How can communities build capacity to lead their own development projects?
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Community development is the process of improving the social, economic, and environmental conditions of a specific area through the active participation and empowerment of its residents. However, many communities face challenges such as lack of resources, skills, or leadership to initiate and sustain their own development projects. How can communities build capacity to lead their own development projects? Here are some tips and best practices based on urban planning principles and successful examples.
The first step in any community development project is to identify the needs and assets of the community. Needs are the problems or gaps that the community wants to address, such as poor infrastructure, low income, or environmental degradation. Assets are the strengths or resources that the community can leverage, such as human capital, social networks, or cultural heritage. A participatory and inclusive approach to identifying needs and assets can help to build trust, ownership, and empowerment among the community members.
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Nnenna Urum-Eke
Head of Development at Enfield Council
No community is completely lacking in skills and experience - both professional and lived. So first, acknowledge and understand their existing knowledge, abilities, experiences and resources. Next, help them harness them through co-design of the structures and processes they need to collaborate and progress tasks effectively. Finally, help them understand and fill the gaps - facilitating whatever training, funding, advice and professional services they need to successfully deliver the project.
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Beatrice Hati Gitundu
Urban Development || Disaster Governance || Resilience || PhD Researcher
Shift from ‘empowering’ to CAPACITY SHARING. Based on my experience, the crucial thing is to first kill the “savior mentality”. Going into a community, what makes you think they lack capacity? We must shift for “empowerment” to Capacity Sharing. Communities have their own agency and experience. No matter the type development, this must be the starting point - Understanding what experiential knowledge exists and diverse forms of embedded agency, then hybridizing this with other forms of knowledge and skills. That way, participation is aimed at capacity sharing and not the reductionist “training” and “empowering”. In the same breadth, we must be keen not overromaticize suffering as agency. My (radical) thoughts.
The next step is to set goals and priorities for the community development project. Goals are the desired outcomes or changes that the community wants to achieve, such as improved health, education, or livability. Priorities are the most urgent or important needs or assets that the community wants to focus on, such as water supply, job creation, or community cohesion. Setting goals and priorities can help to clarify the vision and direction of the project, as well as to allocate resources and responsibilities.
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Saeid Daniari
Freelance at Self Employed
Community development, must start by a feasibility Study, which identifies future needs of resources that can help upgrade the social life of a community, and just economic improvement of the developer. Define a set of visionary goals which each part of the communitybis obliged to.
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Christian Nussmueller
City of Graz, Executive Office for Urban Planning, Development and Construction - Unit for Climate Action and Funding Projects
Its useful to connect and confirm the community goals with existing administrative/political strategies and plans. The goals shall be defined measurable to be evaluated after implementation.
The third step is to plan and implement actions that will help to achieve the goals and priorities of the community development project. Actions are the specific tasks or activities that the community will undertake, such as building a school, organizing a festival, or planting a garden. Planning and implementing actions can help to translate the vision into reality, as well as to monitor and evaluate the progress and impact of the project.
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Eng. Feras Altarawneh, AIA/ PMP
Chief Executive Officer
From past experience, planning and implementation is essential to achieve goals. However, not in all cases. What is more crucial is to secure sustainable resources throughout the life of the development and that is in itself is not as easy as it sound particularly if development scale require huge infrastructure like transit networks that involve numerous stakeholders/ shareholders. This is just an example of areas that could require different level of thought process and planning .
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Andrew Flores, AICP
I am inspired by the recent work of Del Amo Action Committee in West Carson (unincorporated Los Angeles County). The community voice comes through unfiltered in their Vision and Implementation Plan. Their work is a model of effective and equitable coalition building for other organizations to follow. You don't need to be a Planner to develop a vision, plan and work toward implementation for your community.
The final step is to learn and adapt from the experiences and feedback of the community development project. Learning and adapting are the processes of reflecting on the successes and challenges of the project, as well as adjusting the goals, priorities, or actions based on the changing needs and assets of the community. Learning and adapting can help to improve the quality and sustainability of the project, as well as to foster a culture of innovation and resilience among the community members.
Community development is not a one-time event, but a continuous and dynamic process that requires the active and collaborative involvement of the community. By building capacity to lead their own development projects, communities can enhance their well-being, autonomy, and identity.
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Sabareesh Suresh
Manager - Climate Action Implementation @ C40 | Local Pathways Fellow UN SDSN | Global Commission on Adaptation - Youth | GARP-SCR
Encourage the community to document their experiences, lessons learned, and successful practices. This can serve as a resource for future projects and allow others to benefit from their experiences.
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Neil Davidson
Systems Lens & Poet at And Now What
Create a mutually assistive community & collective wellbeing & synergy, by: Listening deeply as we sense into & process implications of collapse. Create safe places—receptacles for multiple wisdoms to surface, cross-pollinate, share & scale knowledge & ideas to solve community problems & anticipate future needs. Integrate community content with systems design expertise to engage & enliven self-healing & regenerative ways forward. Respect social complexity, diversity, fragmentation, different worldviews, & capability. Respectfully surface issues & look into deeper systemic causes. Synthesising & iteratively refining common understandings in systems context. Mindfully co-imagining & co-designing alternative ways forward with community.
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Shane Phillips
Housing Policy Researcher, Author, Consultant, and Speaker
In addition to other folks' ideas about engaging and building capacity in the community, I also think state and local governments need to lower the barriers to entry. Community groups are much less likely to get involved in development if project review and approval processes are uncertain, slow, and expensive. It's also much more difficult to pull together resources for a 100-unit project than a 10-unit project, but smaller projects are often prohibited or infeasible due to zoning and other regulations. Supporting community development isn't just about building capacity, but also about ensuring that communities don't require Herculean capacity to succeed in development.