For people who have been extensively involved in community development, it is no doubt an approach that can empower communities to improve their lives. However, for others who know little about it, it conjures up images of residents complaining about their areas and delaying projects that were meant to benefit them. This knowledge gap, one might think, would have been closed by the impact community development work has achieved over time. Unfortunately, the majority of policy makers and funders still seem to have a complete blind spot when it comes to the value of helping communities build their collective influence.
An underlying problem is that public bodies, which should be welcoming and supporting community development, often view it as merely an instrument in aid of getting top-down targets met. When those targets end up being questioned, the processes for attaining them are challenged, and alternative plans are sought, those in charge of setting and meeting their own organisational targets are not happy. What they don’t realise is that the central issue here is power – the power of people living and working in various communities to deal with the problems they face. Targets, objectives, outputs, etc. need to relate to communities’ experience. Problem-solving must connect with people’s understanding of possible options. If solutions and programmes are imposed on people without their informed involvement in shaping them, it exacerbates their powerlessness, and leaves them more disillusioned than ever with how things are organised around them.
To appreciate the real importance of community development, one should see it in the historical context of collective struggles against powerlessness. The driving force has always been the refusal to accept an unpalatable state of affairs as unalterable. From racist practices, appalling housing conditions, neighbourhood crime and disorder, to widespread poverty, diminishing employment prospects, and environmental degradation, whenever communities are galvanised into working together to formulate and press for better outcomes, community development takes another step forward.
Looking back, the closest community development came to be recognised by any government as a core discipline in empowering communities was when the Labour Government established the Civil Renewal Unit (CRU) in 2003 which went on to promote the community development ethos and the adoption of diverse engagement techniques across local and central government, in partnership with the community sector. CRU established a network of Civic Pioneers to widen local authorities’ engagement with local people, a series of Take Part hubs to help people exert greater influence over public policies and services, and a group of Guide Neighbourhoods to facilitate peer-to-peer learning amongst communities in shaping local priorities and strategies. It acted as the government sponsor of the Community Development Foundation, and ran national and regional ‘Together We Can’ awareness-raising campaigns to encourage collaborative working between community groups and statutory bodies. It also invested in dissemination infrastructure to increase the take-up of practices such as participatory budgeting, neighbourhood plans, and community asset transfers.
Yet despite the impact of these activities in raising community confidence and satisfaction in a wide range of areas across the country, it was still all too easy for a different political regime to dismantle this structure when it took over from Labour in 2010. Coordinated and long-term support for community development activities ceased, and the Community Development Foundation itself was closed down. At one level, this might be regarded as myopic policy making – opting for short term cuts over more durable community improvement. But at a deeper level, it reveals a callous disinterest in addressing the problem of powerlessness in society. Shallow rhetoric about ‘Taking Back Control’ will not get us very far (or worse, it covers up even greater loss of power). History tells a clear story – for the struggle to secure a fair share of power for all, we need sustained community development.
--
No comments:
Post a Comment