Non-government public action networks and global policy processes

Historically, non-government development assistance organizations (NGOs) based in Northern donor nations delivered assistance, primarily at the local scale, to disadvantaged communities in Southern nations. Their primary mandate was to contribute to improved quality of life for people in those communities. However rather than continuing to concentrate on the 'development project' in order to provide services like water supplies and sanitation systems or to encourage income generation activities and alternative livelihood strategies, increasingly NGOs have devoted growth in their numbers and size and in the resources available to them, and facilitated by transnational networks to maximize their impact on global policy processes.