Wilfred
Karunaratne, as Chair for the Participatory Institute for Development Alternatives
(PIDA) in Sri Lanka, accepted the 1982 Right Livelihood Award which his organization
received ”...for developing exemplary processes of self-reliant, participatory
development among the poor in Asia.” PIDA was created in 1980, based on the pioneering
research of South Asian scholars in the 1970s who examined why previous development
efforts had failed among the poor in Asia. With these new insights, PIDA has been
able to successfully lift rural and urban poor people out of poverty by helping
them to gain a better understanding of their situation from a political, economic
and social viewpoint, and then helping them organize and cooperate within their
communities to improve their abilities to be sustainable. Since its early beginnings,
PIDA has grown and expanded by working with other NGOs and has created a viable
model that is inspiring other programs throughout Asia.
