Jean Roberts

Riding the Waves of Community Development in Australia

Community Development had begun to take shape and form by the mid 70s: it was an idea whose time had come!

Author: Jean Roberts, 2007. Publisher: Roberts Management Concepts Pty Ltd
ISBN 978-0-646-4850

Chapter 1: The 3 major components in community development – people, tasks and environment

In developing any community, there will be the need to plan, implement and evaluate one or a number of individual tasks or situations. It is predictable that each task or situation will consist of 3 major components:

• the task itself
  • what needs to be done, why, how, when, where, at what cost
• the person or persons involved with or affected by the task
  • who, who for, by whom, who else, together with their needs, interests and aspirations
• the environment within which the people will accomplish the task
  • the broad environment (eg political, cultural, social, economic, geographic) and the immediate environment (eg organisational issues, access to facilities and equipment, physical comfort)

Community activity will need people to be involved, tasks to be achieved and an environment that will need to be understood.

People of any age, background or culture may be involved as individuals, groups or organisations. However they are involved, they will need to be empowered as individuals before they can be effective in empowering the wider community. Each person brings with them:

• immediate relationships (immediate and extended family, those they live and love with, those with whom they share important aspects of their lives)
• present and past experiences (workplace, personal, social, economic, spiritual, educational, physical, emotional, intellectual, cultural experiences)
• formal and informal learning (qualifications, courses, workshops, self-paced learning, reading, studies)
• community networks and linkages (groups and organisations with whom they are already involved and through which their lives are enriched)

No community is without a community memory, tradition, culture, personality… often called ‘a rich tapestry’. The challenge for people is to capitalise on the existing strengths of their community, and to collaboratively plan their desired future. Previous relationships and established networks need to be respected, as these also contribute to the ‘rich tapestry’ of any community.

Tasks that range from simple through to complex will need to be planned and implemented by the people who make up the geographic community or community of interest, which may include:

• arranging discussions or meetings
• prioritising needs and interests
• considering possibilities for immediate or future action
• acquiring additional resources
• maintaining interest and motivation
• keeping people informed.

Individual tasks need to be:

• appropriate to the community’s needs, interests or aspirations,
• acceptable to the people who will be involved, and the environment within which the tasks is to be accomplished, and
• achievable within available or accessible resources.

Environmental factors that can influence both the people and tasks, and these may be:

• obvious (such as access to distance, terrain, transport and availability of facilities), or
• needing exploration (such as criteria for funding, quality of relationships between existing community-based organisations, government policies and priorities, previous attempts at community initiatives).

‘Obvious’ environmental factors need to be identified, acknowledged and accommodated. For example, an identified community that is situated within a specific geographic boundary offers different challenges and opportunities in comparison to one that is spread across hundreds of kilometres.

Environmental factors that need exploration include language that is currently in use in relevant government policies and funding programs. If the wrong language is used when corresponding with a government department, or a community group has misinterpreted the department’s language, the result may well be a total lack of understanding between the two parties.

Language

Language seems to be a moving target. As we have moved into the 21st Century, a new language has taken preference over the traditional language of community development, community empowerment and community management.

Today, the language includes – and is not confined to – such terms as:

• community building
• community strengthening
• community engagement
• community consultation
• community communication
• community capacity building
• social capital
• social responsibility
• social partnerships
• corporate citizenship
• corporate social responsibility
• neighbourhood renewal
• neighbourhood strengthening

Activity of any kind and at any level of any community – whether formal or informal, whether a geographic community or community of interest – involves the making of decisions.

With regard to language, the first decision any group should make is to agree on their own definition of terms frequently used in their area of influence or activity (such as those above). Start the process of clarification and agreement by trying to obtain definitions of specific terms from the people who use them frequently or have introduced them. And do a search on the internet to see how widely such terms are used and defined. For instance, a search for ‘social capital’ opens a list through www.NonprofitHub.com, where ‘social capital’ is defined as the effort of the individual of a community to come together in order to build a social infrastructure of shared values and challenges. This site also presents a nonprofit dictionary, and this list of ‘upcoming terms’:

• social cohesion
• social development
• social enterprise
• social entrepreneurs
• social investing
• social marketing
• social policy
• social venture capital
• social venture funds
• socially responsible investing

For clarity, here’s a repeat of my own definitions of the three sequential steps in community building, community strengthening, neighbourhood renewal – or whatever language is being used:

Step 1 – Community empowerment, where a defined community is given – or given access to – the resources needed to enable it to make decisions on its own behalf. This means that the community itself determines not only how decisions are made, but that decisions are made with the support and commitment of the community itself

• the community must be defined, and
• given access to the resources it needs to facilitate local decision-making

Step 2 – Community development, where a defined community determines its direction, priorities and activities

• the community has access to the resources it needs to facilitate local decision-making, with
• the community developing its own action plan with priorities, and
• the community identifying any additional resources necessary to implement its priorities, and locating these additional resources

Step 3 – Community management, where a defined community manages its own resources through an agreed and appropriate structure and process

• the community may manage implementation of its own priorities with the support of established community or support agencies, funding sources – or through its own efforts and energy

In his book The Different Drum (an Arrow publication, first published in 1990), M. Scott Peck writes about community-making and peace. He sets out 4 stages in the making of a genuine community, and presents a number of scenarios to illustrate these stages. In chapter 5 on Stages of Community-Making, Peck states that:

Communities, like individuals are unique. Still we all share the human condition. So it is that groups assembled deliberately to form themselves into community routinely go through certain stages in the process. These stages, in order are:

• Pseudocommunity
• Chaos
• Emptiness
• Community

 

Peck explains that the:

Pseudo-community Stage finds members attempting to be an instant community by being extremely pleasant with one another and avoiding all disagreement.

Chaos Stage always centres around well-intentioned but misguided attempts to heal and convert.

Emptiness Stage – There are always two ways out of chaos (ie a period of time squabbling and getting nowhere). One is into organisation – but organisation is never community. The only other way is into and through emptiness, the hard part, which means that they need to empty themselves of barriers to communication – expectations and perceptions; prejudices; ideology, theology and solutions; the need to heal, convert, fix or solve; the need to control.

Community Stage – Having worked through Emptiness, the community has been born. The group has become a community. Where does it go from here? What, then, is its task?

Peck infers that when the people have worked out how to work together in their community, they need to know where they want or need to put their collective energy. And in working together, they are able to examine options for action, and to understand their environment.

The waves of community development include the acquisition of resources

Looking back to the 1970s, many community-based initiatives grew into informal groups, and many more into legal entities. A lot of time was given to writing submissions to attract funds from governments, foundations, trusts and corporations to support community initiatives. Such submissions emphasised ‘inputs’, ie additional resources required to cater for the needs, interests or aspirations of their service-users or members. And the greater the need, the more chance there was of attracting funds.

Then, in the 1980s, the focus of submission-based funding moved from inputs to ‘outputs’. This meant that community groups needed to emphasize the new or improved services or programs that would be possible with the funds being sought – rather than the nature and extent of need.

In the 1990s, came ‘Re-inventing’ of government – the purchaser/provider relationship’ at local, state and commonwealth levels of government. The focus of submission-based funding moved from ‘outputs’ to ‘outcomes’ – and to measurable outcomes. By way of explanation, an ‘output’ is what is created through application of available resources: an ‘outcome’ is the impact or effect of outputs on the life or lifestyle of people in the community. For the funding source, the measurable outcome becomes the return on investment of their funds.

Community development has moved from justifying inputs, through designing and sustaining outputs to being accountable for achieving measurable outcomes. Community-based organisations were now providers of contracted service providers rather than groups of like-minded people offering services or assistance to people with a need, interest or aspiration.

Since the 1990s, legislative frameworks for service standards and accreditation have become highly sophisticated, leading to an increasing requirement for continuous quality improvement – in many cases through external audits. In many segments of the nonprofit sector, accreditation is a pre-requisite for funding or contractual agreements – and this will surely become the norm through the next 5-6 years.

The 1990s also saw a concentrated rationalisation in most segments of the nonprofit sector. The purchaser/provider relationship with governments either enforced or encouraged strategic alliances and mergers.

Now, as explained at the beginning of this Chapter, the concept and practice of community development has been divided into a myriad of sub-titles. However, the unifying fact is that they are all dependent upon people to be involved, tasks to be achieved, and an environment to be explored.

In Chapter 2, we will focus on People, and examine the human factors that impact on the people involved with or affected by community development.

We will look at individuals of different ages and cultures, self-help groups, project teams, community-based organisations, commercial organisations, institutions, local authorities, and the 3 levels of government.

We will also look at behaviours that were prevalent in the 1970s and through decades since then – and dip into behaviours that can be expected to be prevalent in the future.

Read more:

Riding the Waves of Community Development in Australia

Contents

Introductory Chapter
Definitions and descriptions associated with the title
Chapter 1 – The three major components in community development: People, tasks and environment
Chapter 2 – People – human factors that impact on the people involved with or affected by community development, eg cultures, traditions, choices, language, expectations, lifestyles
Chapter 3 – Tasks – task analysis of community development, eg exactly what is involved?
Chapter 4 – Environment – a variety of community development environments, eg planned, imposed, organic, accidental, crisis, desperation, innovation
Chapter 5 – Impact of a variety of waves on people, tasks and environments
Chapter 6 – Concepts and theories that can guide practical action plans to help
us understand, respect and capitalise on a variety of waves
Chapter 7 – Reflections and thoughts for community development into the future

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