In recent years support for community development and participatory research has been revived and people’s participation and empowerment has become a major concern in development thinking. The importance of involving people in their own development is driven by the Millennium Development Goals set for community and societal development. The renewed strength of the participatory approach is clearly evident. Although the theoretical position of participatory action research is still contested it has developed a distinctive ontology (the nature of reality), epistemology (the relationship of the researcher to reality), methodology and specific concepts on which a conceptual framework could be built. This article presents some ideas of how participatory action research (PAR) as a cyclical consciousness-raising and knowledge-raising process could be used by government to empower people to become involved in sustainable community deve