Article by Materahub
Community development is a process by which communities become more responsible, organize and plan together, develop healthy lifestyle options, empower themselves, reduce poverty and suffering, create employment and economic opportunities, achieve social, economic, cultural and environmental goals.
The United Nations defines community development as “a process where community members come together to take collective action and generate solutions to common problems.”It is a broad concept, applied to the practices of civic leaders, activists, involved citizens, and professionals to improve various aspects of communities, typically aiming to build stronger and more resilient local communities. The purpose of community development is to help create the conditions for an inclusive and sustainable society by supporting communities to engage in collective action for transformative change.
Community development seeks to empower individuals and groups of people with the skills they need to effect change within their communities. These skills are often created through the creation of social groups working for a common agenda. Community developers must understand both how to work with individuals and how to affect communities’ positions within the context of larger social institutions. Communities are not only defined as a physical location such as the city, town or village where we live, they can also be defined by common cultural heritage, language, and beliefs or shared interests, these are sometimes called communities of interest. An individual can be part of a neighbourhood community, a religious community and a community of shared interests all at the same time. The relationships, whether with people or the land, define a community for each individual.
The term “development” often carries an assumption of growth and expansion. During the industrial era, development was strongly connected to increased speed, volume and size. However, many people are currently questioning the concept of growth for numerous reasons: a realization that more isn’t always better, or an increasing respect for reducing outside dependencies and lowering levels of consumerism. So while the term “development” may not always mean growth, it always implies change.
The community development process takes charge of the conditions and factors that influence a community and changes the quality of life of its members. Community development is about community building where the process is as important as the results.
Whereas the term “community capacity building” has evolved from past terms such as institutional building and organizational development. In the 1950s and 1960s, these terms referred to community development that focused on enhancing the technological and self-help capacities of individuals in rural areas. In the 1970s, following a series of reports on international development, an emphasis was placed on building capacity for technical skills in rural areas, and also in the administrative sectors of developing countries. In the 1980s the concept of institutional development expanded even more.
Institutional development was viewed as a long-term process of building up a developing country’s government, public and private sector institutions, and NGOs. Capacity building became a crucial topic during the 1990s. With increasing concerns about environmental issues such as climate change, there has been a focus on achieving sustainable development, or development that maximizes social, economic, and environmental benefit in the long run while protecting the earth.
During debates about how to achieve sustainable development, it has become a common place to include discussions about local community empowerment as well as “related concepts of participation, ownership, agency and bottom-up planning.” In order to empower local communities to be self-sustaining, capacity building has become a crucial part of achieving sustainable development.