Between radical aspirations and pragmatic challenges: Institutionalizing participatory governance in Scotland

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I’d been travelling and been through quite some rough experiences and come face to face with injustice … I quickly got into the women’s movement, as there we were in the 1980s … It was very difficult, we were pushing agendas about women’s empowerment and participation, which had not been very well dealt with up until then in the revolution … So we had to invent our own methodologies … building our social movement with women’s organizations from all of Latin America. I was working in rural areas … confronting the really dire poverty that people were living in … And I wasn’t really equipped for that, but I was working with others … so it was like a fast-learning curve and then the political situation changed … So that meant, you know, being in confrontation all the time … I worked a lot on institutional development and that’s still really relevant here [in Scotland]. A lot of the discussions … about helping community organizations to develop so that they can be equal partners is crucial as well … . When I came back to Scotland I was writing to my friends in Latin America and saying … it’s just so amazing to see this kind of policy stuff coming out of government where you feel you’re on the right side, they are speaking the same language … for example around community empowerment and engagement … And while it is one thing to have the policies and the other is to make that shift … you know, you’ve got something to hold on to, ‘you’ve said this, this is our direction’ … I could see it when I came back … that there was a number of building blocks … that set Scotland on a path which I think is about, you know, a modern democracy.