This paper describes and analyses a governmental development program called "Comunidade Ativa" in its "Programa Faz Cidadão" version, designed for Bahia's arid inlands. Through the concepts of sustainability, it discusses its proposals for community leadership training courses and analyzes its methodological approach, its working procedures and the survival of its community fora. Such governmental programs intend to stimulate the constitution and ability of negotiation in representatives of communities with a low Human Development Index (HDI), taking local peculiarities into account while constructing an emancipating educational process, in order to attain an Integrated, Local Sustainable Development (ILSD). These clear proposals nevertheless, do not seem to entail effectiveness nor synergy between the government and local communities' actions. The political and educational strategy of participatory planning should therefore consider articulating the actions of different partners. The transformation potentialities of such intervention processes are as significant as the problems they are supposed to overcome. Thus, if difficulties are not properly faced by all the parts involved, this program could paradoxically lead to maintaining the status quo through a transformation proposal.
Planning; Participation; Representation; Education; Elocution; Enonciations; awareness building; Emancipation; Sustainability; Community; ILSD