Community Development Skills Research Articles

Innovation and deadlock in governing disasters and climate change collaboratively - Lessons from the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, Australia

Both scholars and global policy point to the need for, and effectiveness of, locally-led and collaborative disaster and climate change practices. However, there is a need for analysing how these collaborative approaches are developed and used in practice in different contexts. This paper outlines the use of collaborative approaches by a climate change and disaster community of practice across seven local government areas in the Northern Rivers region, New South Wales, Australia. The region has experienced multiple large-scale flood and bushfire disasters since 2017. This ethnographic study uses established collaborative governance and adaptive governance theoretical frameworks to draw findings from: lived experiences of researchers, 22 interviews with diverse stakeholder groups, in-person and online events and the first author's research diary. The findings indicate that collaborative practice in response to disasters and climate change has resulted in both effective outcomes and multi-dimensional challenges, which have lasting implications for communities across the Northern Rivers region. Three critical leverage points for enhanced collaboration and effectiveness were identified. First, improved use and flow of information such as climate projections and place- and needs-based information. Second, mindset shifts that value community knowledge and contributions, and improved practice through enhancing skills in community development and community-led recovery in disaster and climate change practitioners. Lastly, collectively moving from reactive to proactive responses to climate change and disasters. These insights provide an opportunity for improving the design of community-based risk reduction programs and multi-stakeholder governance arrangements into the future, in the state of New South Wales and beyond.

Foundational Knowledge and Skills in Community Development: A Comparison of Educator Perspectives

The challenges metropolitan regions, cities and towns, neighborhoods, and villages face require community development skills that address complex community problems, engage multiple publics, and pursue collective strategies. However, there is no consensus about how community development should be taught due to its various understandings, theories, and approaches. The article presents the results of a community development educator survey and illustrates a diversity of responses to educational delivery among forty-eight respondents representing twenty-seven community development programs in the United States. We compare the perspectives of respondents who teach in planning programs with other community development educators to discuss commonalities and differences.

Sustainable Tourism as a Springboard for the Development of the City of Buea (Focus Area - Case Study and Applied Research on Tourism as an Instrument for Community Development)

The purpose of this study is to test the applicability of sustainable tourism theory within the sustainable community development framework. Starting with a review of literature on sustainable tourism and sustainable development, the study focuses on a project called “Achas Centre for Sustainable Community Development” (ACSCD). Based in the tourist hot-spot of Buea in the South West region of Cameroon, ACSCD operates on a theoretical framework designed to orchestrate development and shape the future of this mountainous (volcanic) city and its neighboring coastal city of Limbe. The research method employs the case study approach by exploring the conceptual base of this project that seeks to development tourism as a springboard for sustainable community development. The operating model of ACSCD reveals that the sustainable community development centre is complemented by the training centre “Achas Higher Institute of Sustainable Tourism, Hospitality and Business”. While the higher institute imparts the training that empowers community members with tourism and community development skills, the sustainable development centre channels these skills through identified focus areas into community development projects. The key finding of this study is that planning for the future and sustainable development of creative cities such as Buea, should be the outcome of both empowerment programs, the identification of essential development focus projects and the execution of such projects in the interest of sustainable community development. The significance of this study lies not only in its conceptualization of a new approach to sustainable community tourism development, but also its demonstration of the fact that sustainable community development is a result of both skills acquisition and the transmission of such skills into viable community development projects.

The Pedagogy of Protest: Learning through Crisis and the Case Study of Terry Hicks

This article explores the learning dimensions of circumstantial activists, activists who come to protest due to a significant life issue or crisis event, which has contributed to their motivation to campaign. The article is a case study of Terry Hicks who campaigned for more than 6 years to have his son released from Guantanamo Bay, a United States military prison in Cuba, for suspected terrorism. It outlines the learning dimensions of circumstantial activists as they participate in social change with particular reference to Terry's case and reveals that circumstantial activists' learning is fast paced and rapid. Responding to crisis and potential loss, circumstantial activists are frequently taken out of their comfort zones and on to a learning edge because they need to acquire new knowledge and skills very quickly in order to be effective as activists. The emotions are crucial to their motivation and desire to campaign and in Terry's case particularly because of his familial connection to his son David. As activists become more experienced they learn to “manage” their emotions. The article uncovers the community development skills and knowledge that is acquired by circumstantial activists as they learn mainly informally on the job of activism.

Refining the attribution of significance in social impact assessment

Clarifying and improving how significance is attributed to social impacts provides greater robustness and objectivity to the social impact assessment (SIA) process. This is beneficial for a discipline that still grapples with credibility issues compared to other disciplines that are also commonly presented as chapters in environmental impact assessment (EIA) reports. This paper provides a practitioner's perspective on refining how the significance of social impacts is attributed. The discussion emphasises the need to define social receptors and community resources. It highlights the human elements in the variables influencing significance, namely magnitude and sensitivity criteria. SIA practitioners with specialist skills in community development or sociology are best suited to using wellbeing and vulnerability as key magnitude and sensitivity criteria.

Teaching community development to social work students: a critical reflection

Community development is generally considered to be a core component of social work practice and knowledge. Yet much professional social work education and discourse seems to relegate community development to the margins. This paper critically analyses the development of a community development subject within one particular Australian social work course. Particular attention is drawn to subject objectives, content, reading material, teaching methods and assessment. Some suggestions are made for new educational initiatives that could potentially enhance the contribution that community development skills and processes make to social work practice efficacy and wisdom.

A microanalysis of a participatory action research process with a rural Aboriginal men's health group

Our recent paper (Tsey, Patterson, Whiteside, Baird, & Baird, 2002) analysed the early stages of a participatory action research process (PAR) designed to support members of a rural Aboriginal men?s group to take greater control and responsibility for the factors influencing their health and wellbeing. This follow-up paper focusses on key challenges and opportunities associated with the PAR process. Among other things, the paper highlights: a need for training providers and policy-makers to give more attention to the issue of community development skills and how to promote the uptake of such skills more widely in Indigenous settings; the importance of taking a ?solution-focussed approach? in line with the principles of PAR when doing community development work; a need for relevant training and creation of real employment opportunities to be central to strategies designed to support rural Aboriginal men to take their rightful place; a need for the men?s group to promote the broad spectrum of its activities more widely so as to minimise an image problem that the men?s group is only for men having problems; and, above all, an urgent need for the men?s group organisers to play leadership roles through, for example, dialogue with local gay men so as to jointly come up with ideas to make the men?s group more accessible for all men, including gay men.

Developing and using skills in community development to achieve the objectives of the Reconstruction and Development Programme

Developing and using skills in community development to achieve the objectives of the Reconstruction and Development Programme

Community Development in the Workplace: Bridging Factions with the Participatory Process

This paper demonstrates the utility of community development skills, tactics and strategies within the workplace. The case study adresses the process of uniting the division between the direct care staff and administration in a human service organization through the use of the participatory process. Two additional components of the participatory process were developed and implemented. The importance of preparing the environment for the introduction of these components is discussed. The participatory processes served to unite the staff and enhance morale but did not prove to be the final answer for employee performance concerns.

An undergraduate community education curriculum for community development

Abstract In 1971 the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin‐Milwaukee broadened its role as a teacher training institute by creating a community education program for the purpose of reaching out to a non‐traditional population of students in the urban Milwaukee area. The original program was staffed by community organizers from Chicago who held the academic ranks of lecturers and specialists. These organizers, after working in an outreach capacity with community groups in Milwaukee, discovered that people from the inner city wanted to learn community development skills. From these initial contacts the staff in the community education program conceptualized a community development role for community educators within an urban setting. These educators would know how to work with people in neighborhoods, organizing them into self help projects that would improve their communities. In 1974, under the leadership of Dean Richard Davis, the community education program became an undergraduate department, and hired faculty with doctorates and for traditional professorial roles within the university. This faculty has created a competency‐based curriculum that prepares students to become effective community developers, allows students to earn fieldwork credits, and grants credits for previous educational experiences. This paper will first discuss the relationship between community development and community education. It will then describe the undergraduate curriculum at the University of Wisconsin‐Milwaukee and compare this curriculum with traditional community development curricula. Finally, it will discuss how this approach to community education relates to the principles of community education.