emphasize her friendship with her allies, and this interpretation
appeared to be borne out by a number of concomitant
circumstances and in particular by the comments of the
European press. It was likewise assumed that at the same time
the Treaty was supplemented by a naval convention turning
upon the future action of the Triple Alliance in the Mediterranean.
I investigated these reports in Rome and elsewhere, and I
received convincing evidence that they were both equally
groundless. No new clause touching the naval forces of the
Alliance, or indeed dealing with anything else, was added to the
Treaty. It was renewed as it stood. And the early date at which it
was signed was credibly explained to me as the outcome of a
legitimate eagerness on the part of Italy to see reaffirmed by
Austria-Hungary the noli me tangere Convention which acted as
a bar to encroachments, territorial or other, on Albania.
Between France and Italy the cordiality established mainly
by the exertions of M. Barère has of late years undergone a
marked change, and while the two Governments were
endeavouring to smooth over their differences and deal amicably
with each contentious matter as it cropped up, the press of each
country was bombarding the other with taunts and reproaches
which rendered the task of diplomacy unnecessarily difficult. And
British publicists, for reasons which lie near the surface, felt
inclined to take sides with their French colleagues, without
perhaps investigating with sufficient closeness and care the
origin of the estrangement. Those unfriendly utterances, some of
them the effects of mere misunderstandings, run through
contemporary political history like a red thread through a piece of
white cambric.
Italy’s solicitude for friendship with France and Great Britain
is prompted by interest as well as sentiment. For she sorely
needs peace, recognizes the need, and is exerting herself to the
utmost to insure it. And this indisputable fact might profitably
serve as the starting-point of one’s reasoning on the subject, and
likewise as a safe basis for the attitude of the statesmen
interested. For a long time, it is true, the occupation of Tunis by
France in 1887 was resented by every public man in the
Peninsula. The ensuing tension was accentuated as much by
the manner as by the policy of Crispi. The Abyssinian campaign
made matters worse, seeing that the Abyssinians were believed
to have received their arms and ammunition from the French.
During all those untoward incidents, Great Britain was found on
Italy’s side. The Franco-Italian war of tariffs raised mutual
animosity to its highest power, after which a reaction set in which
led to the conclusion of the Mediterranean agreements with
France and England.
During the Lybian war Italy seized two French steamers, the
Manuba and the Carthage, for alleged contravention of
international law, and sent them to Cagliari. France protested,
and M. Poincaré took up such a decided position in the matter
and gave it such vehement expression that all Italy was
unanimous in holding him as the destroyer of the good relations
laboriously established by M. Barère and the Consulta. And the
affront has not yet been forgotten. The next grievance had its
source in the action of the British Government, which confided to
France the protection of her Mediterranean interests, and
encouraged the Republic to keep the bulk of its warships in that
sea. This preponderance of the French fleet in Italy’s own sea
was regarded by the Government of the Peninsula as an
unfriendly act, owing to its special bearings on their relative
naval strength there. And the author of this obnoxious innovation
was believed to be the Republic, which had induced Great
Britain to acquiesce.
Lately Italy asked for an economic opening in Asia Minor,
into which every Great Power of Europe was penetrating. That
the demand was not unreasonable is shown by the fact that it
has since been complied with. In view of that contingency,
therefore, it would have been well to examine it without bias,
instead of opposing it with vehemence. For Great Britain is no
longer the most puissant State in the Midland Sea, and
circumstances may one day arise in which she will be in want of
an ally there. And Italy is her most natural partner. The
circumstances that she is a member of the Triple Alliance is no
bar to this prospective co-operation. For the Triple Alliance is a
defensive combination. It provides for a certain well-defined
eventuality, but outside that sphere Italy is untrammelled.
The pith of the matter, then, is that British and French
publicists are wont to lay undue stress on Italy’s alliance with
Germany and Austria-Hungary. That engagement is but a single
facet of her activity. There are others more enduring. She is
obliged to protect her special interests and is also free to
cultivate her special friendships. Paramount among those
interests is the maintenance of peace, and chief of those
friendships is that with Great Britain and France. Even the Triple
Alliance was founded as an association for the prevention of
war, and hitherto it has not drifted into aggression. Italy’s
influence in that concern is growing, and together with it her
facilities for upholding the pacific policy with which she has
uniformly identified herself. And the more steadily her economic
well-being and her political prestige develop, the greater will be
the weight which as second member of the Alliance she can
16
throw into the scale of peace.
Italy occupies a unique position in the polity of Continental

Europe. Whereas all other Great Powers owe much of what they
have and are to successful wars, Italy is indebted for her rapid
progress and growth chiefly to the arts of peace and the triumphs of
diplomacy. And as she is an essentially pacific and cultured State,
whose policy is inspired solely by national interests, it stands to
reason that her statesmen will take heed not to endanger what she
already possesses and what she may reasonably hope for in the
future by any hasty move, and least of all by impulsively exchanging
peace for war. In plain English, she will be guided by events, and it
would be mere childishness to expect to see her rush into the arena,
moved by a sudden outburst of sentimentality. And as yet the
national interest is not deemed to have become a decisive motive.
For this reason the importunity of her ex-allies is more likely to
damage than help the cause in which it is employed. The Teutonic
belligerents, too, are wasting their breath when they hold out the
annexation of Tunis, Savoy, and Nice as the price of her co-
operation, just as the Entente Powers would be doing were they to
endeavour to entice her to their side by dangling maps of Italia
irredenta and Valona before her eyes. Italian statesmen may be
trusted to gauge the situation aright, and when the upshot of the
mighty struggle can be forecast, to make no miscalculation. They
may also be credited with decision enough to take their final stand in
good time. But above all else, it should be borne in mind that Italy
will be guided solely by the promptings of her national interests. She
will hardly consider these sufficiently guaranteed by a scrap of paper,
and still less by a German promise of one.
Respecting one important consideration Italian statesmen will
hardly be content to suspend their judgment or to cherish illusions.
However satisfied in mind they may be that their neutrality was
warranted by the aggression of their German and Austrian allies,
they cannot ignore the contrary thesis which is firmly held by every
thinking German and Austrian in the two Empires. The Kaiser, his
Chancellor, the Evangelical theologians, the men of letters of the
Fatherland, Count Bernstorff in Washington, all hold that Germany
and Austria are but defending themselves against unprincipled
aggression. And the corollary of this declaration is that Italy is guilty
of the monstrous crime of regarding her treaty obligations as a
worthless scrap of paper. For the moment impunity is the result of
powerlessness to punish the criminal, and will continue only as long
as its cause is operative.
That this and other equally momentous aspects of the thorny
problem are receiving due consideration may be taken for granted.
CHAPTER VII
THE TWELFTH HOUR
Although the Austrian ultimatum to Servia was so worded and the

time accorded for a reply so limited as to ensure its rejection,
misgivings were, as we saw, felt and uttered in Vienna and Budapest
that Servia would knuckle down and execute the humiliating behests
of the Ballplatz. For this was a consummation which was deemed
highly undesirable. The carefully laid plan would have become
difficult of realization had Austria’s terms been acquiesced in
unreservedly. It would have rendered a military expedition
superfluous and left Servia’s army intact. Hence the exhaustive
precautions adopted for the purpose of provoking a negative answer
to the ultimatum from Belgrade.
On July 23rd, while the Franco-Russian festivities were at their
height, and M. Poincaré and the Tsar were announcing to the world
their ultra-pacific strivings, the bolt fell from the blue. What will
Russia say? people asked in Western Europe. Well, the Russian
Foreign Office, as we now know, was informed by Austria of the text
of the Note only seventeen hours after it had been presented, and
only thirty-one hours before the time limit had lapsed! The little case
thus made of Russia by the Teutonic allies was meant to be clearly
conveyed by this studied affront. It had been decided in Berlin and
Vienna that Russia must and would remain passive.
Delay was the only danger apprehended in Vienna, and nothing
was left undone to prevent its occurrence. M. Pasitch, the Servian
Premier, who appears to have had an intuition of what was brewing,
let it be known before the Austrian Note was presented that he was
absent from Belgrade and was going abroad. His substitute was
nominated. But in Vienna they were on the alert, and M. Pasitch
received from that city an urgent telegram notifying him that the
representations which the Austro-Hungarian Government were
drawing up would be delivered in Belgrade almost immediately, and
that their tenor was such as to necessitate his presence in the
capital. Thereupon the Premier hastened back to Belgrade.
From the first inception of the Austro-German plan of concerted
action, the parts of each of the actors were assigned. Servia was to
be stung into utterances or action which would warrant resort to an
Austrian punitive expedition, but before this Russia was to be
warned that if she aided or abetted her protégé and issued a
mobilization order against Austria, a counter-move would at once be
made by Germany, who would mobilize, not as a demonstration, but
for war. This warning was to serve as an efficacious deterrent. If
Russia, it was argued, can be got to realize that even partial
mobilization on her part will provoke not merely general mobilization
by Austria, but war with Germany and with Austria-Hungary, her zeal
for the Southern Slavs will be damped, and she will entrench herself
behind diplomatic formulas. This conviction was deep-rooted. It
formed one of the postulates of the Austro-German scheme.
Evidences of it are to be met with everywhere. But by way of making
quite sure, private letters were written by Continental statesmen to
their friends in the interested Governments—letters like that which
the Kaiser himself once penned to Lord Tweedmouth—impressing
upon them the gravity of the situation, and adjuring them to realize
that this time Austria and Germany were playing no mere game of
bluff, but were in downright earnest, and that if peace was to be
maintained at all, it could only be by inducing Russia to forego
mobilization.
That, too, was the burden of many of my own messages to the
Daily Telegraph, beginning with the very first. Thus on July 28th I
telegraphed:
The moment Russia mobilizes against the Dual Monarchy,

the German Empire as well as Austria-Hungary will respond, and
then the object of these military operations will be pursued to the
bitter end, with the results so clearly foreseen and so graphically
described by Sir Edward Grey in his proposals.
In the interests of European peace, therefore, which can still
be safeguarded, in spite of the hostilities now going ahead, it is
essential that every means of friendly pressure should be
thoroughly exhausted before a provocative measure such as
mobilization is resorted to. For mobilization by Russia, Germany,
and Austria will connote the outbreak of the long-feared general
Continental war.
In the assumption that Russia would be partly intimidated and

partly talked over by her French allies and English friends as soon as
these learned what tremendous issues hung in the balance, the two
Teutonic Governments laid it down from the start that no Power
would be permitted to intervene between Austria and Servia in any
shape or form. These two States must compose or fight out their
quarrel as best they could without the good offices or advice of any
foreign Government. “No discussion will be allowed,” I accordingly
telegraphed; “no extension of time will be granted.” All these
limitations were elements of the pressure brought to bear upon
Russia directly through her friends and ally. I sought to make this
clear in one of my messages to the Daily Telegraph, in which I wrote:
Meanwhile, Austria’s allies have taken their stand, which is

favourable to the action of this Government and to the
employment of all the available means to localize the eventual
conflict. It is further assumed that Great Britain will, if hostilities
should result, hold aloof, and that France will make her influence
17
felt in preventing rather than waiting to localize the struggle.
But Russia needed no deterrents, if Austria’s ostensible aim

were her real one, if she were bent only on obtaining guarantees for
Servia’s good behaviour in future. For the Tsardom was peaceably
disposed and extremely averse to war. M. Sazonoff’s attitude was
straightforward and considerate. He showed thorough understanding
for Austria’s grievances and reasonable claims. He had no intention
of jeopardizing peace by screening Servia or rescuing her from the
consequences of her misbehaviour. King Peter’s Cabinet accordingly
received sound advice from the Tsar’s Government. And what was
more to the point, they adopted it.
During the second day of the time-limit in Vienna and Budapest it
was feared that Servia would give in. M. Jovanovitch, the Servian
Minister, hinted as much, and when one reads Servia’s reply one
cannot fairly reproach him with overstating the gist of it. For it was
acceptance of all those demands which were compatible with
independence. But then independence was precisely what Austria
was minded to take away. And the reserves and provisoes made by
the Servian Note for the purpose of safeguarding it determined the
departure of Baron von Giesl from Belgrade. Characteristic of the
fixed resolve of the Teutonic States to force a quarrel upon Servia at
all costs and irrespective of her reply to the Austrian Note is the
circumstance, vouched for by the Russian press, that within forty
minutes of the delivery of that reply, which was a lengthy document,
the Austrian Minister in Belgrade had read and rejected it, had
removed his luggage and that of his staff from the Legation to the
railway station, and was seated in the train that was to convey him
out of Servia. Forty minutes!
It is not easy for Western minds, accustomed to truth, honour,
and self-respect, to realize how all the usages of international
intercourse were thus set at naught during this first stage of the
European conflict. Words and forms were employed to mislead.
Servia’s answer was wanted only as providing a plausible pretext for
the resort to force, which had been decided on from the first. And I
was informed—although I must in fairness add that I had no tangible
evidence for the assertion, nothing but a strong presumption—that
even if M. Pasitch, violating the Constitution of his country, had
undertaken to carry out all Austria’s behests unreservedly, and if no
internal troubles had resulted from this subservience, the Austrian
troops massed on the Servian frontiers would not have been baulked
of their prey. Another demand was held in reserve which Servia
could not and would not comply with, and her refusal would have
afforded the wished-for ground for invasion.
In any and every case, Servia was to have been entered by
Austrian troops. That seems to have been a settled and irrevocable
resolve. And all the diplomatic notes, conversations, and reports,
which Sir Edward Grey, M. Viviani, and M. Sazonoff treated as
excusable manifestations of fiercely burning anger, were but
cunningly devised expedients to sting the Belgrade Cabinet into
some word or act that might serve to justify this set plan. The plan
was not at first suspected by the Entente Powers, nor was it fully
understood for some time even after its existence had been
discovered. It was, as we saw, twofold. First, the “punishment” of the
army by the forces of the Dual Monarchy, and of the nation by the
levy of a crushing war indemnity, and of the economic energies of
the country by the imposition of a commercial treaty which was to lay
Servia permanently at the mercy of her powerful navy. And, second,
the partition of the newly annexed territories among Servia’s
neighbours and the establishment of a Balkan League under the
ægis of the Habsburgs. The machinery for bringing about this latter
object was in full movement at the very time that the British, French,
and Russian Governments were basing their moderation and self-
containment on Austria’s voluntary undertaking not to annex any
portion of Servian territory. Here, again, was a case of juggling with
phrases which the Chancelleries of the Entente Powers were taking
at their face value. Pressure was even then being put upon Turkey,
Bulgaria, and Greece to assist in this underhand scheme, and
reliance was being placed in the Hohenzollern King Carol, who
would, it was assumed, make full use of his authority to hinder
Roumania from taking sides against Austria-Hungary. The Treaty of
Bucharest was to be proclaimed a scrap of waste paper.
Had the Governments of the Entente realized the impossibilities
that beset them when zealously endeavouring to hit upon a formula
which would have satisfied Vienna and insured the quiescence of St.
Petersburg, they would unquestionably have bent their efforts in
quite other directions. But this vital aspect of the matter lay hidden
from their vision. They were further imposed upon by Germany’s
evident anxiety that the war area should be restricted to Servian
territory. Indeed, one of the most caustic ironies of the crisis lay in
the eager co-operation of the Entente Powers with Germany for what
they all termed the peace of Europe, but which the Teutonic States
knew to be the smooth execution of their own sinister designs. The
combined moral pressure of all Europe was accordingly brought to
bear upon Russia to oblige or constrain her to passivity for the sake
of the general peace.
And it must be confessed that the Tsar’s Ministers came up to
the highest expectations conceived of them. Defence, not offence,
was their watchword. They would follow the lead of their future
adversaries and content themselves with parrying their thrusts. M.
Sazonoff’s first step, although he may have foreseen the coming
hurricane, was to ask for an extension of the time-limit. “If you want
to localize the quarrel,” he argued, “you must adopt suitable
measures. You say that our co-operation is essential. Well, we are
willing to accord it. Let us get to work at once. Some of your
demands involve a change in the Servian Constitution. No Minister
and no Cabinet can accomplish this without a law passed by the
Legislature. And this cannot be done in a few hours. But give Servia
a few days to turn your demands over in her mind, and give us time
to advise and to urge her to prudence and compromise.” Now if, as
France and Great Britain assumed, Austria wanted only to punish
Servia for her past attitude and obtain guarantees of future good
behaviour, she would have complied with this common-sense
request. But as that was not her entire plan, she refused,
congruously with her preliminary arrangement with the German
Kaiser, and relying on the axiom that Russia would not fight.
This negative answer disclosed the fact that the two allies’ plans
went further than had been assumed. Thereupon the Tsar’s
Government issued orders countermanding the manœuvres,
promoting officers, summarily terminating the camp gatherings,
prohibiting aviation over the frontiers, and proclaiming the two
capitals in a state of “extraordinary protection.” Notwithstanding, or
by reason of this, Berlin put in a plea that she should not be
confounded with Vienna. “It was not we who sent the ultimatum.
Neither did we know the text of it. That was Austria’s handiwork, and,
what is more to the point, she has acted at her own risk and peril.
Please bear that in mind.” “We certainly will. But are we to take it
that, having acted at her own risk and peril, Austria is proceeding
alone?” “Ah, well, she is our ally, you know, and we are bound to
second her demands and stand by her to the end.” “Well, will you
exercise an ally’s right and counsel her to postpone military
operations until Europe has had time to secure for her ample
satisfaction.” “No, we do not see our way to comply with this
request.” That was Germany’s mode of speech and action.
Thereupon Russia introduced a modification of the law of military
conscription in so far as it deals with officers of the reserve and the
militia. The practical result of this innovation was to facilitate
mobilization should that measure be subsequently resorted to.
Soon after the expiry of the time-limit Austria declared war on the
realm of King Peter. M. Sazonoff, having from the start defined his
country’s position in the words, “Russia cannot adopt an attitude of
unconcern in a struggle between Austria-Hungary and Servia,”
continued to give striking proofs of the Tsar’s will to save Europe
from a general war. Sir Edward Grey had offered to get satisfaction
for the Dual Monarchy through the Powers, and he would have
accomplished his purpose without a doubt. But Austria was bent on
getting something more than satisfaction for herself and for Germany
in spite of Russia, whom she stigmatized as the mischief-maker.
Hence all the heavy guns of European diplomacy were levelled
against the Tsardom, while the St. Petersburg Foreign Office went
beyond the Hercules’ pillars of conciliation. Not only had Russia
induced Servia to consent to terms which were onerous and
humiliating, but the Russian Ambassador in Vienna said it was
probable that his Government would, if properly approached, go still
18
further. Our own Ambassador in that capital assured his chief that
he had gathered that Russia “would go a long way to meet Austrian
19
demands on Servia.” M. Sazonoff did not stop even here. He was
careful to explain that mobilization should be envisaged as what it
really was, namely, a mere intimation that Russia must be consulted
20
regarding the fate of Servia, not as a threat of war.
The German Kaiser, celebrating the 200th anniversary of the
Kingdom of Prussia, had laid down the principle that “in this world
nothing must be settled without the intervention of Germany and of
the German Emperor,” yet the fate of a Slav State, which Russia
had, so to say, created and watched over and protected, was about
to be decided without her consent, nay, without her knowledge.
Russia was to be ostentatiously ignored and the Balkan States to be
impressed by the fact that she was worse than powerless as a
friend. That the Tsar’s Government, however ready for compromise,
would not brook this deadly affront was manifest to all excepting
those who had settled it to their own satisfaction that she was too
helpless to move. And the two Teutonic allies were of this opinion.
That is why their answers to Russia’s demands for a conference, or
at any rate for an exchange of views, were not only negative in
substance, but wantonly insolent in form. All that M. Sazonoff
demanded was an assurance that Servia would not be utterly
crushed. It was refused. He would, he said, understand that Austria-
Hungary is compelled to exact from Servia measures which will
secure her Slav provinces from the continuance of hostile
21
propaganda from Servian territory. And that was what every
statesman in Europe was also saying. If Austria’s demands had
been, as they seemed, inspired by a legitimate desire to safeguard
herself from a real Servian danger, the undertakings of Servia and
Russia ought to have afforded her a broad enough basis for a pacific
settlement. But all these colloquies, assurances, and claims were but
the screen behind which a huge anti-European conspiracy was being
hatched. And as yet the truth had not dawned on the statesmen of
the Entente, who, still hypnotized by the crime of Sarajevo, were
honestly working to obtain amends and guarantees for Austria-
Hungary and ward off the growing peril of a general war.
Germany, ever alert and watchful, was the first to note that
Russia’s attitude differed from what it should be according to
programme. She did not appear disposed to take with resignation
the humiliation devised for her. She declared that she would not be
indifferent to a conflict between Austria and Servia. She demanded a
hearing in the councils of those who arrogated to themselves the
right of life and death over her Slav protégé. As soon as this
discrepancy between the actual and the expected became evident,
the Berlin Government, which had made provision for this
eventuality, commenced elaborate preparations against Russia,
particularly in the Finnish Gulf. And as is the wont of Prussia, these
preparations were secret. But the Russian authorities got wind of
them, and apprized our Ambassador in St. Petersburg of what was
22
taking place.
Russia’s spirited determination, coupled with her dignified
conciliatory disposition, caused painful heartburnings in Vienna. It
constituted the first hitch in the official programme. What was the
good of having agents in St. Petersburg, who supplied exact copies
of State papers and faithful narratives of private conversations, if the
legitimate deductions from these data were upset at the very outset?
To me, who witnessed the gradual breaking in of this painful light
on the systematic mind of Teutonic diplomacy, there was something
intensely ludicrous in the tragic spirit in which it was received. Could
nothing, it was asked, be done to keep Russia in bounds? Was
France fully alive to the issues which Russia’s intervention would
raise? Where was the love of peace so lately and so loudly
professed by the Tsar and M. Poincaré?
I had not the faintest doubt as to how Russia would behave
under the provocation to which she was being subjected by the
Teutonic States. There are some considerations of an altruistic
nature which nations, like individuals, set above their own vital
interests—considerations that engage all that is deepest and noblest
in their feelings, that fire their imagination and call forth all the
energies of their will. And the fate of the little Servian nation was one
of these causes. To the Russian the Slav cause is much more than a
political interest: it is a religious cult. But for such altruistic heroisms
the Prussianized German has no sense. To him it is the fourth
emotional dimension. On July 30th I despatched the following
telegram to the Daily Telegraph, which I afterwards discovered was
not transmitted:
It would be a delusion to suppose that Russia will keep the

peace while Servia is undergoing punishment that would reduce
her to the rank of a semi-vassal State, and it would be a piece of
still greater self-deception to imagine that Germany will not raise
her army to its war-footing once the mobilization order has been
issued in St. Petersburg, or will not use that army to the full
when it is in the field. And as Austria-Hungary is resolved to
have her way with Servia, and to refuse to render account of her
action to any other Power, one is forced to the conclusion that
the only possible solution to the present crisis is the much-
dreaded European war. It is for that tremendous struggle that the
Great Powers, and possibly one or other of the smaller ones,
must now make ready.
On July 30th the meek, insignificant figure of the German

Ambassador, Count Pourtalès, his head sheepishly bent down on his
left shoulder, passed through the spacious apartments of the
Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After a brief talk with M. Sazonoff
he became aware that the Rubicon was about to be passed,
whereupon, as our Ambassador to the Tsar puts it, “he completely
broke down. He appealed to M. Sazonoff to make some suggestion
which he would telegraph to the German Government as a last
hope.” For he, too, was aware that Russia’s entrance into the arena
was an item which the Berlin wire-pullers had no wish to add to their
compact little programme. To this appeal the Tsar’s Minister gave a
ready and conciliatory reply: “If Austria,” he said, “recognizing that
her conflict with Servia has assumed the character of a question of
European interest, declares herself ready to eliminate from her
ultimatum those points which run counter to the principle of Servia’s
sovereignty, Russia engages to stop all military preparations.”
That proposal was fair and moderate from every point of view
but one. And that one was the Austro-German plot, which it was
calculated to thwart.

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Values Deliberation and Collective

Action: Community Empowerment in

Entrepreneurship in Regional Communities: Exploring the

Hindu Women's Property Rights in Rural India: Law,

Enacting Values-Based Change: Organization Development

Values, political action, and change in the Middle East

From Plural to Institutional Agency: Collective Action

Action Learning in Health, Social and Community Care:

Action! China: A Field Guide to Using Chinese in the

Modern Financial Crises: Argentina, United States and

Values Deliberation &

ISBN 978-3-319-33755-5 ISBN 978-3-319-33756-2 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016948400

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

Cover illustration: © imageBROKER / Alamy Stock Photo

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

We are grateful to the Wallace Global Fund; UNICEF Child Protection;

2 Community Values and Aspirations as the CEP Arrives 41

Helping Each Other 44

3 Tostan’s Instructional Strategies 53

4 Learning and Values Deliberations During the Democracy

5 One-and-a-Half Years After the Democracy

Public Deliberation 108

6 Long-Term Program Results 137

7 Analysis: How Values Deliberations Lead

Fig. 7.1 The basic social process 147

Table 1.1 Tostan sessions studied 13

• “The best kind of help to others, whenever possible, is indirect, and

How do we advance child protection and human development in

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 1

• Do start from where the doers are

In an autonomy-respecting program, the motivation to change comes

evaluations; its program is already the subject of academic reporting and

• Have confidence in yourself and be able to express your ideas in

The nucleus of Tostan’s approach to values education is the first

it as “gender synchronization,” working with men and women, boys and

program in a number of communities in this region, only villages where

Entry into the Field

Facilitators’ Training Manual and Curriculum Guide

Table 1.1 Tostan sessions studied

1 General Introduction Sitting in a semicircle, village hopes, program goals,

Respondents also had little experience with research procedures and

Interview/Focus Group Questions

Translation from Pulaar to English

Although we encouraged interviewers to seek out the same respon-

Interview/Focus Group Questions

The problems with which Italian statesmen have for several

Italy occupies a unique position in the polity of Continental

Although the Austrian ultimatum to Servia was so worded and the

The moment Russia mobilizes against the Dual Monarchy,

In the assumption that Russia would be partly intimidated and

Meanwhile, Austria’s allies have taken their stand, which is

But Russia needed no deterrents, if Austria’s ostensible aim

It would be a delusion to suppose that Russia will keep the

On July 30th the meek, insignificant figure of the German

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