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| The
word "community" has been used in several different contexts. |
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Biologists
talk of community as meaning several individuals in a single species, or
several different species, living, competing, co-operating, to make a larger
whole. |
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| Since
the advent of the internet and information technology, various collections
of persons, often those sharing a single interest, have grown up, without
geographical boundaries, and who communicate electronically. |
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The
focus on this web site in this training series, is on a more orthodox meaning
of community, a community of living human beings, one which usually has
geographic boundaries (except those may be stretched, as in nomadic
communities), associated, for example in communities that range from
local neighbourhoods in large urban areas, to remote rural villages. See
Habitat. |
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| A
community is not just a collection of individual human beings. It is a
super-organism that belongs to and is part of culture,
composed of interactions between people, everything that is learned. Its
six dimensions include: technology, economy, political power, social patterns,
shared values, beliefs and ideas. It is not transmitted by biological means,
but by learning. |
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Like
a tree or other life form that transcends the very atoms which compose
it, its human members can come of go, through death, birth or migration,
and it still continues to live and grow. It is never homogeneous, having
many factions, schisms, competition and conflicts within it. A community
is a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. See "What
is Community." |
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| When
a community develops, it grows. See the word, Development.
It does not necessarily mean getting bigger or getting richer. It means
getting more complex and stronger. |
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A
community does not get developed by a mobilizer and more than a flower
grows taller by someone pulling it up. A community (as a social institution)
develops itself. A mobilizer can only stimulate, encourage and guide members
of the community. |
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| Some
people assume that community development simply means getting richer ––
an increase in per capita wealth or income. It can be, but is more. It
is social change, where a community becomes more complex, adding institutions,
increasing its collective power, changing qualitatively in its organization. |
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Development
means growing in complexity and strength in all six dimensions of culture.
(Español: desarrollo
comunitario, Français: développement
de la communauté). |
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| Community
participation is far more than the contribution of labour or supplies;
it is participating in decision making, to chose a community project,
plan it, implement it, manage it, monitor it, control it. It differs from
community contribution. Social Animation
promotes the activities of a target community, with a view to the community
taking more responsibility for its own development, starting with decisions
about what projects to undertake, and stimulation to mobilize resources
and organize activities. |
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Community
participation promotion aims at ensuring that decisions affecting the community
are taken by all (not only a few) community members (not by an
outside agency). |
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| In
the CSMED methodology, community contribution is encouraged, for it helps
the community to become more responsible for the activity if they invest
their own resources in it. We also encourage Government, and outside donors
to discuss their activities with the whole community; this is community
consultation. |
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Community
participation here should not be used as the equivalent of community contribution
or community consultation (as is misleadingly done by many assistance
agencies); participation here means participation in decision making,
in control and in co-ordination. (Español: participación
comunitaria, Français: participation
de la communauté). |
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| More
than merely songs and dances, culture, in social science, means the overall
social system, the total of all learned attitudes and behaviour, consisting
of socio-cultural systems belonging to six dimensions: technological,
economic,
political,
interactive,
ideological
and world view. |
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The
basic unit of culture is the "symbol." Culture is not genetic; it
is transmitted by communicating symbols. Sometimes called the "superorganic,"
because it is composed of systems that transcend the biological entities,
humans, that compose and bear culture. See "Culture."
A community is cultural. See: Strange
Fish. |
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| Many
people assume that development means quantitative growth, whereas its main
characteristic is qualitative change. To develop is to grow, and to grow
means more than to get bigger; it also means to become more complex and
stronger. When a community develops, it gets stronger
and more complex. It undergoes social change. See "Culture."
An economist may see development as only an increase in wealth or income
(absolute or per capita); and an engineer may see development
as a greater control over energy, or more sophisticated and powerful tools. |
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To
a mobilizer, however, those are only two of the six cultural dimensions
of a community that change. Development means
social change in all six cultural dimensions: technological, economic,
political, interactive, ideological and world view. See Community
Development. (Español: desarrollo,
Français: développement). |
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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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| Money
and wealth are not the same. Money is a cultural symbol that everyone must
believe in if it is to be useful. |
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It
can be used as a measure of wealth, a method of transferring or exchanging
wealth, and a way to store wealth. (See "wealth,"
and Principles of Wealth). Money
is not wealth. |
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| Poverty
is more than a lack of money and income, more than lack of access to facilities
and services such as water, roads, education or clinics. It is the result
of “poverty of spirit” ie an attitude of hopelessness, an ignorance
of available resources, a dependence upon others, lack of confidence, discouragement,
lack of skills, lack of trust, lack of integrity and lack of effective
sustainable organization; in short, lack of good management. See
Factors
of Poverty. |
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Poverty
is a social problem, and calls for a social solution; poverty is not merely
the lack of income among a collection of individuals. Poverty can be reduced
by organizing and guiding poor people towards helping themselves, and by
getting stronger (empowerment) as
a result of engaging in struggles and meeting challenges. The eradication
of poverty, therefore, calls upon a sustainable improvement in management.
(Español:
pobreza,
Français:
pauvreté). |
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| The
word "sustainability" is important in development assistance. (The
word is not found in most dictionaries). It refers to the "ability"
of
something to be "sustained" (carried on) after outside support is
withdrawn. For the community that builds a water supply, the repairing,
cleaning and using the pump after it is constructed, is the desire. |
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For
an external donor, it is the continuation of the project or its outputs
after the donor withdraws. For you, the mobilizer, it is the continuation
of the community strengthening social process after you move on. For environmentalists
and ecologists, sustainabilty requires that an activity can be sustained
(eg biologically) by the physical environment, that non-renewable
resources are not used up. |
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| Transparency
is a very important element of strengthening a community (see elements
of empowerment).
The word "transparent" here means the ability to see through something. |
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When
civil servants try to do things (ie make decisions, allocate resources)
in secrecy, hiding their activities from the people, they are not being
transparent. They are giving the people the "mushroom
treatment." |
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| This
promotes mistrust, apathy, and marginalization (important factors of
poverty
and community weakness). Your job as a mobilizer is to promote transparency.
You do it by explaining what it is, and that the people have a right and
a responsibility to know what is going on (awareness raising). |
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You
also do it by ensuring that it is a key element of the community organizations
that you form or re-organize. Laws, such as the "Freedom of Information
Act," or similar laws which ensure that details of government spending
must be of public record, available to the people, are intended to promote
governmental transparency, although some officials will attempt to subvert
the spirit of such laws. |
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| If
you hide a problem, cover it up or deny that it is there; you surely hinder
its solution. |
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If,
instead, you uncover it, admit it, and honestly examine it, you are well
on the way to solving the problem. Transparency strengthens. |
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