The Peace Corps Volunteer in the Field: Community Development

Abstract

If, in the development process, the people of a community can learn how to organize themselves into an effec tive problem-solving body, an infinite number of possibilities are opened. The more a community uses the resources—labor, money, materials—that exist within itself, the more successful the project is from a pure community-development view. What is actually happening in such a case is the utilization and im plementation of democratic principles and techniques to procure what is a basic right. A community may be asking for some thing that has historically been denied. The provincial at titudes of "just keep them quiet" or "they don't count" are going to be shaken. The Volunteer, in this instance, does not play the role of standard-bearer in a storming of City Hall, but rather that of adviser and subtle teacher of the tools of com munity action. Community development as practiced by Peace Corps Volunteers is a process aimed not at material ends, but rather at the poverty in men's minds.