Community Development refers to a strategic long-term plan designed to help people acquire skills, learn processes and use resources to mold their own future. The dependency approach focuses on a community’s needs, deficiencies and problems while the empowerment approach focuses on a community’s assets, capacities and problem-solving abilities.
Below is a brief description of principles that guide our empowerment approach as compared to a dependency approach:
View of “Them”: Where the dependency approach implies a view of “them” as victims needing to be rescued; the empowerment approach implies a view of a people as resourceful, persistent in challenging conditions and who are in need of additional instruction and encouragement to improve their future.
View of “Us”: Where the dependency approach implies a concept of “us” as experts who know how to make their life “better” (e.g. more like ours); the empowerment approach implies a concept of “us” as open-minded collaborators who are willing to learn about their culture, patterns of life, strengths and abilities, for the purpose of engaging in a collaborative process to strengthen and improve their condition.
Community Connection: Where the dependency approach finds its primary connection to a community through projects; the empowerment approach finds its primary connection to a community through nurturing a mutually respectful relationship.
Project Agenda: Where the dependency approach sets the agenda for capacity building from “the outside looking in”; the empowerment approach develops the agenda for capacity building from the “inside looking out”.
Project Involvement: Where the dependency approach attempts to match projects to donor agendas or preferences; the empowerment approach only adopts projects when the community, as a whole, commits to taking ownership and responsibility for capacity building.
Temporal Perspective: Where the dependency approach focuses on “quick hand outs” that create a short term impact; the empowerment approach focuses on a “slow hand up” that seeks to create a long term and sustainable positive impact.
Project Ownership: Where the dependency approach views projects as “our projects,” creating a dependency on our involvement for completion or sustaining a project; the empowerment approach views projects as “their project,” requiring that they take ownership and responsibility for completing and sustaining a project.
Scalability: Where the dependency approach encourages immediate full scaling of projects; the empowerment approach encourages incremental scaling of projects, increasing the scale only as a community demonstrates it has the willingness and capacity to do so.
Criteria for Success: Where the dependency approach holds “the end” as its criteria for success (e.g. completion of a project- a building is constructed); the empowerment approach also holds “the means” as its criteria for success (e.g. increased involvement and ability of a community to help themselves).
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