Saturday 16 May 2009

Participatory Community Development - Part 2

The Meaning of Community

If you want to undertake a Participatory Community Development (PCD) process, the first thing to do is to decide what you mean by “community”.

Wikipedia has some interesting things to say about community. Among them:

“In biological terms, a community is a group of interacting organisms sharing an environment. In human communities, intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, risks, and a number of other conditions may be present and common, affecting the identity of the participants and their degree of cohesiveness.

“In sociology, the concept of community has caused infinite debate, and sociologists are yet to reach agreement on a definition of the term. There were ninety-four discrete definitions of the term by the mid-1950s. Traditionally a "community" has been defined as a group of interacting people living in a common location. The word is often used to refer to a group that is organized around common values and social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household. The word can also refer to the national community or global community.

"Communis comes from a combination of the Latin prefix com- (which means "together") and the word munis probably originally derived from the Etruscan word munis- (meaning "to have the charge of").[1] Since the advent of the Internet, the concept of community no longer has geographical limitations, as people can now virtually gather in an online community and share common interests regardless of physical location.”

Regarding Participatory Community Development, I have thought of community as being one of two types, broadly speaking.

There is community as place: a barrio, a neighbourhood, or a village, for example. It is a geographical location. You can use Google Maps to find it. Scale is involved here. I doubt anyone would call Chicago or Dar es Salaam communities. They’re just too big. Uracuza in the Peruvian Amazon, on the other hand, is a community. I know this because I’ve worked there. But when does a place become so big that it is no longer considered a community? I don’t have the answer to that one.

I have practiced Participatory Community Development in a number of places where people felt a strong sense of community. Two examples:

· Ozd, Hungary – A slum neighbourhood in this city made up entirely of Roma families, some of the most vulnerable people in the country, if not in all of Central and Eastern Europe. The neighbourhood lacked running water, sanitation, and adequate housing. It was a ghetto.

· Morogoro, Tanzania – A slum neighbourhood called Chamwino, made up largely of marginalised families, many of whom are considered to be illegal squatters. Residents of the town are often afraid to venture into Chamwino.

Then there is community as a group of dispersed individuals who nevertheless share something in common, where they benefit, or could benefit, by collaborating, even though they may live in different parts of a city or even state or province. Adults with disabilities may consider themselves to be a community. Or people living with HIV and Aids. Maybe professionals, lawyers, engineers, doctors, may consider themselves to form a community. We often hear about the gay community.

But just because people share something in common doesn’t automatically turn them into a community. That happens when they reach out to each other for mutual interest. So, we can say that here there are latent, or dormant, communities and active communities.

One of the drawbacks to the second type of community, of dispersed individuals, has always been the difficulty of meeting face-to-face, of getting together. Now, as Wikipedia rightly points out, this barrier has been overcome thanks to the internet and social communication tools.

Examples of where I carried out Participatory Community Development with dispersed individuals who shared something in common are:

· El Real de Santa Maria, Panama – Embera families are spread throughout this town in the Darien. However, they have a strong sense of identity.

· Chinandega, Nicaragua – Commercial sex workers are found in different parts of this city. However, the threats of physical violence, arbitrary arrests by police, and their marginalisation from society are strong factors in creating a sense of community for mutual support.

Can Participatory Community Development be practised with a virtual community? If anyone is interested, I would like to explore this further.

Next: A Local Organisation Has to Take the Lead

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