What is Community Development?
What is community development? (1)
The key purpose of community development is collectively to bring about social change and justice by working with communities (2) to:
- Identify their needs, opportunities, rights and responsibilities
- Plan, organise and take action
- Evaluate the effectiveness and impact of the action all in ways which challenge oppression and tackle inequalities
The values of community development
These outline the basic values and practice principles for good community development work practice.
Social Justice:
- Respecting and valuing diversity and difference
- Challenging oppressive and discriminatory actions and attitudes
- Addressing power imbalances between individuals within groups and society
- Committing to pursue civil and human rights for all
- Seeking and promoting policy and practices that are just and enhance equality whilst challenging those that are not
Participation:
- Promoting the participation of individuals and communities, particularly those traditionally marginalised or excluded
- Recognising and challenging barriers to full and effective participation
- Supporting communities to gain skills to engage in participation
- Developing structures that enable communities to participate effectively
- Sharing good practice in order to learn from each other
Sustainable communities:
- Promoting the empowerment of individuals and communities
- Supporting communities to develop their skills to take action
- Promoting the development of autonomous and accountable structures
- Learning from experiences as a basis for change
- Promoting effective collective and collaborative working
- Using resources with respect for the environment
Self-determination:
- Valuing the concerns or issues that communities identify as their starting points
- Raising people’s awareness of the range of choices open to them, providing opportunities for discussion of the implication of options
- Promoting the view that communities do not have the right to oppress other communities
- Working with conflict within communities
Reflective practice:
- Promoting and supporting individual and collective learning through reflection on practice
- Changing practice in response to outcomes of reflection
- Recognising the constraints and contexts within which community development takes place
- Recognising the importance of keeping others informed and updated about the wider context
Working and learning together:
- Demonstrating that collective working is effective
- Supporting and developing individuals to contribute effectively to communities
- Developing a culture of informed and accountable decision making
- Ensuring all perspectives within the community are considered
- Sharing good practice in order to learn from each other
Footnotes:
1. This Definition is the current definition used by The Community Development Xchange and is taken from the National Occupational Standards for Community Development Work.
2. Communities refer to those that can be defined geographically and/or those defined by interest.
