THE MAIN APPROACHES IN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT; THE COMMUNITY APPROACHES, THE INFORMATION SELF-HELP APPROACH, THE SPECIAL PURPOSE, PROBLEM SOLVING

THE MAIN APPROACHES IN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT; THE COMMUNITY APPROACHES, THE INFORMATION SELF-HELP APPROACH, THE SPECIAL PURPOSE, PROBLEM SOLVING

DEFINITIONS OF THE KEY TERMS

The term community has two distinct commutive meanings: Firstly, Community usually refers to a social unit larger than a small village that shares common values. The term can also refer to the national community or international community, and, secondly, in biology, a community is a group of interacting living organisms sharing a populated environment, (http://en.wikipedia.org/community).

Community development is action that helps people to recognize and develop their ability and potential and organize themselves to respond to problems and needs which they share.  It supports the establishment of strong communities that control and use assets to promote social justice and help improve the quality of community life.  It also enables community and public agencies to work together to improve the quality of government, (http://www.scdc.org.uk/who/what-is-community-development).

Community development is a structured intervention that gives communities greater control over the conditions that affect their lives and this does not solve all the problems faced by a local community, but it does build up confidence to tackle such problems as effectively as any local action, (http://maaori.com/develop/commwhat.html). 

Therefore, community development means the integrated development process aimed at improving the overall social economic and cultural condition of the people. It is attempt to equip people who are unemployed or underemployed with skills which will bring them a better life.   

THE COMMUNITY APPROACHES

Community approach attempts to engage the full capacity of the private and nonprofit sectors, including businesses, faith-based and disability organizations, and the general public, in conjunction with the participation of local, tribal, state, territorial, and Federal governmental partners. This engagement means different things to different groups. In an all-hazards environment, individuals and institutions will make different decisions on how to prepare for and respond to threats and hazards; therefore, a community’s level of preparedness will vary, (FEMA, 2011, pg. 3).

Community approach means an approach that is used to understand the community condition aiming at good intentions to help the society through sustainable solution to their problems, (http://www.ocw.unu.edu/intrnational-network).

Therefore, Community approach is an approach or tools used to integrate the community into various development programs through the use of community participation about their problem facing at a time so as to come-up with solution to those problems. And the word community participation means the process based of dialogue with a community or involving the community to identify their problems and its solution. Community participation may in term of Authentic, pseudo, or pasual community participation. Examples of community problems are water problem, diseases, crimes including child abuse and sex abuse, Gender inequality, and women brutal punishment. Therefore through community approach, the community involving direct from identification of problem, and to the identifying which method will be used on solving a certain problem rather than other problem.

THE INFORMATION SELF-HELP APPROACH

The information Self-help Approach refers to the process whereby people within the community working together to arrive at group decisions and taking actions to improve their community, it based on the principle that people can collaborate in a community to provide important needs and services. The process is more important based on building community institutions and strengthening community relationships. Local needs are clearly defined and action is initiated by the community themselves at a given time, (www.faculty.ycp.edu/.../CD%20Approaches.ppt).  

Generally, self-help Approach is based on solving problem of individual so as to reduce economic dependent from other people by increasing effort towards achieving development in their own group formed. 

The Self-Help approach is a successful instrument for combating problem like poverty and other relating problem by empowering the very poor majority women; economically, socially and even politically in order to live a life of greater hope and dignity with their children and families within the community as well as increasing unity and social ties, promoting healthy practices and motivating the social and financial emancipation of women, (http://www.siqqee.org/index.php). The community plays a role in selecting the poorest households among them using criteria that they themselves develop – aided. The very poor members of a community are organized to form Self Help Groups of members from these poor households and from the same socio-economic background. This have further promoted income generating activities among the women and has begun to bring in more economic independence to them and their families, resulting in better welfare of their families including children.

THE SPECIAL PURPOSE, PROBLEM SOLVING

Problem-solving is a mental process that involves discovering, analyzing and solving problems, (http://psychology.about.com/ problem-solving-steps.htm). The ultimate goal of the Special Purpose, problem-solving is to overcome obstacles and find a solution that best resolves the issue. The best strategy for solving a problem depends largely on the unique situation. In some cases, people are better off learning everything they can about the issue and then using factual knowledge to come up with a solution. In other instances, creativity and insight are the best options.

The special purpose, Problem solving is the process of recognizing a problem, defining it, identifying alternative plans to resolve the problem, selecting a plan, organizing steps of the plan, implementing the plan, and evaluating the outcome to the society, (http://medical-dictionary.com/problem+solving).

A special-purpose is the type of problem solving Approach which means tailor-made for a particular problem, and often exploits very specific features of the situation in which the problem is embedded. (http://www.alanturing.net).

The Steps in the Special Purpose, Problem-Solving

These steps in the special purpose, problem solving sighted from the website http://psychology.about.com/od/problemsolving/f/problem-solving-steps.htm.

 

1.  Identifying the Problem: This stage need to identify a specific problem facing the community. While it may seem like an obvious step, identifying the problem is not always as simple as it sounds. In some cases, people might mistakenly identify the wrong source of a problem, which will make attempts to solve it inefficient or even useless.

2.  Defining the Problem: After the problem has been identified, it is important to fully define the problem so that it can be solved.

3.  Forming a Strategy: The next step is to develop a strategy to solve the problem. The approach used will vary depending upon the situation and the individual's unique preferences.

4.  Organizing Information: Before coming up with a solution, we need to first organize the available information. What do we know about the problem? What do we not know? The more information that is available, the better prepared we will be to come up with an accurate solution.

5.  Allocating Resources: Of course, we don't always have unlimited money, time and other resources to solve a problem. Before you begin to solve a problem, you need to determine how high priority it is. If it is an important problem, it is probably worth allocating more resources to solving it. If, however, it is a fairly unimportant problem, then you do not want to spend too much of your available resources into coming up with a solution.

6.  Monitoring Progress: Effective problem-solvers tend to monitor their progress as they work towards a solution. If they are not making good progress toward reaching their goal, they will reevaluate their approach or look for new strategies.

7.  Evaluating the Results: After a solution has been reached, it is important to evaluate the results to determine if it is the best possible solution to the problem. This evaluation might be immediate, such as checking the results of a mass problem to ensure the answer is correct, or it can be delayed, such as evaluating the success of a therapy program after several months of treatment.

CONCLUSION

All these three community development Approaches; The Community Approach, The Information Self-Help Approach, and The Special Purpose, Problem solving are used on solving community problem such as poverty, diseases, social crime, so forth from individual level to community level so as to improve and increase the livelihood of the people within the community.

REFERENCES

http://en.wikipedia.org/community/15-12-2012/6.14AM

http://www.scdc.org.uk/who/what-is-community-development/15-12-2012/.18AM

http://maaori.com/develop/commwhat.html/15-12-2012/6.21AM

http://www.ocw.unu.edu/intrnational-network/15-12-2012/6.18AM

www.faculty.ycp.edu/.../CD%20Approaches.ppt/15-12-2012/6.39AM

http://www.siqqee.org/index.php/15-12-2012/6.51AM   

http://psychology.about.com/ problem-solving-steps.htm/15-12-2012/7.04AM

http://medical-dictionary.com/problem+solving/15-12-2012/10.05AM

http://www.alanturing.net/15-12-2012/10.17AM

http://psychology.about.com/od/problemsolving/f/problem-solving-steps.htm/15-12-2012/ 11.55AM