55
 Sometimes a preliminary requirement for effective feedback is

that farmers become aware of their own knowledge and confident in express-

ing themselves in the presence of government officials. In many cases,

rural people have been so badly repressed for generations that this emer-

gence of consciousness and confidence is a difficult process. Paulo Freire

recommends that this process can be facilitated in a small discussion group

where people give reassurances to each other. A skilled leader can use

a dialogical process to help people discover and express what they know.

Freire suggests that adult literacy programs are particularly effective

vehicles for this process.1

 Other types of activities can serve a similar function. In a

pilot project conducted in a Tanzanian village, a dialogical process with a

group of villagers uncovered how much they knew about methods for grain

storage. When various traditional techniques were combined with some

modern ones, low-cost but effective grain.storage systems were developed.

In principle, once villagers have discovered that they have the power

to solve one set of problems, such as grain storage, they may apply this

knowledge to other problems. Thus, it would be most interesting to do

follow-up studies in the villages where this pilot project was conducted,

to see if farmers there are using group dialogical processes to solve

other community problems. A report of a somewhat similar project in

Ecuador, also based on Freire's principles, indicates a widespread expansion

of community activities, such as schools, bus service, rural electrification,


 Ipaulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

 2Appropriate Technology for Grain Storage. (New Haven: Economic
Development Bureau, 1977).