CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1Definition of key terms

1.2 Design

A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object, system, for the implementation of an activity or process, or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product or process. In some cases, the direct construction of an object without an explicit prior plan (such as in craftwork, some engineering, coding, and graphic design) may also be considered to be a design activity. The design usually has to satisfy certain goals and constraints, may take into account aesthetic, functional, economic, or socio-political considerations, and is expected to interact with a certain environment. Major examples of designs include architectural blueprints, engineering drawings, business processes, circuit diagrams, and sewing patterns.

1.3 Development

Development is a process that creates growth, progress, positive change or the addition of physical, economic, environmental, social and demographic components. The purpose of development is a rise in the level and quality of life of the population, and the creation or expansion of local regional income and employment opportunities, without damaging the resources of the environment. Development is visible and useful, not necessarily immediately, and includes an aspect of quality change and the creation of conditions for a continuation of that change.

1.4 Community Development

Community development is a process where community members come together to take collective action and generate solutions to common problems. Community wellbeing (economic, social, environmental and cultural) often evolves from this type of collective action being taken at a grassroots level. Community development ranges from small initiatives within a small group to large initiatives that involve the broader community.

Community development is a grassroots process by which communities:

become more responsible
organize and plan together
develop healthy lifestyle options
empower themselves
reduce poverty and suffering
create employment and economic opportunities
achieve social, economic, cultural and environmental goals

1.5 Community

Refer to a group of living things with commonality such as norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area for example a country, village, town, or neighborhood.

1.5.1 Types of Community

Location-based Communities

Range from the local neighborhood, suburb, village, town or city, region, nation or even the planet as a whole. These are also called communities of place.

Identity-based Communities

Range from the local clique, sub-culture, ethnic group, religious and Multicultural. They may be included as communities of need or identity, such as disabled persons, or frail aged people.

Organizationally based Communities

Range from communities organized informally around family or network-based guilds and associations, to more formal incorporated associations, political decision making structures, economic enterprises, or professional associations at a small, national or international scale.

CHAPTER TWO

DESINGINING COMMUNITY BASED DEVELOPMENT

2.1 Community development

Refer to a practice-based profession and an academic discipline that promotes participative democracy, sustainable development, rights, equality, economic opportunity and social justice, through the organization, education and empowerment of people within their communities, whether these be of locality, identity or interest, in urban and rural settings.

2.2 Community based development

2.3 Community participation can take place during any of the following activities,

2.3.1 Needs assessment:

Expressing opinions about desirable improvements, prioritizing goals and negotiating with agencies

2.3.2 Planning

Formulating objectives, setting goals, criticizing plans

2.3.3 Mobilizing

Raising awareness in a community about needs, establishing or supporting organizational structures within the community.

2.3.4 Training

Participation in formal or informal training activities to enhance communication, construction, maintenance and financial management skills.

2.3.5 Implementing

Engaging in management activities; contributing directly to construction, pay of services or membership fees of community organizations.

2.4 Five steps for community involvement

2.4.1 Start off with a transparent community selection process and share results

There are many options on how to go about selecting your target communities. Donor requirements may indicate specific selection criteria or prioritized geographic or socio-demographic sectors. The quality and availability of quantitative data such as average family income or school dropout rates will also drive selection criteria. As important as defining your community selection process may be, it is equally important that you are transparent and publically share selection criteria and the results of the community selection process. Post the results of your community selection process online and share them with program stakeholders, including the communities that were not selected.

2.4.2 Map community priorities and identify community leaders

Once we identified our target communities, we designed a simple questionnaire with the goal of identifying potential community leaders as well as what community members saw as their most pressing priorities. The questionnaire was applied through a house-to-house survey approach and carried out by our program staff. This is a great opportunity to inform community members about your upcoming program, its objectives and next steps. We found that when interviewed individually and anonymously, community members were more forthcoming about their needs and priorities, as well as their perceptions of who the “go-to” people were within the community. Properly framing questions is important. For example, we did not explicitly ask “Who are the community leaders,” but rather, “Who does the community member turn to when they need help or when there is a community issue that must be resolved”.

2.4.3 Hold preliminary meetings with community leaders

Often vulnerable communities are skeptical of outsiders and have been on the receiving end of broken promises to improve community infrastructure or provide much needed basic services. Trying to engage communities directly through public calls for meetings without establishing community channels and trusted intermediaries may limit or delay your success in mobilizing communities to participate early in the program. Once Sowing Futures systematized the results of leaders identified by community members during the community assessment surveys, we convened leaders to introduce them to the program and request feedback and advice on how best to engage the broader community. We asked leaders to help us reach out to the community and to help organize the first community assembly meetings. Leaders proved instrumental in identifying the most effective methods for reaching out to communities.

2.4.4 Hold community assembly meetings to elect local representation to coordinate program activities

Global Communities methodology works through a community coordination mechanism called Community Development Councils. The programs provide much of the knowledge and skills training to Community Development Council members. Community capacity building activities such as long-term community development planning and project formulation and execution are led through and carried out by the Community development councils. The goal is to build a critical mass of community capacity to enable communities to take ownership and put them in the driver’s seat. While Community development councils are set up as a program coordination mechanism, past experience has shown that the most successful Community development councils organically transform into formal community-based organizations with legal representation and ability to receive funding from outside sources.

Community development councils derive their legitimacy through community assembly meetings where community members nominate candidates and votes are held out in the open. The program and community members agree upon basic principles of transparency and inclusive representation that ensures that vulnerable groups participate within the Community development councils and have an active voice. Sowing Futures’ communities’ agreed to have ballots cast where community members were required to vote for at least one man and one woman in each ballot. Communities also agreed to designate CDC seats for youth and senior citizen representation.

2.4.5 Allow communities to prioritize and select quick impact projects to solidify support and galvanize local participation

It is important in your first community assembly meeting to select a community project that can be completed in a short period of time. These projects will build off of the initial enthusiasm at the prospect of the program’s start-up. Quick impact projects allow from the outset for several things to happen simultaneously.

The results from the initial community assessment to rank and present community priorities during the community assembly meetings. Then allowed community members to add additional priorities and to discuss and reprioritize amongst themselves. Certain parameters, including costs, timeframes, community contribution, and outside resource mobilization need to be established to help guide the conversation. Communities then voted and selected a first community project or activity that would help contribute to achieving the prioritized community objective.

2.5 Principles for community involvement

2.5.1 Community Engagement

An important element of community development begins with defining the unmet needs of a community. But it is at least equally important to engage residents and other community stakeholders in defining those unmet needs and developing solutions. Community engagement is a strong value and fundamental practice of neighborhood revitalization. The importance of engaging the community is grounded in the belief that the public has a right to participate and to articulate what their needs are. It is believed that by using “collective intelligence” and working together, it can be more accurately identify problems and develop more pragmatic and effective solutions. Community engagement is a type of public participation that involves people in problem-solving or decision-making processes. It is a multifaceted, ongoing process. When community stakeholders are engaged in the process of redevelopment or planning in the early stages of a project, it tends to result in a higher likelihood of community buy-in.

2.5.2 Leadership

Leadership is a critical element in garnering support for a community development project and is another core principle in successful community development finance. A strong leader is essential for seeing a project through to the end. In addition, when projects encounter challenges as many inevitably do those that successfully overcome them tend to have adaptive leaders who possess the appropriate skill set to address the challenges. A visionary who serves as the champion of a cause has the capacity to leverage interests across sectors. This individual does not necessarily have to be the leader of an organization and can represent any of these sectors grassroots, faith-based, civic, politics or business. During challenging times, an effective leader provides motivation, commitment and tenacity to other stakeholders who may be discouraged due to setbacks. Effective leaders will provide the skills to motivate stakeholders to remain committed and focused. Before you look for partners for your specific initiative, be sure of what you bring to the table, know who you are and where you are going.

2.5.3 Collaboration

In today’s world, resources time, energy and money are limited, valuable and carefully allocated. Addressing complex community development problems requires adaptive leadership, cross-sector problem solving and ultimately, strategic collaboration. That’s why collaboration is the third principle comprising the people component of successful community development team building.

2.5.3.1 Types of Collaborations

a) Funder Collaborative

Are groups of funders interested in supporting the same issue who pool their resources. Generally, participants do not adopt an overarching evidence based plan of action or a shared measurement system, nor do they engage in differentiated activities beyond check writing or engage stakeholders from other sectors.

b) Public-Private Partnerships

Are partnerships formed between government and private sector organizations to deliver specific services or benefits. They are often targeted narrowly (e.g., developing a particular drug to fight a single disease) and usually don’t engage the full set of stakeholders that affect the issue (e.g., the potential drug’s distribution system).

c) Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives

Are voluntary activities by stakeholders from different sectors around a common theme. Typically, these initiatives lack any shared measurement of impact and the supporting infrastructure to forge any true alignment of efforts or accountability for results.

d) Social Sector Networks

Are groups of individuals or organizations fluidly connected through purposeful relationships, whether formal or informal. Collaboration is generally ad hoc; most often the emphasis is placed on information sharing and targeted short-term actions rather than on a sustained and structured initiative.

e) Collective Impact Initiatives

Are long-term commitments by a group of important actors from different sectors to a common agenda for solving a specific social problem. Their actions are supported by a shared measurement system, mutually reinforcing activities and ongoing communication, and are staffed by an independent backbone organization.

2.6 Evaluation

You are probably intimately aware of your community’s strengths and weaknesses and how your particular community development project can be an asset to your neighborhood. But to secure funding, you will need to document your specific issue and the projected outcomes of your initiative. In addition, there are critical pieces of data your lenders and/or investors will want to evaluate to help them determine whether to finance your project. All of this information will be part of your community development finance plan. This unit will focus on the fourth key principle of successful community development finance evaluation. The following are the types of data you will use for the evaluation process and the data you will need to provide to your lenders and or investors that will provide the basis for their investment decisions. The data generally falls into three categories environmental context, business plan and financial information.

2.7 Advantages of community participation in community development

a) Efficiency

Participation can ensure effective utilization of available resources.

b) Effectiveness

People’s participation can make different programmes more effective by granting them a say in deciding the objectives and strategies and by participating in implementation, thereby ensuring effective utilization of resources.

c) Self reliance

Many development interventions have been seen to create a kind of dependence syndrome. With active involvement of local people, it is possible not only to break the mentality of dependence but also to increase their awareness, self-confidence and control of the development process.

d) Coverage

Development interventions are directed towards the upliftment of the weaker sections of the-society. Despite professed target groups an attempt to cover the weaker sections, however, most projects have been at best only partially successful. The benefits are concerned off by non-poor, the elite and the powerful. People’s participation can be a potent way of ensuring the flow of the benefits to the target groups.

Furthermore, the cost effective operations can ensure that 150 resources are available for wider coverage of the weaker sections of society than would otherwise be possible.

e) Sustainability

Development interventions are funded by government or by donor agencies. Experience has shown that development interventions from the external assisted projects fail to sustain the required level of development activity once support or inputs are withdrawn by the funding agencies. People’s participation regarded as an essential pre-requisite for the continuity of the activities. The involvement of local people and the utilization of local resources generate a sense of ownership over the development interventions to the people. This sense of ownership is essential for the sustainability of the interventions even after external funds cease to flow.

2.8 Challenges and obstacles facing community based development

i. Time constraints

When asked what their biggest challenge is, the word that kept coming up with project managers was “time.” The time challenges spanned from getting a project done quickly enough, to coordinating schedules, and working within slow processes and regulations. Since projects are often collaboration, one of the challenges involves finding the “time necessary to formulate partnerships to effect change as a group and garner support.” Others felt that projects could get too long and benefit from being restrained to a certain time frame because there is “too much room for slippage otherwise.”

ii. Setting a goal and sticking to it

Project managers reported problems with projects that are both too broadly-defined and too narrowly-defined. This problem centers around a manager’s effectiveness at defining the task. Another problem we saw is that even when a project was defined well, “customer additional requirements seem to be endless for a continuous scope creep”.

iii. Budget limitations

Not surprisingly, budget constraints cropped up in the responses. Most frustrating is “inefficient use of resources (fiscal, human capital).” Another aspect relates to the scope creep problem mentioned above. When a project changes directions, a project may exceed the funding allocation.

iv. Poor communication among contributors

Since projects often involve the coordination of many moving parts, it is critical for there to be quick and open communication among all involved parties. A common problem is for the needs of the managers to get lost in translation as the “requirements/design are formally handed off to the developers.” One manager cited that the “requirements need to be very crisp” to avoid this kind of miscommunication.

v. Organization and coordination

The problems of organization and coordination are similar to the communication challenge. Since projects involve many players, they need to stay organized and informed. For example, one respondent cited that the biggest challenge is “getting school boards, school administration, their A/Es all on same page with needs, regulations and laws of NJ.” Another cited organization problems within the agency: “My current organization does not support projects, during large multi-year, multi million $ projects they frequently reorganize and do not communicate these decisions; having dire consequences on projects.”

vi. Inadequate community communication

People may simply be unaware of opportunities to be involved in the community. Try contacting groups working on similar issues to your own to find out how they get people involved. Find ways to get the word out to the community that you're looking for people to join in your effort.

vii. Limited experience

People may avoid becoming involved simply because they haven't ever had experience with collective action, and therefore are unfamiliar with what will be expected of them, how they can make a difference, or whether they will be welcome. For many people, participating in an unfamiliar way, such as attending a neighborhood meeting, may cause anxiety. Be very clear with people about what they can expect to have happen at meetings, what they can expect their role to be in the organization, and what will be expected of them if they get involved. Make sure people know you are approachable should they have any questions, and make sure that you are always friendly and clear when answering those questions.

viii. History of being ignored

Sometimes people affected by the problem have been ignored or they have tried to participate in the past but they were allowed to do only token work. Few leaders and organizers may have actually listened to them seriously or actively involved them in the planning, organizing, deciding, and evaluating processes. If people have come to expect that they will be ignored, they will be less likely to even attempt to get involved.

ix. Resistant leaders

Perhaps the people who are affected by a problem see their leaders as resistant to their getting involved. Are the leaders willing to rethink their agendas according to citizen input? Are the leaders able to listen and follow through with what they've heard? For citizens to remain involved, it is important for them to feel that what they say is worthwhile.

x. Sense of powerlessness

The complexity of politics intimidates citizens, preventing them from getting involved. The many levels of government make it difficult for anyone to know where to begin, whom to approach, and how to be influential. Awareness and education regarding these processes will help individuals gain the self-confidence to begin. People may be scared to speak up because they might not understand everything that's going on and they're afraid they'll look foolish.

xi. Lack of time

Organizing convenient times for people to meet is key since they often have tight schedules. Take into consideration when the population you are reaching is available so that they will be able to participate. For example, if you want a lot of people who work the night shift to get involved, you will need to have times available that don't coincide with their work hours. Additionally, meetings and events should not last longer than is necessary so that people don't feel like their time is wasted. Also the projects uses much time like to bring people together so as they can plan for their own project.

xii. Lack of transportation

If possible, provide transportation to those who don't have the money or access to vehicles. Meeting places also need to be as close and familiar as possible to the participants, such as in schools or libraries. If there is public transportation near your meeting location, be sure to tell people where it can be found.

xiii. Lack of child care

Not being able to find reliable child care or having to pay for a babysitter can be big barriers for parents who would otherwise get involved. Consider ways in which child care can be made available. For instance, you can provide childcare at the meeting site, or have parents who are involved set up a pool to take turns providing care.

xiv. Overcommitted leaders or citizens

If those involved try to do more than is realistic, then others who don't have the time or ability to work as much on the issue may leave. Pace yourself and make realistic demands of yourself and others.

xv. Too many involved

Smaller groups tend to get more done quickly. Utilize more groups with fewer people so that each individual may be heard and feel important instead of overlooked

xvi. Poor organization of existing action groups

If there are existing groups that are taking action on the issue at hand, organize their efforts and resources so that time and energy are not duplicated. If the groups themselves are poorly organized and utilized, assist them in reorganizing or joining other groups.

xvii. History of unproductive meetings

Past experiences with unproductive meetings make people cynical about the effectiveness of meetings in general. Find ways to let them know why you believe the meeting will be helpful and why each person is an important

COMMUNITY BASED DEVELOPMENT