Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from July 31, 2011

Conducting Community Development Work in Developing Countries

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 incom

Community Development: Between Expectation and Reality

INTRODUCTION Modernization promoted by western countries, followed by economic rationalism, has shown remarkable achievement. The presumption to its unquestionable success was based on the attaining of high performance of economic growth due to the high rate of investments in industrial sector. The development strategies following this approach is the achieving a maximum production by maximally managing resources with the purpose for people benefit. The principle of this strategy is that the increase of production would automatically increase the benefit for community. However, a range problem, including poverty, environmental deterioration, and the isolation of people from the development process, came up together with this sophistication.  It clearly indicates that this success unable to fulfil the most essential need for human being socially, economically and politically, which are the need for community to live with their environment harmonically, and the need for them to live in h

The Implementation of Decentralization Policy in Indonesia: Benefits and Challenges

INTRODUCTION Since President Suharto resigned in May 1998 caused by the people power led by students, there have been remarkable changes toward democracy in Indonesia. The strong indication can be seen from the success of Indonesia in carrying out general election, where according to some observers both domestic and foreign observers, it was the most democratic general election which had ever been carried out in Indonesia; freedom of press which was formerly tightly regulated and monopolized by the central government; a dramatic increase up to 181 in the number of political party within ten months, from May 1998 to February 1999, (Fatah 2000) ; amendment of 1945 Constitution which was taboo to be done during New Order Era, then to be conducted thorough plenary session of People Assembly in 1999. In short, nearly all sectors of national life experienced dramatic democratization process. This process is nation widely called for reformasi.      One of the most important and fascinating as