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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. |
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"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). |
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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. |
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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. |
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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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| 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. |
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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. |
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It
is built up of several important principles:
1. 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;
2. 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;
3. Organisms become stronger
by exercising, struggling, and facing adversity. Empowerment methodology
incorporates this principle for social organisations;
4. Hands on participation,
especially in decision making, by the recipients, is essential for their
increase in capacity;
5. We need to aim at
the participants from the beginning taking full control, exercising full
decision making, and accepting full responsibility for the actions which
will lead to their increased strength.
This is the core set of principles
of the empowerment methodology. |
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To
enable means to 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. |
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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. |
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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 contine after the deaths of its
human carriers.
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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? |
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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. |
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Differs
from monitoring which should be value-free observation. (See Evaluation
and value). |
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