Community Development Work Research Articles

Barbeques and shiny numbers: micro-ethical encounters in Sydney social housing estates

AbstractMicro-ethical practices are at the heart of community development work, however they are often subsumed within descriptions and reports focused on projects and outcomes. In this article, we examine the critical role played by micro-ethical practices in addressing exclusion and misrecognition with community members experiencing social disadvantage. In three vignettes drawn from a weekly food and social support programme, we discuss the ways in which micro-ethical practices in community development can address exclusion at a fundamental level in the everyday environment using relation-based principles and a framework of recognition.

The ethics of food sovereignty: discourses for transformative social change and community development practices by peasant movements

Abstract The food sovereignty movement is a global alliance of peasants aiming to create democratic, sustainable, and decentralized food systems. The radical strategy of the movement, aimed at promoting a global peasant identity and collective action for food systems’ transformation, is a community development endeavour that encompasses processes of social learning, community building, and community organizing. The food sovereignty movement provides relevant insights about the ethical challenges involved in building and mobilizing transnational solidarity. This paper explores the global food sovereignty movement of La Vía Campesina and two cases of local, farmer-led movements in India, namely Navdanya and The Deccan Development Society, through a constructivist qualitative case study methodological design. The paper analyses the ethical challenges experienced and explores the roles and responsibilities that community development workers play in facilitating transformative social change in the food systems. This paper demonstrates that the main challenge of building solidarity involves reconciling multiple visions and practice frameworks, through the respect of diversity and democratic choice. Finally, the paper highlights ethical considerations (such as overcoming binary logics), the crafting of community-led discourses, and pedagogical practices (such as Wisdom Dialogues), as key elements to guide community development workers to aid the facilitation of processes for identity building, conscientization, and collective action.

Saving Which Children How? The Importance of Cultural Capital in Youth-Focused International Aid and Development

ABSTRACT This review discusses the book Saving the Children: Humanitarianism, Internationalism, and Empire by Emily Baughan. In the book, Baughan documents and discusses the first 100 years of the Save the Children Fund, which was established in the United Kingdom in 1919. In this article, I review the book in the context of the Community Capitals Framework, paying particular attention to the importance of cultural capital. One of the major shortcomings of Save the Children was the willful ignorance of and, at times, the purposeful destruction and elimination of the cultural capital of the communities, families, and youth they were serving. I discuss the consequences of ignoring and damaging cultural capital and provide examples of how, rather than being only a historical problem of large and complex organizations such as Save the Children, some current scholars and practitioners continue to neglect and harm cultural capital in their own community development work.

Perceptions of occupational therapists in the United Kingdom on the applicability of the reflective framework for community development in occupational therapy

Introduction: Community development approaches are increasingly used by occupational therapists in response to occupational justice theory, which posits that both individuals and community groups may be denied access to meaningful occupations through societal powers outside their control. Previous research has found that occupational therapists feel insufficiently prepared for a role in community development and tend to use their general skill set, sometimes in combination with generic community development approaches. This study explored whether the reflective framework for community development in occupational therapy is applicable and useful for occupational therapists in the United Kingdom. Methods: A mixed methods approach was used, combining an online questionnaire and focus groups with occupational therapists who already work in community development. Findings were compared with the framework. Findings: The participants recognised most aspects of the Framework in their own practice, but some key aspects such as collaboration with the community at every stage were less prominent. They found the framework applicable to the UK context, particularly for occupational therapists inexperienced in community development practice. Conclusion: This study has highlighted community development practice by occupational therapists in the United Kingdom and concluded that the framework would support them in fulfilling this role more effectively.

The dark side of moral outrage: Understanding the risks to long-term, meaningful community development work in higher learning

ABSTRACT Social justice is a critical and increasingly utilized frame for organizing academic endeavors. As such it is important for academic communities to have meaningful conversations about the implications of social justice activities in their praxis. While recognizing many forms, this article is focused on the juxtaposition of academic activism and community development-based work. These activities can be complimentary and offer rich options for engagement by faculty and students in social change work. Yet there remain tensions between these activities in the absence of institutional or disciplinary guidelines for best practice. This article explores the “dark side” of these tensions and their consequences for faculty and communities. This paper also presents a call to action for faculty and institutions doing this work to center communities first and foremost to mitigate the potential devastation for community partners, who are as engaged in social change work but lack the same institutional protections.

The Importance of Communication in Collaborative Community Development: Lessons Learned from Three Cases

Collaborative community development projects aimed at promoting economic vitality, with attendant consequences as a key social determinant of health, necessarily pose questions about how to best communicate between developers, project partners, and community members. Many such projects are taking place across the United States, including in Ohio. This commentary draws on examples from 3 communities (2 outside of our state of Ohio, and another in the Linden neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio) to distill 3 key lessons in the area of communication. First, we argue that communication should be proactive, not reactive. Second, we explain why planners should be consistent in the provision of updates related to progress or lack thereof in real time on websites and apps, all while ensuring that information remains current. Third, though communication remains an under-appreciated aspect of partnership-based community development work, including explicitly health-oriented work, we argue that communicating progress to community members is not only logistically important, but part of a broader effort to build trust within communities in order to create long-lasting and sustainable change. This trust, after all, is a necessary foundation for community-focused workconcerned with addressing the social determinants of health.

Administrative Roles Performance of Community Development Workers and Public Infrastructure Development Outcomes in Rural Communities in Ogun state, Nigeria

This study is on administrative roles performance of community development workers and public infrastructure development outcomes in rural communities,Ogun state, Nigeria. Descriptive survey design of the ex-post facto type was used. Using total enumeration sampling technique, 813 respondentsparticipated in the study. An adapted instrument “Administrative Roles Performance of Community Development Workers in Public InfrastructureDevelopment Project Questionnaire (ARPCDWPIDPQ)’’ designed for the study was subjected to Cronbach Alpha test of internal consistency, whichyielded 0.75. Data generated were analyzed using descriptive and correlation matrix at 0.05 level of significance. Correlation analysis showed positivesignificant relationship between administrative roles of community development workers and infrastructure development outcomes i.e ownership andcontrol of public infrastructure (r=.693), citizen participation in management of public infrastructure (r=.592), access and utilization of public infrastructure(r=.682), productive activities/income (r=.540) and capacity building/enhancement of technical expertise (r=.409) respectively. This indicates thatthe independent variable had significant positive relationship with all the dependent variables at 0.05 level of significant. Hence, the null hypothesiswas rejected at 0.05 level of significance. It is recommended that professional community development workers should be properly trained to improvetheir efficiency and effectiveness in the administration of public infrastructure development.

The Chaeli Campaign Journal Club: Strengthening evidence-based practice and contributing to practice-based evidence in under-resourced South African communities.

BackgroundThe Chaeli Campaign is a Cape Town based non-profit organisation offering programmes largely for children and youth with disabilities in diverse under-resourced communities in South Africa. Their therapy team established a Health Professions Council of South Africa accredited interdisciplinary journal club in January 2012, with the aim to improve the team’s service to the community.ObjectivesOur first objective was to make our practice more evidence-based through reading systematically and critically in our field. Our second objective was to write up and share some of our practices to contribute to the generation of practice-based evidence.MethodFirst-person action research was applied. The core group of participants over time comprised two occupational therapists, one physiotherapist, two speech therapists, two teachers and four community development workers. Nine iterative cycles of planning, action, review and revised planning have been implemented on an annual basis in this non-formal, long-term action research project.ResultsFor over nine and a half years we have pre-read, discussed and completed evaluation questionnaires on 54 peer-reviewed journal articles, conducted 12 conference presentations and published three articles in accredited journals. Participants reported a broadened understanding of issues around disability, more reflective, contextually and culturally appropriate practice and improved interdisciplinary teamwork.ConclusionThe Chaeli Campaign journal club has built the capacity of therapists, teachers and community development workers to find, read, evaluate and use research evidence to improve their practice. It has also given participants the opportunity to ethically research, present and write up their grass roots interventions, thus contributing to locally applicable practise-based evidence. It is hoped that the sharing of our experience will assist and encourage other teams to start interdisciplinary journal clubs as a step towards facilitating two-way knowledge translation from evidence to practice and from practice to evidence.

Harmful, helpful, or both? A commentary on postmodernism and critical theories in community development education

ABSTRACT In this relatively informal commentary, I discuss the potentially helpful and harmful roles that postmodernism and critical theories have in academia in general and particularly in community development scholarship and pedagogy. After introducing postmodernism and critical theories as well as some of the common criticisms of these frameworks, I discuss the importance of cultural capital in community development and how postmodernism and critical theories can protect and maintain cultural capital as well as damage and diminish it. I also discuss the importance of ensuring students in community development courses understand these frameworks and understand that they are but some of the theories and skills students will need to know to be effective and ethical community development scholars and practitioners. The duty of educators is to ensure that students have the abilities and support to do the hard work of critically evaluating and analyzing all viable approaches to community development work.

Does community development work? Stories and practice for reconstructed community development in South Africa

Does community development work? Stories and practice for reconstructed community development in South Africa

Tethering Natural Capital and Cultural Capital for a More Sustainable Post-COVID-19 World.

The world faced stark challenges during the global pandemic caused by COVID-19. Large forces such as climate change, cultural ethnocentrism and racism, and increasing wealth inequality continue to ripple through communities harming community well-being. While the global pandemic caused by COVID-19 exacerbated these forces, lessons across the globe have been captured that inform the field of community well-being long-after the end of the pandemic. While many scholars have looked to political capital, financial capital, and social capital to tackle these challenges, natural capital and cultural capital have extreme relevance. However, scholarship tends to overlook the inextricable and important links between natural capital and cultural capital in community development and well-being work. These capital forms also inform contemporary understandings of sustainability and environmental justice, especially in the fields of community development and well-being. This perspective article showcases the deep connections between natural capital and social capital through literature review and community cases across the globe. Questions are posed for future research and practice tethering together cultural capital and natural capital when looking to bolster community well-being.

Rooting and reaching: insights from Love Leitrim’s successful resistance to fracking in Ireland

Abstract What can community development learn from frontline community resistance to extractivism and the fossil fuel industry? In the global North, environmental governance often operates within the dominant mode of neoliberal ‘environmentality’ (Luke. 1999. Environmentality as green governmentality, in E. Darier ed, Discourses of the Environment, Blackwell, Oxford), conceptualizing environmental action in individualized and depoliticized ways. This is compounded by the discursive hegemony of the educated middle-classes, which frames environmental issues in ways that render invisible the concerns of marginalized communities and workers. In this paper, I present an activist ethnography and case study of Love Leitrim, a community group that played a crucial role in the successful Irish movement to resist fracking. I suggest that local environmental justice struggles point to the possibility of a ‘liberation environmentality’ (Fletcher. Environmentality unbound: multiple governmentalities in environmental politics, Geoforum, 2017;85, 311–315); which challenges capitalist modes of environmental governance that facilitate the exploitation of the environment for capital accumulation. The paper identifies how a combination of (i) relational local organizing; (ii) trans-local networking with other frontline communities and (iii) creative political engagement enabled campaigners to organize collectively around the environment, navigate power asymmetries and secure political change across spatial scales. I conclude by suggesting that Love Leitrim’s frontline community struggle offers important insights for community development workers who wish to address the environment as a political issue and play a role in bringing about a just transition for marginalized communities and workers.

Enhancing the quality and social impacts of urban planning through community-engaged operations research

While inquiry in operations research (OR) modeling of urban planning processes is long-standing, on the whole, the OR discipline has not influenced urban planning practice, teaching and scholarship at a level of other domains such as public policy and information technology. Urban planning presents contemporary challenges that are complex, multi-stakeholder, data-intensive, and ill structured. Could an OR approach which focuses on the complex, emergent nature of cities, the institutional environment in which urban planning strategies are designed and implemented and which puts citizen engagement and a critical approach at the center enable urban planning to better meet these challenges? Based on a review of research and practice in OR and urban planning, we argue that a prospective and prescriptive approach to planning that is inductive in nature and embraces “methodological pluralism” and mixed methods can enable researchers and practitioners develop effective interventions that are equitable and which reflect the concerns of community members and community serving organizations. We discuss recent work in transportation, housing, and community development that illustrates the benefits of embracing an enhanced OR modeling approach both in the framing of the model and in its implementation, while bringing to the fore three cautionary themes. First, a mechanistic application of decision modeling principles rooted in stylized representations of institutions and systems using mathematics and computational methods may not adequately capture the central role that human actors play in developing neighborhoods and communities. Second, as innovations such as the mass adoption of automobiles decades ago led to auto-centric city design show, technological innovations can have unanticipated negative social impacts. Third, the current COVID pandemic shows that approaches based on science and technology alone are inadequate to improving community lives. Therefore, we emphasize the important role of critical approaches, community engagement and diversity, equity, and inclusion in planning approaches that incorporate decision modeling.

Teacher-Student Reflections: A Critical Conversation about Values and Cultural Awareness in Community Development Work, and Implications for Teaching and Practice

This reflective, autoethnographic piece provides some insights into our involvement with a program that promotes a value-driven approach to community development work. As a ‘conversation’ between a lecturer and a graduate, or Educator of Informal Educators and Informal Educator, we discuss the process of teaching and learning about values within day-to-day community development practice. We emphasise that a value-driven approach enables informal educators to celebrate cultural diversity, which can be complex in community settings. As the educator of informal educators (Louise), I reflect on the need to explore and demonstrate what value-driven practice looks like in day-to-day practice within community work and not simply state that values are important. This was prompted by self-reflection and the realisation that my teaching failed to illuminate how to bring values to life in all aspects of community work to achieve anti-discriminatory, inclusive and empowering practice. As an informal educator (Matthew), I consider how community development theories and values translate into meaningful practice that celebrates cultural diversity. Reflections are influenced by theories from Paulo Freire, with a focus on his notion that ‘educators should respect the autonomy of the students and respect cultural identities’. An example of Freirean dialogue, the article discusses our critical consciousness through praxis as educator and informal educator. Acknowledging that we are never fully complete—we are always ‘becoming’—we hope the article will be of interest to both Educators of Informal Educators and Informal Educators alike.

Community development and social work teaching and learning in a time of global interruption

In a rapidly changing and unpredictable global environment, there is new impetus to draw on community development approaches in the face of complex practice challenges that include the long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. As social work and community development educators in Ireland and Australia, the question becomes how can we respond in a time of major ‘disruption’ where there are both opportunities and constraints? This paper settles on this pause and uncertainty to seek new approaches to prepare social work students for changing conditions. Long-standing questions re-surface in relation to social, economic, political and environmental structures and conditions that are located in a neoliberal framework. The paper explores challenges and opportunities facing educators and social work students through a core set of principles—critical, relational and connected—that underpin our community development pedagogy. Within these themes, we explore teaching practices which seek to create a ‘Community of Learners’, generate a process of collaborative critical inquiry, engage students in reflective praxis enriched by contemporary theory and research, and foster a deep, connected and adaptive perspective on global and local issues. This stimulates creativity and meets the need for critical and adaptable practitioners capable of practical action through this period of disruption and crises of governance, climate and technologies of the future.

Empowering Kibera during political change: A case study through a Freirean lens

Empowerment is an often used concept and the work of Paulo Freire has helped to define the application and outcomes of approaches. The researchers visited Kibera in Nairobi, Kenya, during periods of political activity which had previously resulted in violence. Community members identified strategies employed in an attempt to curtail heightened risk. These factors were analysed to evaluate whether empowerment, as espoused by Freire, was still relevant in community development work. Empowerment strategies were multi-faceted and highlighted that they had created new issues for the community to address, suggesting strategy and outcomes need to be strong considerations in future work.

Community Application

Community development is basically the task wherein people belonging to a particular community come together and help in strengthening the civil society by categorising the actions of their respective communities, and their perspectives in building an economic, social and environmental approach. The community development workers help communities to bring about the required social change, thus improving the quality of life in their stipulated areas. Nowadays, online applications have become a vital component of any industry. Businesses can now be grown effortlessly and have become easier by using web applications and also in achieving the goals in a minimal span of time. The evolution of any web application involves the identification of product requirements, plotting, coding, and examining using the required technologies and frameworks. The applications are built on top of frameworks so that the elementary requirements in the development activity of the web applications are already initiated and can be fulfilled accordingly.

CoLabS: A collaborative space for transdisciplinary work in sustainable community development

Currently, the need for transdisciplinary approaches and collaboration, to reduce the gap between science and practice, is continuously rising along with the need for sustainable development. An increase in knowledge transfer, meetings and overall communication among researchers and practitioners is a logical consequence of the previous. However, the resulting higher transaction costs, mainly related to transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions (and additional financial costs) involved in face-to-face meetings, are in direct conflict with the urgent need to reduce our carbon footprint. This research explored the development of an online platform, “CoLabS”, specifically designed as a virtual meeting and learning space to support collaboration within and between communities to accelerate sustainable community development efforts. While the move towards online collaboration in virtual environments has steadily increased in the past decade, it has now become essential due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the feedback provided by focus groups, the collaboratory platform's design and usability as well as the technical aspects and its functionality are discussed in this paper.

Pathways to Empowerment and Justice: The Invisible Hurdles Stage II Research and Evaluation Final Report

The Invisible Hurdles project is an integrated justice project of four partner organizations the project leader is the Hume Riverina Community Legal Service (HRCLS) a program of Upper Murray Family Care and this research was funded through them by the Victorian Legal Services Board and Commissioners grants program. The other three partners in this multidisciplinary and Health Justice Partnership are : Albury Wodonga Aboriginal Health Service (AWAHS) – this is an Aboriginal Community Controlled organization; North East Support and Action for Youth (NESAY) is a leading agency supporting young people and their families in North East Victoria, servicing a vast region of seven municipalities; The Wodonga Flexible Learning Centre (WFLC) – this is a campus of the Wodonga Senior Secondary College - an alternative education center was established in 2014. The project is run in the Hume Riverina region of Victoria and New South Wales focusing on ‘at risk’ young people. Numerous hurdles get in the way of young people receiving legal assistance, particularly where they face disadvantage in other forms such as poverty, family violence, drug or alcohol issues and insecure housing. Research, including from the first iteration of the project shows that young people are reluctant to trust legal professionals and to seek help, relying instead on family and friends’ advice or failing to address their legal problems at all. Pamela Taylor-Barnett (Hon. Lecturer)and Dr Liz Curran (Hon. Assoc Prof.) (in their Honorary capacities (pro bono at ANU) through ANU were commissioned to conduct and produce this Second Stage Research and Evaluation in July 2019 having done the initial study over three years for Stage One which was completed on 14 June 2021 The first report (also on SSRN) recommendations from Stage One led to the further funding of Stage Two (and expanded service project from Stage 1 to include greater focus on community development and systemic work) and they were retained again to build on the longitudinal nature of the research. Findings and conclusions based on the data for this Stage 11 research & evaluation (quantitative and qualitative data collected) include: Over five years of funding from multiple sources, the Invisible Hurdles team has delivered a first-class, fully integrated legal practice despite threats to the end to its funding presented by short term funding from time to time. This uncertainty makes it hard to reassure partners and young people that the service is there for the long haul and to retain staff as was highlighted in Stage 1. The extensions of funding for Stage 2 saw a more consistent staff that enabled traction. Longer term funding certainty should be a priority to ensure the projects significant gains are not lost and momentum continues to build. Such long term 5-8 year funding (with evaluation to ensure and test ongoing effectiveness) should form part of governments’ stated commitments to family violence, regional people, to closing the gap and to breaking the cycle of poverty. The Invisible Hurdles team has made excellent contributions to systemic work by young people. The most important advancement about this work is that some of the young people involved have started to use their voice to self-advocate. The evaluators would like to see this aspect of the project to continue. Collaboration in systemic advocacy that enables multiple voices, varied agency expertise across disciplines and perspective to occur in such partnerships (based on the outcomes of other evaluative studies and in the research literature) is especially rare. The project has the capacity to be an authoritative advocate for the needs of regional youth. There are also some useful findings around service delivery during a pandemic and the critical nature of trust and established relationships to sustain service delivery, flexibility and innovation.

Voluntarism and Sustainable Development in Bangladesh

The aim of this paper is to examine that building safe, stronger, healthier, and sound communities are exhilarated by the process of sustainable community development work of which voluntarism is an integral part. In the key concepts to be discussed, this also emphasizes the significance of the indefatigable voluntary actions in all levels of policy-making procedures for sustainable community development in Bangladesh. This paper has been divided into four (04) key points: 1. The social, economic, and environmental values and the desire for a sustainable framework for community development in Bangladesh. 2. The significance of voluntarism towards the community and local development of Bangladesh. 3. Recorded histories that showcase the contribution volunteers are making to meet the goal for local and community development. 4. According to the policy relevance; the current scenario of voluntarism for community development.