INTRUDUCTION
In the last two decades, countries throughout the world
including developed and developing countries were faced the dramatic impacts of
global reformation. This new restructuring suggest that we are moving rapidly
from the era of the nation states toward a global community dominated by
regional market economies and growing interdependence. It has become routine
for international observers to point out the surprising changes have taken
place in all aspect of global life politically, economically, socially and even
culturally.
However, a real "new world order" remains
mysterious. While experts may claim the global spread of democracy, political
and economic instability has reached an unparalleled level. Among developing
countries remain experience economic crisis. The gap between rich and poor has
doubled in the past three decades, so that we now live in a world in which 20%
of its people consume more than 80% of its wealth. During the 1980s, per capita
incomes fell in many developing countries, severely miserable; poverty, starvation,
and disease remain widespread.
As developing countries, particularly Asian countries
continuously receiving aids from developed countries, the development of
communities who live in this region still remains become a big question. Even
began in1997, this region has confronted multidimensional crisis. Under
the circumstances, the role of community development workers (CDWs) delivers
the aid in succeeding community development (CD) in the third world becomes
crucial. This paper will examine the role of the community development workers,
as well as their constraints and challenges in conducting community development
work in developing countries. In doing so, it will also attempt to promote the
effective of delivering community development works in developing countries.
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT: ORIGIN AND DEFINITION
The concept of community development had emerged since the
post-World War II. It became an international jargon in 1948 when the Cambridge
Conference on African Administration, organized by the British Colonial Office,
substituted the term community development for mass education. In the late
1940s and the 1950s the British Colonial Office, US International Cooperation
Administration (USICA), and the United Nations (UN) encouraged the developing
countries to take an interest in the community development approach. As a
result, it gradually emerged as a universal phenomenon in the Third World,
(Mezirow, 1963 and Voth, Donald E. and Brewster, Marcie, 1989).
Definitions of community development in the literature are
varied. To provide an overview, I would like to review some definitions of
community development given by different experts and organizations as quoted by James A. Christenson, Kim Fendley and Jerry W. Robinson, Jr. in Community
development in Perspective edited by James A.Christenson and Jerry W. Robinson, Jr.
Dunbar (1972) defines community development as “a
series of community improvements, which take place over time as a result of the
common efforts of various groups of people … to meet human want or need”.
Darby and Morris (1975) advances the definition that community
development is “an educational approach which would raise levels of local
awareness and increase the confidence and ability of community groups to
identify and tackle their own problems.”
Ravitz (1982) sees community development as “the active
involvement of people at the level of the local community in resisting or
supporting some cause[s] or issue[s] or program[s] that interest them.”
Cawley (1984) considers community development as “a
deliberate, democratic, developmental activity; focusing an existing social and
geographical grouping of people; who participate in the solution of common
problems for the common good.”
The United Nations (1963) defined community development as
"the process by which the efforts of the people themselves" were
combined with "those of the governmental authorities" in order to
"improve the economic, social and cultural conditions of
communities," to integrate "these communities into the life of the
nation" and to "enable them to contribute fully to national
progress."
Kenny (1994), states that community development is
related to the notion that community has more responsibility for determining
their own needs and setting up their own direction by managing their own
resources based on principles “sharing resources, social interaction and
participation, self help and mutual support activities”.
From these diverse definitions, we can conclude that
community development is a group of people in a certain place with their
governmental authorities initiating a development process aimed at changing
their economic, social, cultural and even environmental spheres.T
THE ROLE OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT WORKERS
One implication of the global restructuring is change of
relationship between state and civil society. As a result, new pattern of community
development practice appeared. The trend is that the increasing involvement of
voluntary sector agencies in a field previously dominated by governments.
Following this new trend, the role of community development
workers also underwent transformation. They began focus on developmental
strategies rather than welfare activities. They have also begun building
coalition with others regionally, nationally and even internationally to
support people-centred and sustainable development at the local level, and even
they have involved in mobilising social movement voicing, for example,
environmental, human rights and gender issues. In short, community development
workers have very important role in helping communities to achieve their
development goals.
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
The new trend of global economics commonly called economic
rationalism, which emphasize productivity, has shown remarkable achievement.
The indicators can be seen from the growth of economic performance in several
developing countries. However, following this achievement, in the early 1980s
most developing countries also experienced welfare crisis. During the period,
there has been insufficiency, insecurity and ambiguity of the welfare state,
and it was persistently unable to fulfil the human needs. The welfare state
promoted by western societies clearly was not able to provide social equality
and even it was suspected contributing to widen social inequality and
injustice. The fail of the welfare state to lead the community to a better life
was generated by the monetary crisis due to the slowing of economic growth.
Consequently, governments were in difficult positions because at the same time
the people demanded welfare state service due to the increase of unemployment
and poverty rate, (Ife, 2002).
Meanwhile, Experts and donor countries have long debated the
reasons for limited success of community development programs in the Third
World. Some believe that a traditional value system is one of the major factors
responsible for this. They argue that rural people suffer from paternalistic,
apathy and dependency syndrome. The community and their institutions are tied
to tradition and mired in myth, fallacy and age old beliefs that breed
attitudes, perceptions, and behavioral patterns that are unfavorable with
development, (Magstadt, 1991). The behavioral and attitudinal patterns of
government or bureaucracy and their elitist approach further complicate the
situation.
According to Abedin (2000), the authoritarian and paternalistic
social values and environment in most developing countries, particularly in Asia,
perhaps contribute to the authoritarian and paternalistic behavior and attitude
of the government. This can also contributes to the fact that the ordinary
people are afraid of the bureaucratic authority and therefore suffer from
dependency syndrome. The obvious example can be seen from several features of
Indian life and history, where there "is a sharply defined hierarchy of
sex, generation and age." (Robson, 1964).
Therefore, in most developing countries, community
participation in developing process is very limited because nearly all-social
practices do not encourage principle of participation and empowerment. For
example, in the field of administration, the decisions are usually made by the
government; in society, by the upper strata or a small group of elite; and even
in family, by the parents.
Being unaccustomed to making their own decisions, ordinary
people found it difficult to exercise their task of decision making and thus
they continued to wait for the bureaucracy for decisions and for answers to
their problems. They believe that government is capable of doing everything.
Apart from this problem, the autocratic and paternalistic
behavior of the government as inheritance of colonial has generated officers
who usually “stand in a superior-inferior relationship to the people” (Abedin,
2000). This kind of attitude creates a wide gap between government and
community. The situation is further complicated by the belief of government
that community does not have enough capacity and potential to involve in
development. Therefore, people become apathetic, dependent, and not confident.
However, in the past few decades things have changed to a
limited extent and the situation has been slowly moving in an egalitarian
direction. For example, the implementation local autonomy in Indonesia has
encouraged local governments and their communities to manage their own regions.
Another dimension of developing countries is that poverty,
illiteracy, unhygienic living condition, poor health care, and governments
increasingly characterized by corruption, collusion and nepotism.
CONDUCTING COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES:
CONSTRAINTS AND CHALLENGES.
The emerging of the new development paradigm has challenged
community development workers in delivering their role. In my observation, at
least there are three factors internally as well as externally that may become
problems and challenges for the community development workers in conducting
community development works in developing countries: Regimes, Culture and
Community Development Workers themselves. The next section will discuss those
three factors.
Regimes
Changing the role of Community development Workers (CDWs)
from delivering welfare and service to advocacy, lobbing and even political
action as demand of new world order has worsened the relationship between CDWs
and governments. There is a wide space between CDWs and government to have
different perceptions and even governments sometimes see CDWs as threaten. The
governments worry about the CDWs programme that may decrease their popularity
and can cut their influence. For these reason, government tightly under
controls CDWs.
The other constrains faced by CDWs in establishing their
relationship with the governments are the gap between the willingness to
operate their role as an agent of development and their dependency to
government both regulatory and financially. As reality that CDWs operate based
on government regulation (Heyzer, 1995), it is very possible for the government
to encourage, tolerate, interfere, and discourage CDWs’ activity.
Besides, the effort of CDWs to gain wider political space in
conducting their role as advocates confronted with the government as
legislation makers since the governments reluctant giving too much political
space to CDWs to maintain their position. This reason comes from the idea that
‘CDWs 'initiatives which generate popular bases of support are likely to threaten
the legitimacy of elites and challenge government-defined notions of
development (Elridge, 1989).
Culture
One weakness of the community development practice in
developing countries is that the inconsistency of CDWs in implementing
community based development principle, which oriented to local community. Based
on my observation, most of development programs aimed at improving community in
developing countries ignore cultural perspective, since these program are
planned and even sometimes implemented by those who are from developed
countries, where culturally has different background with community in
developing countries. They are from countries that follow fundamentalism
approach, which sees community as universal, (Crigger, 2001). As a result,
inflexibility and disconnection between the context and the real situation
potentially appear.
For this reason, conducting community development work in
developing countries is not as easy as carrying out community development work
in developed countries. The presence of cultural borders between CDWs and
community in terms of race, ethnicity, class, gender and sex has become a
critical problem in delivering community development programs in developing
countries. Therefore, CDWs are required to have ability to break the cultural
borders and even in a certain level, they are demanded to be able to cross
political, social, economic or ideological spheres, and move from one culture
to another by putting aside their existing cultural beliefs.
The other challenge that might be faced by CDWs in
delivering community development in developing countries is the ability of the
community to understand sufficiently the mission of CDWs. Some people are
still difficult to understand the information given and provided by CDWs because
of the educational limitation and culture barriers. For example, the poverty of
linguistic description of their inner world sometimes creates misunderstanding
between the community and CDWs. The result, sometimes the local community is
prejudiced of the presence of the CDWs in their area. This affects the CDWs in
delivering their programs because at the same time they need supports from the
local community.
Internal Community Development Workers
The constraints and challenges of CDWs conducting community
development work in developing countries not only come from external but also
may be from internal CDWs themselves. As Korten (1990) claims, the inability of
the organizations, both established by government and non government to cope
with the increase scope of responsibility which demanded professionalism of
activities in which they have been involved has become challenges for community
development agent, (Korten 1990). All agents of development, particularly CDWs
that are known as the most effective development agent in dealing with
community, ideally should respond the presence of new development paradigm
based on the principle of good governance which promoted civil society,
sustainability, democratization, accountability, equity, and efficiency. CDWs
have to establish investigation how natural resources are being explored, who
is exploring what and for what purpose, how economic growth is created and who
benefits from it. Nevertheless, in reality this is sometimes neglected.
Moreover, the change of CDWs role from delivery service to advocacy and even
political action has worsened the relationship between governments and CDWs,
whereas the success achieving this kind of development really depends on the
cooperation between the government as policy maker and CDWs as independents
institution, which can contribute to operate the policy, which is established
by the governments.
The other factor is misconception of community development.
Many organizations which claim themselves as CDWs has a limited idea and consider
community development as a simple idea, whereas it is complex idea and not only
cover social aspect as mostly people think but also it includes economic,
political, environmental, cultural and even spiritual aspects, (Ife, 2002).
Due to the misconception of community development, many
community development programs establish strongly emphasize a certain aspect
and ignoring others. Many projects aim to improve the quality of life of
community focus only on economic aspect with the assumption that the success of
community economic development will impact the other aspects. Yet, this
assumption is always different with the reality because it ignores the
complexity of human life and community experience. I believe that the usage of
the inappropriate approach that is always utilised by community development
workers is the main factor of failure in applying principles of good governance
in terms of community empowerment within the project community development
workers.
It is commonly found, the attempt to empower community, the
development workers usually strongly emphasise on the economic approach rather
than the other aspects. For example, giving direct loans, in terms of funds, to
the community in order to improve their life, sometimes fails. In fact, they do
not utilize the funds to increase their welfare but spend the funds to meet
their daily needs. Ideally, before applying the economic approach, it is very
important to identify the real condition of the society.
2. EFFECTIVE COMMUNITY
DEVELOPMENT WORK IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
It is immediately apparent from this experience that the
existing approaches used by state or community development workers do nothing
to cope with crisis of welfare within community. Many countries particularly
community development workers got confusion facing this situation. According to
Onyx (1992), one of the main reasons for this confusion is the fact that the
current concept of community development has been unable working thorough the
new trend of economic rationalism. In many countries, the inability of
governments to optimally manage natural resources, affording basic
infrastructure and assuring basic needs of society within dynamic social,
economic, and political spheres has led to the search for a kind of new
alternative form of social provision which can consistently follow the change
of new economic and social demand. In the last decade, there has been
significant shift to respond the demand; supply-driven has changed to
demand-driven approaches, from centralization to decentralization of resources
and services management. This shift aims to increase efficiency, equity,
empowerment and effectiveness, (Narayan, 1995).
The notion of community-based development simply implies
empowerment and decentralization of decision-making process. This means,
decision makers must be rely on the community based on its aspirations and
needs. Therefore, it is important to understand the shift within
community in order to easily define its needs at more distant level. As a main
idea of community development, empowerment practices should be consistently
established as theory states. In this case, individual or communities need to
be given and take more power to manage their own resources. Therefore, it is
required to established trust that the community or persons are able to handle
and care resources as well as allow them to be more creative and innovative as
long as it is not destructive.
As Ife (2002) states, we need to consider
principle of change from below by valuing local knowledge, culture, resources
and process. It is very common community development workers assume that they
are experts with specialist knowledge ready to be brought to the community and
used to help them. There is no any doubt that community development workers do
have specialist knowledge, but to privilege this knowledge and to devalue the
local knowledge of the community it self is the direct opposite of community
development. The valuing of local knowledge is an essential component of any
community development work. We have to assume that it is the members of the
community who have the experience and know its needs, problems, strengths and
its unique characteristics. The role of the community development workers is to
listen and learn from the community, not to teach them. However, universal
knowledge obtained by community development workers from schools also cannot be
neglected. It is still require in helping community but community development
must relay much more on local knowledge rather than universal knowledge.
Beside local knowledge, local culture also is very important
to take into account in delivering community development because it is very
often the presence of community development workers in a certain community
group even erodes the local culture. Therefore, the workers must be careful not
to assume the superiority of their own culture.
Thus, working within local culture will challenge the CDWs
because they may find sort of values that may be contrast with their culture
and even conflict with the human right. For this reason, CDWs have to
understand that cultural values and practices are contested within communities.
Therefore, cultural values and practices are dynamic following the change of
community. In this stage, CDWs can engage with community in such way that does
not necessarily validate cultural values and practices that conflict with human
right but play important role by facilitating the community engaging in a
process of cultural change and development.
One of the important principles of community development is
the principle of self-reliance, which means that communities are essentially
reliant on their own resources, rather than being dependent on externally
provided resources.
Opposite with the reality, community development works are
usually far from self-reliant. Resources in terms of funding are commonly
obtain from the state, thorough the institution of the welfare state in various
forms. This practice actually is not conducive to develop because it may
generate dependency. Therefore, for the long term purpose, this practice should
be eliminated altogether and start to explore the possibilities of creatively
developing and using their own local resources, rather than those obtained
externally.
Every community is different. What works in one community
may not work in another, because of differences in culture, history, tradition,
geography, resources, climate, income, etc. For these reasons, community
development workers have to work toward solutions, structure and process which
are grounded in the local culture, and which make sense to local community.
Therefore, CDWs need to apply “community-based development
which is designed to involve community participants from the formulation of
program, implementation, procedures and the This requires a good collaboration
between the CDWs and the community based on the principles: cultural
sensitivity, reciprocity and accountability. CDWs that have authorities on
theoretical and methodological processes have to see community participants as
authorities on their lives and the conditions that affect their lives.
Therefore, it is demanded that the researchers understand a deep form of
cultural sensitivity of the community participants in terms of history, social
factors and geographic dimension. Such as research process will bring benefit
to both CDWs and community participants.
To achieve that, in my opinion, the following points should
be paid attention by the CDWs in conducting community development work in developing
countries:
- Minimize conflict interests and role confusion
Conflict interest potentially affects the CDWs’ perception
with community. The intervention from the donor, which is increasingly
powerful, can affect the CDWs’ behaviours. In this stage, principle of
independency should become guidance. It is very important also to explain the
mission of the CDWs because it is very often the community expects more than
the CDWs can provide.
- Inform optimally: go on extra mile to inform participants
It is very important to note that not all target community
is educated. So, never assume that we have given enough information and
sufficient understanding because in uneducated community, due to the language
limitations, even basic information can be still strange information. For this
reason, native language speaker translating is important, particularly those
CDWs who can not speak the language of the target community
- Respect the community and its values: begin and end with
the community
In most developing countries, basic values and tradition are
still powerful and become guidelines of the community. For this reason, a CDW
has to understand and try to build partnerships with the community in all
phases of development, begin from planning, implementing, monitoring and
evaluating. Community involvement can avoid unethical or excluded feeling of
the community and it can increase chances for the success of the project.
- Maintain the positive relationship between CDWs and
government
As a matter of fact, there are a lot of possible clashed
potencies between CDWs and governments. Yet some possibilities also can be
established in order to maintain the positive relationship between them.
According to Heyzer (1995), in order to develop and maintain the positive
relationship between CDWs and governments, the authorities have to change the
way of viewing CDWs by putting the relationship in such these ways:
First, need more flexibility in interaction. In this
case the government have to understand the change of CDWs’ role. If formerly
they were known only as service delivery and associated with the grassroots,
currently they have broader role including politics, economics. By this
position, they might have different opinion with the governments and even
against the policy, which is established by them. Otherwise, it will create a
high tension in their relations and of course it will bring negative impact to
community. CDWs should not be seen as an enemy that can threat the governments’
interests and legislate or regulate them to control their activities (Heyzer,
1995).
Second, need cooperation. Although there is an assumption
that the principle goal of programme established by government is to support
its interest in order to gain support from the grassroots in effort to maintain
its legitimacy and reputation, yet both CDWs and governments have the same
purpose in establishing their development programmes that is to lead the
community to a better life. So, these two agents of development can strengthen
and enhance one another to reach the needs of grassroots based on their own
ways. A few examples from Asia that showed positive outcomes in
collaboration between CDWs and government can raise awareness of the important
of mutual assistant. The governments should understand this phenomenon. For
this reason, they have to build partnership with the CDWs, and not regard them
as rival.
Furthermore, governments must realize that CDWs have
unquestionable experiences to achieve more sustainable development, which is
required to address problem emerging at local levels, and they have been
recognized closer to community. For this reality, the Governments must regard
the CDWs as partner in reaching the grassroots. In addition, government may
face a big problem regarding support from the grassroots if it fails managing
its programme. For this reason, collaboration with CDWs, which are known
closer, and more understand the problems faced by the rural community will
bring beneficial to the government. By promoting NGO cooperation and activity
at the local level, governments will benefit by obtaining:” support to realize
their own tasks; deeper needs assessments completed by organizations working
directly with clients; input into strategic planning and the development of
local policy; access to effective, less expensive providers of social services
which are now run by local government agencies and clerks; promotion of citizen
responsibility; and, a greater openness by municipal employees to working with
citizens.” (Guc, Michal, 1996).
- The need for internal improvement of CDWs
Realizing the broader roles of CDWs, internal introspection
and development are also needed within the CDWs, and even to strengthen their
position and bargaining power, they have to build alliances and cooperation
among CDWs. CDWs as agent of development should establish leadership roles by
involving in formulating development policy issues, questioning the
inequitable, profit-oriented and materialistic development and promoting
sustainable development in terms of social justice and environmental concerns, seeking
new directions for their own organizations, and actively taking a part in
making networks and coalition with other CDWs to establish joint action,
advocacy and strategy in effort to address local, regional, national and even
international issues. In short, following the demand of the new world order,
internal improvement also is very urgent among CDWs
References can be provided upon requested
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