The purpose of this paper is to analyze the policy problems posed by the many competing programs and projects—international and national, governmental and non-governmental—to aid self-help in local communities, and to suggest a possible solution to them. The solution stresses (1) programs to stimulate planning by the people in order to make better use of their existing knowledge and resources, and (2) the development of multi-purpose "folk schools" to make practical new knowledge readily available to them. This approach would be less costly to government than the customary series of specialized aid programs planned by central authority and delivered to the people through a proliferation of government bureaus. Thus it is a way of helping more people with a given amount of aid funds. It is also a way to stimulate the development of people themselves as the primary planning and action agencies of a free society, as well as a way to help prove that freedom can be more efficient than regimentation in achieving economic and social progress.