| Community Development |
Article Index for Community Development |
Articles about Community Development |
Website Links For Community Development |
Information AboutCommunity Development |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT | |
| urban studies and planning | |
| community buildingurban studies and planning | |
| community building | |
| community | |
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Community development, informally called ''' Community Building ''', is a broad term applied to the practices and academic disciplines of civic leaders, activists, involved citizens and professionals to improve various aspects of local communities. It may form part of the larger subject of Ecologically Sustainable Community Economic Development (ESCED). Community development seeks to empower individuals and groups of people by providing these groups with the skills they need to effect change in their own communities. These skills are often concentrated around building political power through the formation of large 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. Community Development Exchange defines Community Development as: :“the process of developing active and sustainable communities based on social justice and mutual respect. It is about influencing power structures to remove the barriers that prevent people from participating in the issues that affect their lives. :“Community workers (officers) facilitate the participation of people in this process. They enable connections to be made between communities and with the development of wider policies and programmes. :“Community Development expresses values of fairness, equality, accountability, opportunity, choice, participation, mutuality, reciprocity and continuous learning. Educating, enabling and empowering are at the core of Community Development.”1 COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT PRACTICE Community development ''practitioners'' are involved in organizing meetings and conducting searches within a s, use social resources to get the economic and political leverage that a community uses to meet their needs. Often, the social resources within the community are found to be adequate to meet these needs if individuals work collectively through techniques like Cooperation and Volunteerism . A form of community development that links academic resources to community problems in a reciprocally beneficial manner is Community-based Participatory Research (CBPR) , a form of research which engages a community fully in the process of problem definition/issue selection, research design, conducting research, and interpreting the results. One of the principal ways in which CBPR differs from traditional Research is that instead of creating knowledge for the advancement of a field or for knowledge's sake, CBPR is an iterative process, incorporating research, reflection, and action in a cyclical process. In the UK Rural Community Councils support local communities to build sustainable futures. They assist local communities in a form of CBPR called community led planning. Rural Community Councils employ experienced, independent community development workers. A number of different approaches to community development can be recognized, including:
THE HISTORY OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT | ||
| Youth And Women's Groups, Following The Work Of The Serowe Brigades Of | "http://wwwinformationdelightinfo/information/entry/Botswana" class="copylinks">Botswana , of Patrick van Rensburg |
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