Any development effort that does not take cognizance of the participation of the people that are affected by it is doomed to failure. This is especially true of a development which, in the true sense of the word, has made the well-being of the human person and respect for the totality of human rights its point of departure and its goal. If development initiatives do actively involve the people affected at all stages and honour, instead of antagonise human rights, then, developmental activities will enhance the full actualisation of the human potential. The significance of the dynamism between development and human rights is not only being increasingly recognised in the world today but also efforts are being exerted to make observance of human rights one of the major yardsticks to measure the worth and importance of any developmental activity. When synchronised with respect for human rights, developmental activities will undoubtedly make a difference.

APAP believes in this dynamism of human rights and development and tries to translate this belief into practice in all its activities. APAP's vision is that of institutionalising and building a self-sustained and democratic civil society; while its mission is empowering the people specially the poor, women, and children. In fact, the programmes of legal aid, public interest litigation, legal and human rights education and community organisation, etc. are tools employed by APAP for the realisation of this belief. By and large, APAP's activities and the parths it has trodden through so far are living evidences showing its commitment and effort to realise this dream. One such activity is the paralegal training programme which APAP has developed after experimenting it on a pilot basis at different times and areas. This article therefore deals with only one of these pilot paralegal training which APAP has conducted for the Repi garbage collecting community.

One of the first tasks APAP undertook, immediately before it launched its legal education and the paralegal training programmes, was that of surveying the prople and various localities in and around Addis Ababa to identify and focus on those who deserve our attention most. No sooner than it had began the assessment, APAP came across the Repi community widely known by the humiliating term the 'koshe' people (koshe is an Amharic word which literally means garbage and the people do not want to be called by it).

Repi is a place where every truck load of the garbage of the city of Addis Ababa is dumped. It is found on the Southern out skirt of the city on the road leading from Addis Ababa to Jimma. The exact location of this garbage dump site is in kebele 16, Woreda 23, on a dirt road some two kilometres away from the main highway that branched out to the left near the Aoo Africa Leprosy Training and Rehabilitation Centre (ALERT) and its related Hospital. The people there make a living by scavenging on the garbage dumped in the area. The number of these people, of whom more than two third are children (both male and female) below the age of 18, is very difficult to specify as most come from neighbourhoods at some distance from the garbage dumping site. A reasonable estimate would be in the range of 500 to 700; though the number of those dependents on the garbage dumped is far greater than that as each of those collecting at the garbage support a family which could be lepers.

The life of all the community, as indicated above, is very much tied to the garbage dump site. Most of them use the garbage dump site as the source of everything needed for survival - mainly food. Generally speaking, the things they collect from the dump site are either saleable or edible items. Observing the survival mechanism of these people for the first time, one cannot help being moved by a feeling of compassion and urgency to do something immediately to address their immediate needs. This was exactly the feeling we had then. subsequently, APAP made a plan to find out, together with them, ways and means to somehow help improve their wretched living condition.

It was not, however, an easy task talking or communicating with the community. They were very much hostile and have developed a feeling of hatred towards the outside world. They have experienced so much disappointments because of unfulfilled promises and adverse publicity made both by governmental and non-governmental agencies. The staff of APAP had to commute to the place several days a week for not less than three months before they could win their trust and confidence. The process was long, tedious, painful and sometimes frustrating. This combined with their expectant look and the burden of explaining the fact that APAP will not deliver any kind of material assistance has made the stress on the staff too much to bear. On the other hand, the passivity and lack of interest manifested by the community in what APAP is planning to do was quite understandable for it is almost impossible to persuade or expect any person to attend a legal and human rights education session while she/he is starving. It was after a series of appearances and discussions that APAP slightly managed to dispel their initial attitude and persuade them to come to the paralegal training programme it offered.

The program was, thus, started for eleven persons who were selected from and by the community. The people have also played a significant role in identifying commonly recurring problems in the community which in turn have helped to determine the area of the law relevant to them and must be dealt in the paralegal training programme. One such problem they pointed out was the arbitrary way with which the police is treating them: beating, harassing and detaining for no other reason than that they are who they are - the children of Repi. From the way they described such incidents it seemed that they are being subjected to a separate body of law that does not govern all other Ethiopians.

Another problem they identified was related to car accidents. They said that if a dump-truck driver runs over one of the Repi people, the victim is always considered to be at fault, hence the driver will be released after may be a few days detention. Accordingly, the paralegal training programme was designed in such a way as to focus, at least at the initial stage, on those specific issues. Nonetheless, APAP has afterwards managed to train them with other relevant areas of civil and criminal law, human rights and constitutional principles, and equipped them with many practical legal skills such as fact finding, evidence gathering, pleading preparation and community organisation. The initial program was conducted for four months, twice a week for two hours each time. This same training was also conducted in the same manner for 20 girls of the community (All eleven trainees were males). After the classroom training were completed the trainees were and still are deployed to see how they are performing and what specific training and support needs they require. In the meantime however we have begun to witness the fruits of the training. Some trainees are seen engaged in writing simple pleadings for small claims. Others are able to identify legal problems when they encounter one in their community and refer victims to the office of APAP for legal assistance. And above all the most importantly undertaking of the trainees so far has been the fact that they have initiated and are now in the process of forming a credit and thrift cooperative society by convincing 74 members of the community to join it. Currently, they are paying weekly contributions and in close co-operation with APAP, undertaking other preparatory activities that are necessary to get the association registered with the National Bank of Ethiopia which is the government agency that grants legal personality to credit and thrift cooperatives. The problem of the Repi community is yet very far from over. It will not also be over in a short time. It is an isolated community whose life is very much dependent on the whims and wishes of invisible and big forces beyond its control and reach. Given the chance, however, the Repi community has now resource that could allow it to articulate its need and to seek redress for its wrongs. That resource is a small candle in the night. When thousands of those candles are lighted, there will certainly be light amidst the darkness of the night of poverty and injustice.