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| Economic
Dimension of Community: |
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The economic dimension
of community
is its various ways and means of production and allocation of scarce and
useful
goods and services (wealth),
whether that is through gift giving, obligations, barter, market trade,
transfer payments, lottery winning (gambling) or state allocations.
(See
Community).
.
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| When used as a noun,
the word "effect" implies the result of some other action or condition
which causes
it. |
. |
"The effect of your misbehaving is
that you will not find much success as a community mobiliser." |
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Efficiency can
be defined as being able to "Get more output for less input (maximize our
efficiency)"
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| One
catchy phrase that may illustrate this is, "Do not work hard; get results."
Here the admired value of "hard work" (the means or the input) is shown
to be less important than the result of that work (the end or output). |
... |
It is not intended
as an encouragement to be lazy, but as an encouragement to use resources
(including one's own labour) wisely, and therefore (in this context) efficiently. |
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This a story used
to illustrate that something looks different from different perspectives.
|
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| It
is about seven blind men who each touch a different part of an elephant,
and then each have a different idea of what an elephant is. See the Elephant
Story. |
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It is used
on this web site to illustrate that a "community"
like all social organizations, have many aspects but they can not all be
seen at the same time. |
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| The
empowerment of a community (or organization) is an increase in its strength,
improvement in its
capacity
(ability) to accomplish its goals. |
. |
Like capacity
development, it is a process of becoming stronger. See "Measuring
Empowerment" for a list of the sixteen elements of power or capacity,
and a participatory method of measuring its increase. |
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| The
empowerment methodology, in contrast to the charity
approach, aims at strengthening the community rather than encouraging it
to remain dependant
upon outside resources. |
. |
The empowerment
methodology, therefore, does not make everything easy for the community,
because it sees that struggle and resistance, as in physical exercise,
produce more strength. See Community
Empowerment. |
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|
See
Jihad
for an interesting metaphor.
|
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|
Community development
means growing in complexity in all six dimensions of culture. It
differs from community empowerment which means growing stronger. Although
the two are different by definition, they are intricately linked to each
other.
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|
(Deutsch:
empowerment,
die
stärkung, Español:
potenciación,
Filipino/Tagalog: pagpapalakas,
Français: empowerment,
हिन्दी (Hindi): अधिकारिकरण,
Italiano:
empowerment,
Kiswahili:
uwezo,
Português:
fortalecendo,
Pyccкий:
paзвития,
Tiên Việt: năng
lực)
|
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| The training material
here is aimed at attacking poverty at the community level, where mobilisation
and management training are aimed at empowering
low income communities. The theory behind the skills and techniques
here is sociological. |
.
|
The successful community worker,
an applied sociologist,
can not do the best job, however, unless she or he is familiar with some
of the basic principles that lie behind the offering of skills or describing
the programmes to be set up. |
....
It is built up of several
important principles:
1. The balance of power (opinion
makers and leaders, not merely the demographic majority) must desire the
community to become more self reliant and willing to make efforts and sacricfices
to become so. (Leaders and opinion makers may be formal and/or informal,
officially recognised and/or unrecognised). Without this, the mobiliser
would be wasting time and better employed in another community or organization;
.
2. An experienced and/or trained agent must
be available to intervene to stimulate and guide the community to organize
and take action to become more self reliant. The mobiliser may be one with
natural talents and skills, while the training in this web site is aimed
at developing and sharpening those skills and talents;
.
3. While assistance can be offered, it should
not be charity assistance which promotes dependency and weakness, but partnership,
assistance and training that promotes self reliance and increased capacity;
.
4. Recipient organisations or communities
should not be controlled or forced into change, but professionals trained
as activists of mobilisers should intervene with stimulation, information
and guidance. Social engineering must be avoided. Persuasian and faciltation
are needed;
.
5. Organisms become stronger by exercising,
struggling, and facing adversity. Empowerment methodology incorporates
this principle for social organisations. Sports coaches use the slogan,
"No pain; no gain." We do not promote pain, but do promote struggle and
effort;
.
6. Hands on participation, especially in
decision making, by the recipients, is essential for their increase in
capacity. Decisions can not be made for or on behalf of the community;
.
7. A substantial proportion (it varies)
of the resources needed for a community project (ie the action) must be
provided by the community members themselves;
.
8. We need to aim at the participants from
the beginning taking full control, exercising full decision making, and
accepting full responsibilityfor the actions which will lead to their increased
strength.
This is the core set of principles of the
empowerment methodology. |
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| (Deutsch:
stärkungsmethode,
English: empowerment methodology, Español: ~, Français: ~, Português:
~) |
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To enable means
to permit or increase the ability of something.
|
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| To
facilitate
an actor in achieving something for itself. Where one party assists another
party in becoming empowered. Applied to communities and organizations in
this methodology. See Enablement. |
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Two extensions
of the word, (1) "enabling" (as in an enabling environment) and (2) "enablement"
(as in a process of enabling a community or organization to become stronger),
used in this methodology, are not usually found in most orthodox dictionaries. |
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| This
is an environment (political, regulatory) around a community that enables
the community to unite, identify its own resources, engage in self help
activities, and become more self reliant. |
. |
The practices,
attitudes, behaviour, rules, regulations, laws, of leaders, civil servants,
politicians, of central and district governments, all contribute to the
degree of enablement around a community. See Facilitate. |
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| The
process of learning that takes a baby (as a biological organism) and humanizes
it. To become human (ie to obtain culture). Socialization. |
. |
We all start
our own process of enculturation at birth, and it continues until death.
We learn, through symbols, all the six dimensions of culture. |
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Looked at from the point of view of
society and culture, the process is also the way that society and its intitutions
reproduce and continue after the deaths of its human carriers.
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.
.
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The study of
how we know.
See: Knowing.. |
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| Equalitarian
is an ideal of everyone being equal. In the real world, however, we know
that people are born with different strengths and potentials, and into
families with different wealth and power. It may be unfair, but who has
ever promised us that life would be fair? |
. |
What is important,
then, is that we are all treated equally under the law, without laws that
are different for the privileged than for the poor. Furthermore, we have
the ideal that we all have equal opportunities to help and to improve ourselves,
for example, the same opportunities to obtain an education. |
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| A
process of allocating value on what a project has achieved (in relation
to its objectives). Judging. |
. |
Differs from
monitoring which should be value-free observation. (See Evaluation
and value). |
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