"Describes the activities and publications of the innovative Community Publishing Process in Zimbabwe in order to train 7,000 village community workers, the majority of whom were women. Through a community based, participatory process of publishing, the project aims to enable marginalized groups to ... use their creative energies to build dynamic leadership, tackle poverty, take charge of their lives, and make the decisions to shape their future. Representatives of the village readership participated in creating the books and civic education manuals, contributed material orally, and tested and distributed it through local book launches. The project also initiated a series of children’s traditional stories and a book about children’s rights, produced with 500 children aged from three to seventeen. A local leadership programme for writers provides training in journalism and editing, and the publication of a monthly journal from a village publishing house equipped with a computer, duplicator and stapler. The author concludes by stating “as women radically questioning autocratic institutions and processes, we have been able to shape a tool that can be used by marginalized groups anywhere to claim their voice in the public life." (Hans M. Zell, Publishing, Books & Reading in Sub-Saharan Africa, 3d ed. 2008, nr. 1731) more