Community Development Philosophy

^{"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."}

^{- Margaret Mead, anthropologist, author, intellectual 1901-1978}

Community development is about helping people to help themselves. It works by harnessing individual potential and transforming it through education and strong partnerships into just and sustainable solutions that build better futures for all. Huge possibility lies within each of each and every one of us, no matter how isolated our community might be, or how little formal education we may have received.

Community development is about exploiting this potential and providing the right conditions for it to thrive. There is no one way to help people to a better future, and as a result there are many approaches and different strategies involved in the community development process. But, generally, before people can start to look for sustainable solutions to their existing problems, they need new skills. Or, to use community development jargon, they need to be empowered. Education and capacity building are the most effective tools for empowering people and the more that are involved in the learning process, the more powerful the change for good will be.

Community development is far from being a new idea. From the outset humankind has organized itself into clusters, addressed challenges and looked for solutions through change. More recently, development has expanded to include communities that are often thousands upon thousands of miles away from our own homes and communities and the development has often had a very different dynamic.

Often, groups of people have been seen to be struggling by outside actors. The outside actors have swept in and decided what these communities need. The outside actors have provided the new components and implemented a program of change, the outside actors have maintained the change and then, often, when they have left the change they imposed and artificially sustained has crumbled away, leaving communities back where they started.

Failures along these lines have lead development practitioners to take a very close look at the whole process in an effort to nail down what works and avoid what doesn’t. The key finding seems to be that development tends to fail when it is based on a top-down model and it seems more likely to succeed when based on a grass roots movement. Over time and a great deal of trial and error, the experts working in community development have learnt the following key lessons:

For development to be successful it has to be sustainable and it has to be community-led.

In addition, they have highlighted the following key points:

• Communities have a right to participate in decisions that affect their living and working conditions.
• Only community development that gives people decision-making power is sustainable.
• Genuine participation requires community involvement in all phases of change: that means at planning, implementation, maintenance and monitoring phases.
• Participation must build on gender equality and include youth and the elderly.
• Capacity development is essential to promote equal participation from women, men and youth.
• Communities are prime stakeholders among development actors to identify problems, improve and maintain their settlements.
• Charity makes communities dependent upon aid.

Community development recognizes that the most important outcomes of community change are not new projects or buildings, but empowered communities that can solve serious issues by working together. Experience has shown that given clear information and appropriate capacity, education and financial support, poor men and women can effectively organize themselves to identify community priorities and address local problems. In stark contrast, charity or handouts tend to make communities dependent upon aid. By regularly providing a ‘humanitarian’ alternative to the human impulse to solve one’s own problems, aid organizations can actually undermine vital community coping mechanisms.

The community development process is long and tricky. But given time, dedication and skills, it works and works well.

Go to the People Live with the People Learn from the People Plan with the People Work with the People Start with what they know Build on what they have Teach by showing, learn by doing Not a showcase, but a pattern Not piecemeal, but integrated Not odds and ends, but a system Not to conform, but to transform Not relief, but release - Yen Yangchu, 20th century community-based development pioneer from Sichuan, China