CHAPTER 14 Community Development/ Community Building Initiatives

Overview of Community Development  Community development is a form of community organization  Staff are recruited from outside a community to work with residents to help them improve their community Peace Corps and Vista are examples  Community emphasizes self help and voluntary cooperation among members or residents of disadvantaged communities Habitat for Humanity Food banks Tutoring programs for youth in low income areas

Economic Community Development  Economic development is a crucial aspect of community development Special efforts are undertaken to encourage people to spend in their own neighborhoods PLUS encouraging people in other areas to shop their as well  Little Haiti 3 rd Friday  Calle Ocho/ Little Havana Last Friday  Wynwood 2 nd Saturday  Economic development may involve bringing together business owners, public officials, police, schools, social service agencies, banks to develop plans for enhancing local businesses Restore dilapidated infrastructure/buildings, low interest loans, more security presence, etc.

Common Characteristics of Community Development Work  Staff must have a tremendous desire to improve the lives of vulnerable people Motivated by altruis and commitment to others  They strive to help people build on their individual strengths and community assets. Their primary purpose is to empower people Emphasis on bottom-up/grassorts approach to community problems Stimulating citizen particiaption is the underlying purpose of community developoment Staff work with residents so that resdients can carry on with projects subsequent to assiatacne of staff

Common Characteristics of Community Development Work (cont.)  Community development staff identify outside resources that can be tapped i.e. write a grant that provides funding for local individuals to be project mangers  Underlying premise of community development work: People must be actively involved in the resolution of their needs  Ultimate criterion of success is that after a community successfully completes one project, it is able to function independently to address other needs

Community Building Initiatives  Community building refers to activities, practices and policies that support and foster positive connections among individuals, groups, organizations and geographic as well as functional communities  A community building initiative involves a process of empowering residents to work together in mutually supportive relationships Through interacting with each other, new social mechanisms are developed to help in the identification and achievement of community goals Those relationships form “social capital” Residents see how their individual wellbeing is connected to the viability of their neighborhood and community  CBI refers to activities, practices and policies that engage residents in reinventing in the development of their communities

How Community Building Differs From Prior Community Initiatives  Community building initiatives differ from prior efforts to help communities, such as the 1960’s War on Poverty. Rather than focusing on how individual residents could overcome individual problems such as poverty via job preparedness, access to health care  Prior initiatives focused on one problem at t time, independent of each other such as: a) homelessness, b) mental illness, c) delinquency, d) drug and alcohol abuse Service delivery programs were designed to address these specific problems separate from each other and separate from their environmental context  Prior programs were agency driven This contributed to the development of a “social welfare industry” While intended to help low income persons, an unanticipated consequence has been a growing dependency on social services

How Community Building Differs From Prior Community Initiatives (cont.)  CBI looks at a community holistically via focusing on the inherent connection of people within a geographic area Offers opportunity to provide solutions that are tied together in ways that reinforce each other Residents who had limited control, now take greater control

PRINCIPLES OF COMMUNITY BUILDING INITIATIVES (CBIs) Efforts to improve the community must be comprehensive  One solution is not possible for complex problems such as homeless or poverty  There must be a wide variety of interventions  Any new development must fit within a “community mosaic  A comprehensive approach requires linkages among economic, physical and social life of a community ex.: unemployed person gets vocational training by working on a housing renovation project Ex.: neighborhood cleanup project linked to development of a community garden

PRINCIPLES OF COMMUNITY BUILDING INITIATIVES (CBIs) (cont.)  Strategies must be tailored to individual neighborhood areas of a manageable size  This permits customizing strategies to the special character and culture of a particular community  Different communities arrive at different issues in the same city Ex: needs in Little Havana differ from those in Little Haiti, Overtown, etc. Community assets must be built upon  Tangible assets include local buildings, institutions such as schools and churches, banks and businesses, social agencies and hospitals  Less tangible assets include: life experiences, skills, willingness to improve the community

PRINCIPLES OF COMMUNITY BUILDING INITIATIVES (CBIs) (cont.)  Strategies must engage residents and other local stakeholders in establishing community goals and plans to address them “maximum feasible participation” of all residents in a “bottom-up” engagement and implementation process Not a “top-down” implementation approach Most successful approach involves residents in partnerships with social institutors of their community and with policy makers/public officials outside their community

Challenges for CBI’s  Role and expectations of funding sponsors: Funders provide financial resources to hire staff and pay for CBI operating expenses Funders typically establish ground rules for how various participants can related to each other Tension between funders and CBI: funders want to see immediate results and CBI needs o ensure a proper community process exists  Individual mobility: When they can afford to do so, resident may move out of impoverished neighborhoods Community can lose the residents it has helped to develop Antidote for preventing flight is to develop and infrastructure of job opportunities, decent housing, good schools and crime prevention

Challenges for CBI’s (cont.)  Competition with public officials CBIs tend to be accepted by local government officials but in the past community organizers received resistance from local politicians CBIs can be seen as a conduit of information between neighborhoods and them However, CBIs could be training ground for new community leaders who may want to oppose elected officials  Relationship with resource power brokers Need to balance taking control of their own communities with being in partnership with those who control outside resources Funding, expertise and influence from the outside are needed CBI interventions require collaborative dynamics between “insiders” and “outsiders”

SUMMARY  Community building is a process of transforming a community via empowering people to revitalize their own lives  It changes the way that residents relate to each other and to people outside their community  Based on the fundamental belief that residents and their organizations must take primary responsibility to solve their own problems  CBI is a process that organizes a community to identify key resources and to develop/train local leaders to strengthen their community