International languages of management, therapy,
marketing and advertising have their own jargon,
specialized terminology and global standard phrases.
In the development discourse, "sustainability",
"rights based", "participatory" are some frequently
used terms.
The "right for children to participate" is among the
development concepts that travel from an NGO in a
Western country, to (in this case) youth and project
workers in rural Ethiopia, and back to the donor -
seemingly unaffected by the many local adaptations
that the concept has undergone on the way. In the
daily lives of village...