By Benson Mmari.
Community development is a process where community members come together to take collective action and generate solutions to common problems.
Community wellbeing (economic, social, environmental and cultural) often evolves from this type of collective action being taken at a grassroots level. Community development ranges from small initiatives within a small group to large initiatives that involve the broader community.
Community development is said to be a multidimensional process. This is due to its performance in real situation, on how people solve problems in their community and how the development in a community help people in their social life.
Community development seeks to improve quality of life. Effective community development results in mutual benefit and shared responsibility among community members. Such development recognizes:
· The connection between social, cultural, environmental and economic matters
· The diversity of interests within a community
· Its relationship to building capacity
Community development helps to build community capacity in order to address issues and take advantage of opportunities, find common ground and balance competing interests. It doesn’t just happen – capacity building requires both a conscious and a conscientious effort to do something (or many things) to improve the community.
Development
The term “development” often carries an assumption of growth and expansion. During the industrial era, development was strongly connected to increased speed, volume and size.
However, many people are currently questioning the concept of growth for numerous reasons – a realization that more isn’t always better, or an increasing respect for reducing outside dependencies and lowering levels of consumerism.
So while the term “development” may not always mean growth, it always imply change. The community development process takes charge of the conditions and factors that managing influence a community and changes the quality of life of its members.
Community development is a tool for change but it is not:
· A quick fix or a short-term response to a specific issue within a community;
· A process that seeks to exclude community members from participating; or
· An initiative that occurs in isolation from other related community activities.
Community development is about community building as such, where the process is as important as the results. One of the primary challenges of community development is to balance the need for long-term solutions with the day-to-day realities that require immediate decision-making and short-term action.
In all the processes of community development, peoples are engaged to ensure that problems in their community are well solved and to ensure the development.
The development of the community should also be engaged in improving life standard or life styles of such community and peoples.
This situation of making sure that both processes are profitable to each side, it’s when community development process called multidimensional.
