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Community Development Principles – Frequently Flaunted?

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Julian Dobson usefully reminded me this morning;

Cracking on with ideas is good. Rooting them in community development principles and practical action is even better.

But what are these principles?  A quick bit of web research found this list from CDX in Sheffield:

Values

Community development workers support individuals, groups and organisations in this process on the basis of certain values and practice principles.

The values at the core of community development are:

  • social justice
  • self-determination
  • working and learning together
  • sustainable communities
  • participation
  • reflective practice

The practice principles that underpin these values are:

Social justice

  • respecting and valuing diversity and difference
  • challenging oppressive and discriminatory actions and attitudes
  • addressing power imbalances between individuals, within groups and society
  • committing to pursue civil and human rights for all
  • seeking and promoting policy and practices that are just and enhance equality whilst challenging those that are not

Self-determination

  • valuing the concerns or issues that communities identify as their starting points
  • raising people’s awareness of the range of choices open to them, providing opportunities for discussion of implications of options
  • promoting the view that communities do not have the right to oppress other communities
  • working with conflict within communities

Working and learning together

  • demonstrating that collective working is effective
  • supporting and developing individuals to contribute effectively to communities
  • developing a culture of informed and accountable decision making
  • ensuring all perspectives within the community are considered
  • sharing good practice in order to learn from each other

Sustainable communities

  • promoting the empowerment of individuals and communities
  • supporting communities to develop their skills to take action
  • promoting the development of autonomous and accountable structures
  • learning from experiences as a basis for change
  • promoting effective collective and collaborative working
  • using resources with respect for the environment

Participation

  • promoting the participation of individuals and communities, particularly those traditionally marginalised / excluded
  • recognising and challenging barriers to full and effective participation
  • supporting communities to gain skills to engage in participation
  • developing structures that enable communities to participate effectively
  • sharing good practice in order to learn from each other

Reflective practice

  • promoting and supporting individual and collective learning through reflection on practice
  • changing practice in response to outcomes of reflection
  • recognising the constraints and contexts within which community development takes place
  • recognising the importance of keeping others informed and updated about the wider context

This looks like a pretty good list of design criteria.

  • Anything missing?
  • Anything better?

Reading through this list and reviewing some of the current enterprise and entrepreneurship programmes being delivered in the name of community development and regeneration I am finding it hard to find (m)any that don’t significantly fail several of these tests of principles and values.

And I can’t help but think this matters…

NB: Since this piece was written a new way of codifying the values that underpin community development has been agreed:

Equality and Anti-discrimination

Community development practice challenges structural inequalities and discriminatory practices. Community development recognises that people are not the same, but they are all of equal worth and importance and therefore entitled to the same degree of respect and acknowledgement.

Social Justice

The aim of increasing social justice is an essential element of community development practice. It involves identifying and seeking to alleviate structural disadvantage and advocating strategies for overcoming exclusion, discrimination and inequality.

Collective Action

Community development practice is essentially about working with and supporting groups of people, to increase their knowledge, skills and confidence so they can analyse their situations and identify issues which can be addressed through collective action.

Community Empowerment

Community development practice seeks the empowerment of individuals and communities, through using the strengths of the community to bring about desired changes.

Working and Learning Together

Community development practice promotes a collective process which enables participants to learn from reflecting on their experiences.

A Great Big Fundamental Mistake?

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Many community groups feel the need to do something.  Preferably quickly.

To develop some kind of ‘project that the community can rally around’.  That will ‘inspire people and show them we are doing something’.

But I think this is a mistake.  A great big fundamental mistake.  For several reasons:

  • it lets many people in the community off the hook – they can, and will, wait for YOU to sort things out.  This does nothing except to create a new more local group of the anointed – they may lend a hand – but they will expect you to lead.
  • it further disempowers members of the community who see the power lying with you and your group, or as the latest in a long line of well meaning but powerless do-gooders.
  • it is disrespectful of the community – it implies that you know what is needed to sort things out.
  • it ties up resources – before you know it your are running a couple of projects and everyone is too busy to take on any more.  You start to burn out while achieving little and skeptics in the community start to say ‘I told you so’…
  • you alienate people – whatever project you choose you will make friends and enemies, while others will remain indifferent.  You choose to work on ‘the environment’ and some will think it about ‘jobs’.  You work on ‘jobs’ and others will think it is about ‘childcare’. As soon as you nail your colours to a mast, some will think they are the wrong colours on the wrong mast and just back away.

So what should we do instead?

Listen, wait, educate and facilitate.

  • Listen to what community members want to do, and then help THEM to do it.
  • Wait and wait and wait, until you find someone who REALLY wants to do something and invites you and your group to help. You might want to think about what you would need to be like to deserve such an invitation.
  • Educate.  Help local people to understand about what is happening to them and their community and why. Help them to explore the opportunities created as political, economic, social and technological change sweeps their community.
  • Facilitate. Help people to do their work.  Help them to associate and organise.  Help them to build their power and to work on what matters most to them.  Build extensive networks of people who know how to help.  The Zen of facilitation means that you can maintain many projects without burning out.

Fairness and equality cannot drive development…

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Community development cannot be driven by values such as ‘fairness’ or ‘equality’.  However much we might want it to be.

If it were, then when we a community reached ‘the average’ all development would have to stop.  Otherwise continued progress would only serve to introduce new inequalities.  Thankfully this is not how society works.

Sustained development is driven by people in the community who just care about making things better. About progress.  And usually not progress for something nebulous called ‘the community’ (unless they are professional community developers), and certainly not progress for Government agendas such as ‘the economy’, ‘Big Society’, or ‘making democracy work’ but for themselves and their loved ones.

Community and development emerge as these caring people learn to associate, cooperate and organise in pursuit of what matters to them.

Discuss.

Inside Out or Outside In?

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This is another way to think about the difference between asset based community development and deficit based community development.

In asset based development the work starts from within the individual or community.  It is their aspirations and goals (both assets) that initiate the work and give it momentum.  The work starts from within and moves out  as it engages others who can help, bringing their expertise and understanding to the task.

In deficit or needs based development the direction tends to flow the other way.  The need or deficit is usually recognised by an outsider (often based on a statistical analysis and hard data rather than lived experience of the community) and development then heads towards the community and various targets within it.

So, for example, when we plan a worklessness project based on unemployment stats in a part of town and then use community development approaches to tackle it we are doing needs based community development.

If individuals in a community decide that they want to do something to improve employment prospects in their area and then start work on it then we at least have a chance of being ‘asset based’.

Derailed

However there is a risk that even from within the community we start to focus too much on deficits, the things that aren’t working, poor educational attainment, few employers with fewer jobs, people not prepared to start ion low wages etc, and before we know it we are talking about all of the ways in which our glass is half empty rather than the ways in which it is half full.  The focus is on what we are missing and not on what we have got.

On Track for Asset Based Development

To keep on track for asset based development we have to focus on what is working in the community and what is positive.  Who has found work?  How did they find it? Who helped? What do they like about it?  what can we learn from this? How can we encourage more on the same path?

This is not to say that asset based development ducks problems and challenges.  Frequently in trying to make more good stuff happen we will find all sorts of barriers and blockages in the way that have to be tackled.  But the direction of travel remains from the inside out, and the barriers are only tackled when they are really in the way.

Why Does This Matter?

Deficit based community development ‘from the outside in’ in my experience seldom works.  At least, not for the community.  It may work for the funder, but it usually leaves the community even more disempowered and dependent on well meaning outsiders, what Paul Theroux calls the ‘angels of virtue’.

Asset based approaches too are hard to make work well.  They progress at a pace and in directions  established by local people (two features that many funders find hard to reconcile with their approaches to outcomes, targets and milestones).  They can be easily taken over by minority interest groups who claim to work for the community while really pursuing their own interests. They are certainly not guaranteed to succeed. But for me at least they hold much more promise than deficit based models.

The key to successful asset based development work, especially if you’re an outsider, is respect and trust.  A willingness to facilitate local knowledge and insight rather than to impose your own.  This is a hard stance to maintain.  You are often tempted to offer ‘solutions’ that you have seen work elsewhere. Often this is what the community want you to do as well. They want an expert to come in and give them answers.  It seldom works, but the promise is seductive.

If all you have done is spend money and have not inspired anyone, you can teach the sharpest lesson by turning your back and going home. – Paul Theroux