A rural road network is a basic community asset which has tremendous bearing on socio-economic development of rural communities, therefore; involvement of communities is critical in projects or works aimed at providing rural accessibility.

The report discusses the roles that a community can play in a development project. It analyzes the factors which might affect community participation and the steps for achieving participation. Examples are given of practices of community participation in different countries.

Case studies are presented in appendix related to micro-enterprise based routine road maintenance in Latin America, on community involvement in maintenance of rural infrastructure in Sri Lanka and Nepal, on community involvement in rural road projects in Burkina Faso and Benin.