Time for policies that lead to sustainable community development

Aug 22, 2016 Letters

---

Dear Editor;
After World War 2, encouraged by the United Nations, Europe embraced a focus on community development for repairing ravished areas of their various countries. The problem was that the war had devastated much of Europe and governments did not have the resources needed for the rebuilding. The model that was embraced saw a number of internationally recruited professional community development specialists being attached to communities, tasked with identifying community needs, accessing funds made available by UN to recruit skills and acquire materials needed to get the job done.
This model of community development in which the program depended largely on outside experts and resources failed. When the model was exported to third world countries – mainly Africa and Asia in the late 1950s, its failures were even more pronounce. So obvious were the failures that its architects had to concede and embrace a new strategy.
The new approach to community development emphasized efforts by residents of communities as its main ingredient. It became the duty of communities to identify their needs, prioritize them, identify the skills needed to complete the projects and create a register of the skills that could be found in the community.
With this new model, it is only after absence of resources in the community is identified that attention turns to recruiting and acquiring skills and other resources from outside the community. Communities taking responsibilities for their own development bring substantial benefits to individuals, communities and the nation at large. They enhance individuals’ self -esteem, demonstrate to communities their capacity to do for themselves and ensure residents protect and care what they have achieved. Communities taking responsibility for their own development reduce reliance on government.
This allows government to direct its energy and scarce resources to other areas in need of attention. For example, providing nutritious meals for schools, maintenance of sea defense, building and repairing of public roads, providing reliable electricity etc.
For communities to take responsibility for their own development it is the duty of government to ensure communities are given the skills to undertake the assignment. Governments can do this by providing community leaders with training in areas such as (a) Methods in Community Assessment and Organizing, (b) Project Design and Management. These are essentials if we are to release community resources in a big way in its development.
Recently, I read my brother Ras Blackman’s complaint about Bachelor Adventure’s need for  recreational facility. My friend Malcolm Defreitus desires to do same for Albouystown. Then, I noted government ministers meeting with a community to hear what is troubling the people so that they can ‘do’ for the people – for a poor country this is crazy stuff. Outside of the occasional clean-up campaign, I hear nothing about an emphasis on giving communities the ability to do for themselves.  Rich countries are emphasizing this approach to community development, why then is poor Guyana not doing so? I suspect there are two primary reasons for this.
First, politicians in third world countries tend to love having citizens dependent on them. Dependency gives rise to a feeling of being eternally grateful to those who ‘do for you’ when you are made to feel incapable of doing for yourself. Dependent people are unlikely to heed the urging of those who encourage protest even when their (dependent persons) anger is justified. Politicians’ awareness of this tendency of the people is captured in the late President Burnham’s famous observation “He who feeds you controls you.” and Martin’s Carter’s “A mouth is muzzled by the food it eats.” It is this understanding that encourages politicians to bring gifts instead of give skills.
The second reason is the problem of implementing policy. I am confident that within the government there are those who intellectually recognize the need for the community’s involvement in its developmental process. However there is no clear identification of a government agency or organization (whether central or regional) responsible for coordinating implementation. A similar situation existed in the USA when the early poor response to hurricane Katrina led to a man-made crisis which led to the death of over 1300 Americans.
This happened because roles were unclear, thus federal, state and local governments struggled to coordinate a response to Katrina. As Guyanese we must learn from such experiences. We need to agree on which ministry or agency will bear primary responsibility for managing the process of community involvement in its development. When we look at the structures in place at present it would seem that this responsibility should be with the Ministry of Communities, or Ministry of Social Cohesion, OP or the Regional Administrations. Based upon what it is presently doing it seems the government has decided on a somewhat different role for the Ministry of Communities, so lets’ rule out this ministry.
Claudius Prince
Editor’s note. This letter will conclude in forthcoming edition

---

---