Grassroots development, or more generally empowerment, defined as collective action by the poor to address their problems for themselves, frequently assisted by local nongovernmental organizations, deserves a bigger role on the development stage. Charles David Kleymeyer, defined grassroots development in his 1994 book Cultural Expression and Grassroots Development as a process in which disadvantaged people organize themselves to overcome the obstacles to their social and economic well-being. Albert O. Hirschman, one renowned scholar did take collective action for grassroots development into account in a book titled, Getting Ahead Collectively. He found that collective action, arguably undertaken because of immediate benefits to each individual, could broaden into public advocacy with less clearly personal benefits. Grassroots development, however, supports organization, not projects, and as complex adaptive systems, they must constantly shift strategies and goals in response to the pressures of their context.
