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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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.
..
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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.
|
.
| 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. |
..
| 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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| 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. 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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| (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. |
. |
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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.
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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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| 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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