realisedevelopment.net

Just another WordPress site

Community Development Principles – Frequently Flaunted?

by

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.

What If Leeds…the video

by

At the What If consultation event on the future of Leeds they showed a video created by volinteers at Oblong.

If you were not there to see it, or would like to see it again, here it is:

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/19267856]

Your thoughts, comments and observations would be very welcome.

Wrong Thinking in Big Society?

by

It is an easy mistake to make.  The argument for it goes something like this…

If we want to make Big Society work we have to get more citizens ‘connected‘ to ‘place’ and ‘people’.  We have to encourage civic pride and a culture of helping for the common good.  We need to get more of us running libraries, volunteering and generally being good eggs.  We need more people to be more selfless.

But I think this is wrong thinking.

The primary challenge is not about connecting us to ‘people’ and ‘place’.  This maybe necessary but is certainly not sufficient, and if done without the right pre-conditions will only result in rustling up the usual overburdened suspects and urging them to ‘do more’.

The challenge is to tackle apathy and hopelessness. To help people who currently see themselves as ‘victims of a broken society’ to become active architects of a better one.

To connect more of us to our own sense of self: our own sense of potential, aspiration, vision and possibility.  Armed with a sense of agency and purpose in relation to our own lives then association, mutuality and cooperation, all of those factors that lead to the emergence of community will surely follow, as we realise that our own progress is tied up with the progress of our neighbours.

It is when we have given up on ourselves that we also give up on our communities.

How does this wrong thinking manifest itself in practice?

Well, for example, when we ask ‘communities’ what they need. Almost inevitably they will agree on a lowest common denominator project that makes a little difference to a lot of people but ducks the real issues that really blights lives.  So we get a community group lobbying for a new playground instead of tackling the real challenges that they face – like how to put breakfast on the table every morning, or how to get their children to study at school, or how to escape from violence.  These things are just too painful and personal to talk about in group meetings with well-meaning strangers.

We have to recognise that communities appear when large numbers of individuals are working on what really, REALLY matters to them, working collectively in pursuit of their own self-interest, rightly understood.

When we get the balance right between looking after yourself and looking after your neighbour.

Listening: A response to danger?

by

“We truly listen if we sense ourselves to be in danger.

Imagine, for example, that there is a murderer at large and we are alone in bed in the middle of the night and there is a noise downstairs. At times like these, we stop moving, our entire body, inside and out becomes very still until nothing is left but a heartbeat. Even our breathing becomes inaudible. Our concentration is focused totally on the sound. Animals, sensing danger, stop in their tracks and literally prick up their ears to listen….

We need to listen as if our lives depend on it.”
(from “Matsumoto News: A Newsletter by Karen Hagberg; March 1990)

  • Who are you listening to?
  • What are you listening for?
  • Who is not being heard?