Community development
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'''Community development''', informally called '''[[community building]]''', is a broad term applied to the practices and academic disciplines of civic leaders, activists, involved citizens and professionals to improve various aspects of local communities.
Community development seeks to empower individuals and groups of people by providing these groups with the skills they need to effect change in their own communities. These skills are often concentrated around building political power through the formation of large social groups working for a common agenda. Community developers must understand both how to work with individuals and how to affect communities' positions within the context of larger social institutions.
Community Development Exchange defines Community Development as:
:“the process of developing active and sustainable communities based on [[social justice]] and mutual respect. It is about influencing power structures to remove the barriers that prevent people from participating in the issues that affect their lives.
:“Community workers (officers) facilitate the participation of people in this process. They enable connections to be made between communities and with the development of wider policies and programmes.
:“Community Development expresses values of fairness, equality, accountability, opportunity, choice, participation, mutuality, reciprocity and continuous learning. Educating, enabling and empowering are at the core of Community Development.”<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.fcdl.org.uk/about/definition.htm |title=Definition of CDL |accessdate=2007-07-28 |publisher=Federation for Community Development Learning}}</ref>
==Community development practice==
Community development ''practitioners'' are involved in organizing meetings and conducting searches within a [[community]] to identify problems, identify assets, locate resources, analyse local power structures, assess human needs, and investigate other concerns that comprise the community's character [http://qed.emcdda.europa.eu/journal/papers5.shtml (case study)]. These practitioners, sometimes called social [[activist]]s, use social resources to get the economic and political leverage that a community uses to meet their needs. Often, the social resources within the community are found to be adequate to meet these needs if individuals work collectively through techniques like [[cooperation]] and [[volunteerism]]. A form of community development that links academic resources to community problems in a reciprocally beneficial manner is [[community-based participatory research (CBPR)]], a form of research which engages a community fully in the process of problem definition/issue selection, research design, conducting research, and interpreting the results. One of the principal ways in which CBPR differs from traditional [[research]] is that instead of creating knowledge for the advancement of a field or for knowledge's sake, CBPR is an iterative process, incorporating research, reflection, and action in a cyclical process. In the UK Rural Community Councils support local communities to build sustainable futures. They assist local communities in a form of CBPR called community led planning. Rural Community Councils employ experienced, independent community development workers.
A number of different approaches to community development can be recognized, including:
* [[Community economic development]] (CED)
* [[Capacity building|Community capacity building]]
* [[Social capital]] formation
* [[Civil society|Political participatory development]]
* [[Direct Action|Nonviolent direct action]]
* [[Sustainable development|Ecologically sustainable development]]
* [[Asset-based community development]]
* Faith-based community development
* [[Community practice|Community practice social work]]
* [[Community-based participatory research]] (CBPR)
* Community mobilization
* [[Empowerment|community empowerment]]
* Community participation
==The history of community development==
Community Development has been a sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit goal of community people, aiming to achieve, through collective effort, a better life, and has occurred throughout history. In the 18th Century the work of the early [[socialist]] thinker [[Robert Owen]] (1771-1851), sought through Community Planning, to create the perfect community. At [[New Lanark]] and at later utopian communities such as [[Oneida]] in the USA and the [http://www.jcu.edu.au/aff/history/conferences/virtual/scifleet.htm|the New Australia Movement] in Australia, groups of people came together to create intentional utopian communities, with mixed success. Such community planning techniques became important in the 1920s and 1930s in East Africa, where Community Development proposals were seen as a way of helping local people improve their own lives with indirect assistance from colonial authorities.
[[Mahatma Gandhi|Mohondas K. Gandhi]] adopted African community development ideals as a basis of his South African Ashram, and then introduced it as a part of the Indian [[Swaraj]] movement, aiming at establishing economic interdependence at village level throughout India. With Indian independence, despite the continuing work of [[Vinoba Bhave]] in encouraging [[grassroots]] [[land reform]], India under its first Prime Minister [[Jawaharlal Nehru]] adopted a centralist heavy industry approach, antithetical to self-help community development ideas.
Community Development became a part of the [[Arusha Declaration|Ujamaa Villages]] established in [[Tanzania]] by [[Julius Nyerere]], where it had some success in assisting with the delivery of education services throughout rural areas, but has elsewhere met with mixed success. In the 1970s and 1980s, Community Development became a part of "Integrated Rural Development", a strategy promoted by United Nations Agencies and the World Bank. Central to these policies of community development were
* [[Literacy|Adult Literacy]] Programs, drawing on the work of Brazilian Educator [[Paulo Freire]] and the "[[Each One Teach One]]" adult literacy teaching method conceived by [[Frank Laubach]].
* Youth and Women's Groups, following the work of the Serowe Brigades of [[Botswana]], of [http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/Home.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=ERICSearchResult&_urlType=action&newSearch=true&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_1=au&ERICExtSearch_Operator_1=OR&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_1=%22Van+Rensburg+Patrick%22&searchtype=authors|Mr Patrick van Rensburg].
* Development of Community Business Ventures and particularly [[Cooperatives]], in part drawn on the examples of [[José María Arizmendiarrieta]] and the [[Mondragón Cooperative Corporation|Mondragon Cooperatives]] of the [[Basque Country (autonomous community)|Basque]] Region of Spain
* Compensatory Education for those missing out in the formal education system, drawing on the work of [[Open educational resources|Open Education]] as pioneered by [[Michael Young]].
* Dissemination of [[Alternative technology|Alternative Technologies]], based upon the work of [[E. F. Schumacher]] as advocated in his book ''[[Small is Beautiful|Small is Beautiful: Economics as if people really mattered]]''
* Village Nutrition Programs and [[Permaculture]] Projects, based upon the work of Australians [[Bill Mollison]] and [[David Holmgren]].
* Village [[water resources|Village Water Supply]] Programs
Community development in Canada has roots in the development of co-operatives, credit unions and caisses populaires. The [[Antigonish Movement]] which started in the 1920s in [[Nova Scotia]], through the work of Doctor [[Moses Coady]] and Father [[James Tompkins]], has been particularly influential in the subsequent expansion of community economic development work across Canada.
In the 1990s, following critiques of the mixed success of "top down" government programs, and drawing on the work of [[Robert Putnam]], in the rediscovery of [[Social Capital]], Community Development internationally became concerned with social capital formation. In particular the outstanding success of the work of [[Muhammad Yunus]] in [[Bangladesh]] with the [[Grameen Bank]], has led to the attempts to spread [[Microcredit|microenterprise credit]] schemes around the world. This work was honoured by the 2006 [[Nobel Peace Prize]].
The ''"Human Scale Development"'' work of [[Right Livelihood Award]] winning Chilean economist [[Manfred Max Neef]] promotes the idea of development based upon fundamental human needs, which are considered to be limited, universal and invariant to all human beings (being a part of our human condition). He considers that [[poverty]] results from the failure to satisfy a particular human need, it is not just an absence of [[money]]. Whilst human needs are limited, Max Neef shows that the ways of satisfying human needs is potentially unlimited. Satisfiers also have different characteristics: they can be violators or destroyers, pseudosatisfiers, inhibiting satisfiers, singular satisfiers, or synergic satisfiers. Max-Neef shows that certain satisfiers, promoted as satisfying a particular need, in fact inhibit or destroy the possibility of satisfying other needs: eg, the [[arms race]], while ostensibly satisfying the need for protection, in fact then destroys subsistence, participation, affection and freedom; [[representative democracy|formal democracy]], which is supposed to meet the need for participation often [[disempowerment|disempowers]] and [[social alienation|alienates]]; commercial [[television]], while used to satisfy the need for [[recreation]], interferes with understanding, creativity and identity. [[Synergy|Synergic]] satisfiers, on the other hand, not only satisfy one particular need, but also lead to satisfaction in other areas: some examples are breast-feeding; self-managed production; popular education; democratic community organisations; preventative medicine; meditation; educational games.
== Community building and organizing ==
''Putting the unity back into community'' (Pat Shortt)
[[Image:London united logo.jpg|thumb|225px|[[Rise: London United]] festival • July, 2005]]
'''Community building''' is a field of practices directed toward the creation or enhancement of [[community]] between [[individual]]s within a regional area (such as a [[neighbourhood]]) or with a common interest. It is sometimes encompassed under the field of community development.
A wide variety of practices can be utilized for community building, ranging from simple events like [[potluck]]s and small [[Book discussion club|book clubs]], to larger–scale efforts such as mass [[festival]]s and building [[construction]] projects that involve local participants rather than outside contractors.
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[[Activist]]s engaged in community building efforts in [[Developed country|industrialized nations]] see the apparent [[loss of community]] in these societies as a key cause of [[social disintegration]] and the emergence of many harmful behaviors. They may see building community as a means to increase [[social justice]], individual [[Quality of life|well-being]] and reduce negative impacts of otherwise disconnected individuals.
'''Community organizing''' is a process by which people are brought together to act in common self-interest. While organizing describes any activity involving people interacting with one another in a formal manner, much community organizing is in the pursuit of a common [[agenda]]. Many groups seek [[populism|populist]] goals and the ideal of [[participatory democracy]]. Community organizers create social movements by building a base of concerned people, mobilizing these community members to act, and developing leadership from and relationships among the people involved.
== See also ==
* [[Community]]
* [[Community art]]
* [[BetterTogether]]
* [[Community media]]
* [[Community organizing]]
* [[Community practice]]
* [[Rural community development]]
* [[Urban regeneration]]
* [[Urbanism]]
==References==
<references />
==External links==
*[http://comm-dev.org/ Community Development Society]
*[http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/TOPIC_SERIES_IFAS_Community_Development University of Florida Community Development Series ]
*[http://www.vcn.bc.ca/citizens-handbook The Citizen's Handbook]
*[http://cdj.oupjournals.org/ Community Development Journal (Oxford)]
*[http://www.uccb.ca/ced/ Community Economic Development Institute (Cape Breton University)]
*[http://smartcommunities.typepad.com/ Smart Communities Blog]
[[Category:Urban studies and planning]]
[[Category:Community building]]
[[Category:Development]]
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