Community Development Practitioners Research Articles

Critical information literacy: Adult learning and community perspectives

This article considers the evolution of information literacy as a distinct area of inquiry and instruction in libraries. The influence of critical and feminist pedagogies is paramount for the development of critical approaches to understanding an information landscape that is highly politicized. The definition and practice of information literacy will be described, followed by an exploration of critical approaches that help interrogate how information access and control affect these literacy goals and people’s democratic right to information. Information literacy that is grounded in social justice goals can be strengthened through the collaboration of librarians with other adult educators, community development practitioners, social service providers and activists.

Democratic professionals in civic life: cultivating civil discourse in community development

ABSTRACT The field of community development is challenged in the current political culture where polarization and incivility impact democratic ideals and practices. The role of the community development practitioner in such an environment is to approach one’s work as a civic professional, using technical expertise in public-regarding ways to cultivate opportunities for discussion across lines of difference. Foundational and functional competencies for community development include many important characteristics, but they do not include explicit language addressing political polarization. The article suggests looking to educational and professional development programs in the field of dialogue and deliberation as a way to further develop and refine these competencies.

Evaluation of the community development practitioners’ professional development programme: CIPP model application

ABSTRACTAlthough resources are invested in maintaining the professional standards, knowledge, and skills of community development practitioners (CDPs), research has not established if they have benefited adequately from the provisions of an appropriate professional development programme. The Stufflebeam’s CIPP model was used to evaluate this, which is the first exercise of its kind in South Africa. This qualitative study reports on the circumstances associated with its planning. Lack of alignment between the professionals’ needs and learning activities was uncovered, which resulted from the absence of learning activities which meet the needs of CDPs and poor planning. A planning framework is proposed to mitigate the obstacles and challenges.

A note on religious participation and community involvement

ABSTRACTBuilding upon previous research and incorporating a newly constructed measure of religious participation assessing both attendance at religious meetings and involvement in religious groups, we (re)examine the association between religious participation and community involvement using data collected in a 2012 survey of persons living in small and rural places in Texas. Substantial support was found for the hypothesis that increased levels of religious participation are associated with increased levels of involvement in community-oriented actions. The multivariate logistic regression findings also suggest that community attachment and certain sociodemographic variables (i.e. level of education and length of residence) are significant predictors of community-oriented behaviors. Possible implications of the findings for researchers, public leaders, Cooperative Extension personnel, and community development practitioners are advanced.

Neighborhood Schools and Community Development: Revealing the Intersections through the Philadelphia School Closure Debate

This article reveals intersections between schools and community development through analysis of a school closure debate in Philadelphia. Despite their interconnection, efforts to improve schools and neighborhoods have remained substantially siloed. Empirically, the article explores the ways neighborhood stakeholders framed the implications of recommended school closures in terms of the social, institutional, economic, and physical domains of their neighborhoods. The data include video records of community meetings held during the closure debate during winter 2012–2013 and subsequent interviews conducted with neighborhood stakeholders. The analysis outlines an agenda for community development scholars and practitioners to proactively engage with neighborhood schools.

Influence of Process Plan on Agricultural Cooperative Societies Performance in Kenya

Process plan implementation plays a key role in the organizational performance especially the coffee cooperative societies. Coffee cooperative societies enable the pooling of resources towards betterment of livelihood of rural folk particularly the farmers. The study was carried out in order to establish the level of contribution of process plan towards the performance of agricultural cooperatives specifically the coffee cooperative societies in Trans Nzoia County, Kenya. The study utilized structured questionnaire administered to 346 coffee farmers. The respondents were arrived at using purposive and simple random sampling techniques. Data were analysed using Spearman’s correlation coefficient together with regression. It was established that process plan had positive statistical significance on the organizational performance (P < 0.05), hence community development practitioners and agricultural extension officers should enhance utilization of process plan in the agricultural cooperative societies.

Community resilience and community development: What mutual opportunities arise from interactions between the two concepts?

ABSTRACT While overtures have been made in both directions, few have observed a mutual opportunity for resilience to be a goal in community development, or community development to be a key method in fostering community resilience. This article reviews the extent of mutual acknowledgement between these fields, and argues what each field can learn from the other, especially in terms of the practice of community development and enabling resilience. Community development—and some of its components such as capacity building, empowerment, and building networks—offers a key approach to building community resilience. Resilience thinking suggests that community development practitioners can expand their practice to help communities deal with dynamically changing systems. They can emphasize building adaptive capacity, managing complexity, enhancing community values and identity, managing multiple level systems, and supporting community agency. We offer advice and identify watchpoints for a co-evolving practice.

A Community Resilience Framework for community development practitioners building equity and adaptive capacity

ABSTRACT This article combined the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach and Community Capitals Framework to address four critical concerns in the current community resilience literature. One concern is the need for greater flexibility to account for the wide variety of actors within a community system. A second concern––the dominance of only four major outcomes (nutrition security, food security, environmental sustainability, and economic security)––ignores other important system-level capacities. A third concern in the literature is the normative discourse within resilience. The fourth concern with the state of the literature is overemphasis on specific resilience rather than general resilience. To address these issues, the Community Resilience Framework was developed with a particular emphasis on community development practice. This article also provides an introduction to two potential methodologies that can be paired with the framework to engage communities, inform policy, and build resilience.

Every Practitioner a “Knowledge Worker”: Promoting Evaluative Thinking to Enhance Learning and Adaptive Management in International Development

AbstractInternational community development involves complex, dynamic processes. Evaluation capacity building (ECB) designed to promote evaluative thinking among community development practitioners can foster more complexity‐aware monitoring and evaluation for learning and adaptive management. Instead of simply executing technical processes based on predetermined plans, development practitioners can be “knowledge workers” who use evaluative thinking to promote collaboration, learning, and adaptation. In this chapter, framed in the context of the United States Agency for International Development's ongoing efforts to become a more effective learning organization, we describe one such ECB initiative implemented by Catholic Relief Services in Zambia, Ethiopia, and Malawi. The chapter provides reflections on a practical application and empirical grounding of theoretical concepts related to complexity‐aware and learning‐focused evaluation.

Whose Culture, Whose Neighborhood? Fostering and Resisting Neighborhood Change in the Multiethnic Enclave

As multiculturalism has become a valued aspect of the city, ethnic enclaves have taken on new economic power in the cultural economy. However, as Western cities become increasingly diverse, multiple ethnic communities often overlap in shared urban spaces. Employing ethnographic methods, this article examines Wilshire Center, Los Angeles, to better understand how multiethnic communities perceive of and experience the culture of their community and how different actors foster or resist neighborhood change. In doing so, this research complicates our understandings of gentrification dynamics in multiethnic areas, and highlights important considerations for community development practitioners seeking to plan for multiple publics.

Successful transformational change in revenue management among beneficiary communities of South African renewable energy construction companies

Transformational change is the second of three sub-models that resulted from the splitting of the original model following the data analysis as part of a thesis entitled A theoretical model for successful management of revenue for beneficiary communities of renewable energy companies in South Africa . The sub-model provides specific guidance for project managers dealing with transformational change in communities to stakeholders, industry experts and community development practitioners in the renewable energy sector. The aim of the research was to promote a localised understanding of education, social interaction, social cohesion, infrastructure improvement and sharing to ensure success in managing the revenue for beneficiary community projects by renewable energy construction companies. A literature review of relevant literature on transformational change factors was conducted and used to develop a structured questionnaire distributed to national and international population of project management practitioners who were conveniently sampled in South Africa. Using an electronic measuring instrument, the empirical findings established four factors that were reliable and valid for transformational change in communities, namely education, infrastructure development, human development, and change management. Using these factors and constructing a path diagram of the independent variables (education, infrastructure development, human development, change management) and subsequent intervening (good governance) and dependent variables (perceived success of revenue management), appropriate hypotheses were developed to test the model. The hypotheses were analysed and tested empirically using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). Determinants were identified as elements of transformational change that influence the success of revenue management for beneficiary communities for South African renewable energy companies. These included the use of education, infrastructure development, human development, change management, and good governance. Keywords: Beneficiary communities, community development, economic development, green energy, renewable energy, revenue management, socioeconomic development, project management, transformational change

Reexamining the associations among community attachment, community-oriented actions, and individual-level constraints to involvement

Building upon previous research, this study reexamines the associations among community attachment, community-directed behaviors, and individual-level constraints to involvement in community-oriented actions. Using data collected in a general population survey from a random sample of individuals living in 22 rural places in Texas, the following two hypotheses were tested: (1) that community attachment is positively associated with community-oriented actions, and (2) that community attachment is associated with individual-level constraints to involvement in community-oriented actions. The first hypothesis received substantial support; the second hypothesis received moderate support. Possible implications of the findings for researchers, public leaders, Cooperative Extension personnel, and community development practitioners working in local communities in/around rural places containing population settlements are advanced.

Local foods systems and community economic development

Local food system development is a popular strategy employed by many communities in the pursuit of sustainable and equitable economic growth and development. This often includes a range of economic projects including farmers markets, community supported agriculture enterprises, urban farming/agriculture projects, and food hubs. Sometimes it includes intermediated marketing channels like grocery stores and broad-line distributors interested in providing local foods. Despite growing prominence in the policy arena, many of the presumptions of the local food movement remain largely untested. This review provides critical analysis of current research on local and regional food networks and reveals that much of this research currently lacks strong theoretical grounding and quantitative rigor. As community development practitioners and planners play an important role in food system design, organization, policy, and implementation in an effort to produce community or regional wellbeing, it is important for them to distinguish between objective, research-based information and speculative, advocacy-oriented analysis.

Informal Entrepreneurship as a Poverty Alleviation Mechanism in Zimbabwe: Challenges and Prospects

Informal entrepreneurship is a source of livelihood which provides employment and income to poor households in Chitungwiza Municipality in Zimbabwe. The dominant entrepreneurial activities are street vending, foreign currency exchange, urban farming, and home industries and cross border trading. The research approach that underpins this study is a triangulation of qualitative and quantitative. A semi-structured questionnaire and an interview guide were the instruments used in collecting data. The study sample was made up of 156 respondents that comprised informal entrepreneurs, social workers, municipal officials and community development practitioners from Chitungwiza Municipality. The findings revealed that few informal entrepreneurs are benefitting whereas the majority are failing to improve household income due to stiff competition, limited funding, poor infrastructure and harsh municipal policies. The paper recommends that the government of Zimbabwe should build infrastructure (shelters) for the informal entrepreneurs in their designated area of work.

Informal Entrepreneurship as a Poverty Alleviation Mechanism in Zimbabwe: Challenges and Prospects

Informal entrepreneurship is a source of livelihood which provides employment and income to poor households in Chitungwiza Municipality in Zimbabwe. The dominant entrepreneurial activities are street vending, foreign currency exchange, urban farming, and home industries and cross border trading. The research approach that underpins this study is a triangulation of qualitative and quantitative. A semi-structured questionnaire and an interview guide were the instruments used in collecting data. The study sample was made up of 156 respondents that comprised informal entrepreneurs, social workers, municipal officials and community development practitioners from Chitungwiza Municipality. The findings revealed that few informal entrepreneurs are benefitting whereas the majority are failing to improve household income due to stiff competition, limited funding, poor infrastructure and harsh municipal policies. The paper recommends that the government of Zimbabwe should build infrastructure (shelters) for the informal entrepreneurs in their designated area of work.

Civic Education in Community Development in South Africa: Reflections of a Community Development Practitioner

Civic Education in Community Development in South Africa: Reflections of a Community Development Practitioner

Civic Education in Community Development in South Africa: Reflections of a Community Development Practitioner

ABSTRACTThis paper argues for the inclusion of civic education in community development packages for South African communities. Using desktop research as a methodology, the paper analyzes the conce...

A Cross-Cultural Year of Service Theoretical Model

Growing numbers of young people in diverse nations are participating in cross-cultural year of service programs. This paper provides an overview of global trends in the cross-cultural year of service, and a more detailed literature review of two such programs: AmeriCorps*NCCC and the Peace Corps. Drawing upon the ecological model of human development, the theory of emerging adulthood, and the lens model of service-learning, this paper proposes a cross-cultural year of service theoretical model to inform the work of researchers, policymakers, and community development practitioners concerned with year of service programs.

The success of multi-sector participation in the management of revenue for beneficiary communities of South African renewable energy companies – sub-model A

AbstractMulti-sector participation is one of three sub-models that resulted from the splitting of the original model that resulted from the data analysis as part of a thesis entitled ‘A theoretical for successful management of revenue for beneficiary communities of renewable energy companies in South Africa.’ The sub-model provides specific guidance for the multi-sector participation of enterprises, stakeholders, industry experts and community development practitioners in the renewable energy sector to create a pro-active, effective, and relevant decision-making process for achieving success in the management of revenue for beneficiary communities. To address the primary objective, a number of secondary objectives were formulated through the development of a conceptual model consisting of identified variables based on a comprehensive survey of the related literature. By constructing a path diagram between the independent variable and subsequent intervening and dependent variables, appropriate hypotheses were developed. Primary data sourced from an identified national and international population of community management practitioners were collected using an electronic measuring instrument. These data were analysed and tested empirically using structural equation modelling. The determinants that were identified through a review of the literature as elements of multi-sector participation that influences the success of revenue management for beneficiary communities for South African renewable energy companies included the use of outside advice, financial management, support services, and good governance. Keywords: renewable energy, green energy, beneficiary communities, community development, revenue management, socio-economic development, economic development, multi-sector participation

Toward a rural community vitality measurement practice

Despite the increased interest among community development practitioners and the public in indicators of concepts like community vitality, resilience, or wellbeing, little research has been done to identify indicators that truly measure those concepts. In addition, there has been increased use of indices to describe social and economic conditions. This article uses a case to illuminate the methodological challenges of developing an index of community vitality and presents a possible practice solution. Factor analysis was piloted as a method that could be used to determine if a suite of 29 variables covering community capacity, social, economic, and environmental outcomes could be used as indicators of an underlying latent construct of community vitality. Use of this method in the case of Oregon counties and Siskiyou County, California, suggested that the variables capture a variety of community outcome dimensions, but do not correspond to a unitary concept of community vitality.