PHA-Exchange> Towards a New Theory for Community Development

[claudio]

> Towards a New Theory for Community Development (2)
> --------------------------------------------------
>
> THE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT DILEMMA: WHEN ARE SERVICE DELIVERY, CAPACITY
BUILDING, ADVOCACY AND SOCIAL MOBILIZATION REALLY EMPOWERING?
>
> * In community development, the empowerment of some entails the dis-
>   empowerment of others -- usually the current holders of power.
>
> * But beware, empowering people can well trigger repressive actions
>   by the authorities.
>
> * Empowerment is a continuous process; it provides people with
>   choices and the ability to choose; it is the only (and necessary) way
>   to expand the 'political manoeuvring space' of a community seriously
>   trying 'to develop'.
>
> IN THE DELIVERY OF SERVICES, EMPOWERING MEANS, OR IS, OR ARE ACTIONS
> THAT TEND TOWARDS:
>
> * Providing services in a gender sensitive + culture sensitive way.
> * Using existing local human resources.
> * Community representatives participate in making decisions about the
>   services being delivered.
> * Training of staff is mostly competence-based, in-service, aimed at
>   behavioral change and followed by regular support supervision.
> * People cease to be passive recipients of services; they demand re-
>   sponsibility for themselves; they take part in the decision making
>   process and in the delivery mechanisms.
>
> IN CAPACITY BUILDING, EMPOWERING MEANS, OR IS, OR ARE ACTIONS THAT
> TEND TOWARDS:
>
> * Enabling individuals/communities to continuously upgrade their
>   ability to analyze and understand their situation (people themselves
>   collecting, interpreting and using information for action).
> * Sharing a Conceptual Framework of the causes of their problems.
> * Exposing people to relevant information, especially about the real
>   causes behind their problems. (Includes warning people about 'misin-
>   formation' they are exposed to and replacing it).
> * Raising people's consciousness to legitimize their claims.
> * Changing people's perception of their potentials to forge a new re-
>   ality.
> * Increasing people's awareness of what is ‘unfair’ to them.
> * Building growing constituencies for people's rights-based strate-
>   gies.
> * Emphasizing the provision of skills that lead to community owner-
>   ship of the interventions undertaken.
> * Giving high priority to literacy, especially for girls and women.
> * Boosting women's negotiation capabilities, as well as their confi-
>   dence.
> * Raising consciousness about the natural environment.
> * Emphasizing the training of local leaders, teaching them to carry
>   out social and political mappings that point to the current structure
>   of control of resources, as well as to carry out decision audits of
>   who currently makes what decisions about what
> * Training community animators/validators as local strategic allies
>   to introduce new ideas.
> * Creating new employment opportunities and democratizing access to
>   credit, as well as setting up income generation activities for women.
> * Giving people a better income capacity and access to available sup-
>   port systems.
> * Building the mental preparedness for social mobilization.
> * Preparing people to press-on with needed advocacy and effective
>   lobbying.
>
> IN ADVOCACY, EMPOWERING MEANS, OR IS, OR ARE ACTIONS THAT TEND
> TOWARDS:
>
> * Convincing and persuading decision-makers.
> * Increasing people's demand for access to services.
> * Emphasizing work towards the eradication of poverty. (Empowerment
>   implies a reduction of extreme poverty).
> * Fostering actions that decrease the workload of women and give them
>   options for birth spacing.
> * Promoting the shifting of the explicit control of resources more to
>   women.
> * Promoting a more local control of resources.
> * Striving for more economic justice and aiming at decreasing the
>   skewedness in the distribution of income and wealth.
> * Addressing minority equity issues.
> * Assuring active people's participation in informed decision-making.
> * Raising people's consciousness about what their rights are and
>   translating them into specific claims.
>
> IN SOCIAL MOBILIZATION, EMPOWERING MEANS, OR IS, OR ARE ACTIONS THAT
> TEND TOWARDS:
>
> * Going from people's felt needs to concrete demands and from these
>   to making claims so they can better fight for their rights.(i.e., mo-
>   bilization of their social power).
> * Mobilizing people's own resources as needed.
> * Organizing people to effectively use and progressively control ex-
>   ternal resources.
> * Networking with others, to achieve a critical mass of concerned
>   people (locally and externally), and building coalitions.
> * Collectively identifying problems, searching for solutions and im-
>   plementing them.
> * Giving people power over decisions thus increasing their self-
>   esteem and self-confidence.
> * Increasing local democracy with people (especially women) partici-
>   pating more actively in local government.
> * Decentralizing decision-making, including shifting control of finances
to the local sphere. (i.e., devolution of power).

Claudio Schuftan
aviva at netnam.vn