Ten Steps to Community Development

Whether you want to be an active member of the community, an effective service provider or a community leader, you will have to be familiar with its issues, resources, needs, power structure and decision-making processes. Your initial orientation could include reading your local newspaper regularly, attending community events, reading reports and familiarizing with available services as well as community projects and activities. Close observation of the community as you interact with it will also provide significant insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the community.

You won't be able to learn everything you need to know by reading and observation. You will need to talk to others about their interests and perceptions to put it into context. You can contact community members through formal channels, such as joining a local organization, or informally by chatting with people that visit the library or that you encounter in other situations, such as shopping at local stores or attending school activities. By listening to the community you may identify an area in which there seems to be a common interest in making a change.

Health organization staff need to maintain regular contact with the community to collect enough information to make sound recommendations and decisions on health services and priorities and to identify important community issues.

Once you have identified that there are some common interests among community members and you have identified a few individuals who seem willing to work on a community development initiative, the next step is to hold a community gathering. In some circumstances it may be appropriate to invite representatives of specific organizations or sector to attend, but more often it would be a public event for a neighbourhood or, for other types of communities, for all the identified members. The purpose of this gathering would be to develop a shared "community vision"; i.e., through imagining their ideal community and discussing their ideas together they will determine arrive at a common vision and some broad strategic directions that all are committed to working towards. You may also use this gathering to ask for support for the initiative, elicit community input or invite members to join a steering committee or help in other ways.

To be able to work effectively in a community development context, you will need to gather some information about your community.  It is extremely helpful to undertake a comprehensive community assessment which will collect both qualitative and quantitative data on a wide range of community features.  Unfortunately, often time and budget restraints will necessitate choosing between methods and limiting the assessment to particular areas of interest.  Deciding what and how much information to collect may be aided by a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis of the community, which may point to particular areas being higher priorities for action.

There are many methods of community assessment used in community development practice. A few of the more common methods are listed below; additional information is contained in the resources section.

Compiling a community demographic profile is an excellent start. It is helpful to update the profile periodically so you will be able to track changes that occur within your community and respond accordingly. A demographic profile includes statistical information about age, gender, language, visible minority status, education, and family income.  Community demographic profiles are available for approximately 6,000 communities in Canada, along with comparative figures for Ontario, from Statistics Canada's Community Profiles at www.statcan.ca.

Other community statistics may also be of interest to you, such as crime rates, morbidity and mortality rates, or availability of affordable housing. Some of these are available from Statistics Canada, but local data may be obtained from local agencies; e.g. the local police service will have crime statistics.

However, simply collecting information is not sufficient; it must be analyzed in order for it to be meaningful. For example, you might be interested in the relative proportion of seniors to youth in your community, or the proportion of the population for whom English is a second language. You may want to compare the most recent data available with previous years; perhaps to identify the rate of growth of the population, changes in ethno-cultural patterns or age distribution.

Statistical information isn't the only type of information that is important to collect. Finding out how residents perceive their community is also essential to effective community development practice.  Community surveys, community asset mapping, environmental scans, focus groups and key informant interviews are other methods of obtaining community data.  The City of Calgary has an excellent publication on community assessments. It contains background information on the need for community assessments, describes various methods and provides easy-to-follow worksheets for planning and implementing a community assessment process.[2]

In any community development process, it is the community that is in the driver's seat. Community members will define the issues and the process for resolving them, which might be quite different than what would be proposed by an external "expert". However, it is the community members that are most familiar with the situation and, in many cases, have knowledge and wisdom that an external "expert" lacks. By providing tools, resources, meeting space and facilitation, community developers empower the community to start to take ownership of the issues and the development of solutions.

If we genuinely want to empower [communities], we must do it in such a way that they become independent of our charity, that they become self reliant, that they can sustain their own development without our help.[3]

Assuming that the community as a whole has set the strategic directions for the initiative, the steering committee will now develop the action plan. Depending on the size of the group and the complexity of the initiative, there may be other steps between setting the strategic directions and the action plan. You may want to create a comprehensive strategic plan containing long, mid and short-term objectives, and mid-level plans for communications, resource development or human resources. In addition, if there are a number of activities or events to plan, you will need a separate action plan for each one.  The point you need to arrive at is a well thought out plan that is easily comprehended by community members, clearly links activities with objectives and indicates responsibilities, time frames and resources required.

This is the heart of the initiative, in which financial and human resources, including volunteers and community members, are mobilized to take action. This may take many different forms. Perhaps the community has decided to establish a coalition against homelessness and is working to ensure all organizations that come into contact with homeless persons are able to provide referrals to appropriate sources of assistance. The actions might consist of:

• working with community workers to identify needs and appropriate services;
• developing informational brochures;
• eliciting support from targeted organizations;
• distributing the brochures to the organizations; and
• meeting with organizational representatives to provide further information.

In addition to implementing the various action steps, it is important to ensure that the factors that are required for the success of any community initiative are in place, such as:

• shared vision and purpose
• concrete, attainable goals and objectives
• sufficient funds, staff, materials and time
• skilled, participatory leadership
• clear roles and policy guidelines
• mutual respect
• open communications, including both formal and informal methods
• recognition that there are "process" people and there are "action" people; ensure there is a variety of ways of participating in or contributing to the initiative
• time and resources management; don't take on more than you can handle at one time; set priorities
• conflict management; don't let problems slide - address them in an open, honest and timely manner
• good record-keeping; e.g. financial reports, meeting minutes, successes
• celebration of successes
• fun; don't forget to celebrate your successes - even small ones!

Traditionally, community development workers have relied more on their own experience, anecdotal evidence from others to guide their practice rather than formal evaluation procedures. Often it is difficult to find reasonable and appropriate measures in terms of the cost and time involved, especially when the desired outcomes, as is often the case with prevention and capacity-building initiatives, may not be seen for several years.  However, there are many reasons why it is important to evaluate your work. Most importantly, you may need to demonstrate that you have not caused any harm to others through your actions. Other reasons to evaluate may be to demonstrate the effectiveness of the initiative so that it will be continued, to satisfy funder requirements and to provide information that will be useful to others or to subsequent initiatives. Evaluation plans may be formal or informal and tailored to the needs and resources of the group. IN community development, a participatory evaluation method is usually conducted in addition to or sometimes in place of more traditional method. Participatory evaluation involves program participants and/or community members in the evaluation design, data collection, and the analysis and interpretation of results.

"If one is concerned with increasing people's capacity to participate fully and gain some degree of control over their lives, then research methods themselves can be part of this method."[4]

Allow time for the group to catch its breath before embarking on the next initiative. Thank everyone that contributed and make sure there is good follow up communication with media, partner and funders. Celebrate your successes and reflect on any disappointments that might have occurred. Discuss how well the organizational processes and structures worked and identify areas that need some attention before the next rush of activity occurs. Also, it is important to provide a space for participants to reflect on their personal development as a result of being part of the group. When the group is ready to tackle a new initiative, they might want to revisit the community assessment information and the strategic directions and decide whether either of those steps need to be repeated.