By Sarah C. M. Scanlon
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. A Definition of Community Development
3. Resolve’s Fellowship Programme
4. Resolve’s Fellowship Programme in the context of Community Development
5. Conclusion
6. Key Definitions
7. References
8. About the Author
1. Introduction
Community Development (CD) can be considered a theory and practise that aims to unite people together in a locale who share a cause and who then endeavour to change or improve their situations in light of this collectivism. CD can be used as a guide to better utilise the capabilities of a community, such as through ‘self-help’ programmes where ‘communities strengthen their capacity to solve problems, not simply those encountered at this time, but also those they might face in the future’ (Robinson and Green, 2011, p. 71), which allows for sustainable change along the lines of ESD1 and ESD2 as outlined by Vare and Scott (2007). It is especially important in aiding the achievement of several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), such as, Goal 10: Reduced Inequality; Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities; and Goal 16: Peace, Justice and Strong institutions. This article showcases how CD can be used to contextualise and enforce the importance of Resolve, a non-government organisation (NGO) active in Hong Kong that aims to educate and empower members of ethnic minority and LGBTQ communities living in Hong Kong.
2. A Definition of Community Development
Community Development (CD) is a difficult concept to define and ‘an often nebulous term’ (Matarrita-Cascante and Brennan, 2012, p. 293) but it is generally ascribed two qualities: the ability to unite people together and something which this collective is working to correct and/or improve. Although there are many collectives in societies around the globe working to improve their surroundings, ‘not everything that contributed to community improvement can be claimed as community development’ (Bhattacharyya, 2004, p. 9). CD is defined by Matarrita-Cascante and Brennan as:
a process that entails organization, facilitation, and action, which allows people to establish ways to create the community they want to live in. It is a process that provides vision, planning, direction, and coordinated action towards desired goals associated with the promotion of efforts aimed at improving the conditions in which local resources operate. As a result, community developers harness local economic, human, and physical resources to secure daily requirements and respond to changing needs and conditions. (2012, p.297)
Matarrita-Cascante and Brennan go on to identify three forms of CD as ‘imposed’, ‘directed’, and ‘self-help’ (2012, p.298). They can loosely be defined by who is engineering the programme, why they are uniting, the aims which are being set, and how involved the targeted community is. For ‘imposed’ CD programmes, the main stakeholder is usually a government organisation that is in control of the aims, the processes, and does not necessarily involve members of the targeted community in the development of these aims or processes. The aims of these CD programmes are often economic and for the improvement of infrastructure and technology. For ‘directed’ CD programmes, the main stakeholders may be government organisations or also NGOs, and they include more involvement from the targeted community in establishing the processes of a programme but not in the aims. These aims often involve improving the physical environment in order to improve society. For ‘self-help’ CD programmes, the targeted community is the main stakeholder and so they are involved in the processes and aims themselves. The aims of these CD programmes are often in the human resources of the targeted community, investing in ‘increased local control; affirmative success’, effectiveness, and support rates; capacity building; community agency; cohesion; identity formation; and local empowerment’ (Matarrita-Cascante and Brennan, 2012, p. 300). There is a much greater learning outcome from the latter CD programme as the community members are self-directed and benefiting directly from the CD programme.
Within these categories of CD, the most important aspect of CD is the involvement of the targeted community. Bhattacharyya proposes that we think of ‘the purpose of community development as the promotion of solidarity and agency’ (2004, p. 10) and through defining the two particular qualities of CD as solidarity and agency, we can identify the importance of CD. Through solidarity, communities are united and find common goals, and through agency, community members are empowered and find purpose through these common goals.
3. Resolve’s Fellowship Programme
Resolve is an NGO established in Hong Kong in 2017 by Victoria Wiśniewski Otero. The NGO offers a Fellowship Programme to active community members of Hong Kong who face discrimination, including ethnic minorities, asylum seekers, and members of the LGBTQ community, and who are visibly participating in society trying to raise awareness and rectify social inequality. Resolve provides training to the Fellows that would usually be associated with corporate programmes. The training consists of workshops on leadership and teambuilding; rights, diversity and inclusion; strategy planning; mobilizing resources; public speaking and effective communication; and personal accountability. The inaugural Fellowship focused on Racial Equality and Inclusion and culminated in April 2018 (Resolve Foundation, 2018b), and the second Fellowship focused on Social Justice: Ending Gender Based Violence Together, which culminated in November 2019 (Resolve Foundation, 2019a).
Through the Fellowship Programme, Resolve intends to improve the social conditions of underprivileged communities in Hong Kong. They aim to do this through their Fellows becoming the change-makers themselves. They believe that the best way to change people’s perceptions of a community is to have representatives of that community do it themselves (‘Sassy Mama Supports’, 2018). Participation in all levels of society is integral for under-represented groups to ensure there will be short and long-term change and also to feel like active members of their community (Narayan and Shah, 2000). The exclusion of certain groups in Hong Kong is creating a cycle where those who would represent the claims of underprivileged groups are unable to - possibly through language, legal, or personal barriers - and so do not witness the changes needed to live better or participate in future. Resolve hopes to empower those who would not otherwise be able to participate and so break the cycle.
These aims that Resolve is pursuing coincide with several of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) established by the United Nations. Namely, Goal 10: Reduced Inequality; Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities; and Goal 16: Peace, Justice and Strong institutions. These aims focus on building inclusive, fair, and sustainable communities, and are incorporated and instilled through the Resolve’s Fellowship Programme.
4. Resolve’s Fellowship Programme in the context of Community Development
Resolve is focused on empowering the community members themselves through developing their human resources and so can be considered a ‘self-help’ form of CD, despite being an NGO. They look to develop the social capital of underprivileged groups through education and training of individuals selected from those groups. In this respect, Resolve can be considered a Community Leadership Development Education (CLDE) programme. These programmes focus on developing the skills and attributes of certain individuals and building their social networks rather than communities as a whole. CLDE programmes, according to Apaliyah and colleagues ,
generally follow the academy model, where a group of people commit to participate in the program for a period of time for intensive learning. Sponsors may include chambers of commerce, community colleges and four-year colleges, university extension, and private foundations. These programs contribute to building a critical mass of individuals in the community by developing their leadership skills and knowledge to be effective leaders. The anticipated results include improvements in individual skills, increased knowledge about the community, and strengthened social networks. The resultant cadre of local leaders should help to make community development efforts more effective. (2012, p. 33)
This ‘academy model’ is typical of the Fellowship Programme offered by Resolve and fits the mould well. This can be an effective and sustainable way to initiate change in a society as active members of communities are targeted and resources are spent on developing their skills in order for them to then branch out and educate others. Through educating only a select number of community leaders, Resolve is able to use financial, human, and time resources effectively.
According to Vare and Scott (2007), in order for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) to be effective, learning how to change as well as learning how to critically assess the society and current practises that lead to change is crucial. Resolve’s work educating through CLDE incorporates both ESD1, through raising awareness and ‘promoting changes in what we do’ (Vare and Scott, 2007, p.193), and ESD2, through ‘building capacity to think critically about [and beyond] what experts say and to test sustainable development ideas’ (Vare and Scott, 2007, p.194). ESD is fundamentally an educative process, initially by creating awareness of the issues and then through creating the capacity in others to assess and criticise the ways for dealing with those issues. Through creating a critically aware society then change can be longer lasting and sustainable since community members will fundamentally change their actions and beliefs. Resolve is therefore a sustainable CLDE programme through incorporating both ESD 1 and 2 into how they are educating and training the Fellows.
Community participation is integral to CD programmes, but within ‘self-help’ programmes there is an even heavier reliance on participation. This can be a limitation to CD programmes as they lack resources, such as funding, time, or technology, to initiate the change they would like to witness because of this limited participation. However, there is greater benefit to the community members if they participate as, in that case, they ‘develop capacities resulting in self-reliance and greater control over change in the community’ (Matarrita-Cascante and Brennan, 2012, p. 301). Self-reliance over the society they live in, the ways they can combat issues they face, or ways they can influence others to initiate change for them, means community members are empowered and therefore find agency and autonomy. Through participating in CD, community members become part of a united group sharing similar beliefs and goals and so find solidarity and shared identity. These two factors, agency and solidarity, are two defining aspects of CD, according to Bhattacharyya (2004), that show that ‘community development is a positive response to the historic process of erosion of solidarity and agency’ (p. 14), by which it can help preserve democracy and ‘democratic community-level processes’ (Matarrita-Cascante and Brennan, 2012, p. 301). CD at the community ‘self-help’ level can be viewed as preserving democratic processes by giving the community members voice and autonomy from those who would otherwise control and define them. Government organisations and private institutions primarily, but also NGOs, can
create chronic dependency in the "clients," establishing a relationship as between givers and abject recipients, the latter rarely gaining the capability to break out of the relationship. They are service providers. In community development parlance, such projects are set up for the clients not with them. [original author’s italics] (Bhattacharyya, 2004, p. 13)
Many ‘imposed’ or ‘directed’ CD programmes are often defined by those outside of the targeted community and so, either willingly or not, they can fail to introduce change by not incorporating community members on a sustainable and real level. They may mis-diagnose issues, fail to incorporate certain communities within a larger one, or even wish to create a system of dependency so that they are able to exist contingent on the community in need. Resolve is managing to balance being an NGO, and so culpable to stakeholders outside of the targeted community, with helping the community on a direct and sustainable level.
Resolve’s Fellowship Programme is building agency and solidarity within different communities in Hong Kong through their Fellows and the steps they are actively promoting in their 2018-2020 Strategic Plan. In particular, the Plan has two aims that include perfecting their signature fellowship model and establishing a thriving alumni network. The alumni network is of particular importance as it aims to ‘build lasting ties’ between the Fellows over the years, build ‘opportunities for [the Fellows’] growth and visibility’, and have alumni ‘continue to collaborate together to make Hong Kong more inclusive’ (Resolve Foundation, 2019b). Resolve is building a community within the community leaders who participate in the programme and the community of Hong Kong, by facilitating connections between Fellows and creating opportunities for them to educate others who have not taken part in the Fellowship Programme. This is evidenced in the culminating project by the inaugural Fellowship, where they ran a campaign titled ‘Everyday Racism’, which ‘is a participatory audiovisual storytelling project drawn from the lived experiences of racial minority communities in Hong Kong’ (Resolve Foundation, 2018a). The aim of the campaign was to raise awareness to the residents of Hong Kong of the inequality and injustice faced by minorities in what is assumed to be an international and open-minded city. Alongside the online campaign, the Fellows participated in talks throughout the city, such as a panel talk on November 6th, 2018 (‘Hong Kong must show it is home to all races’, 2018); participation by Fellows in TEDX HKU and TEDX Wan Chai, both in 2018 (‘Event’, 2018); and at several international conferences and events, including appearing at the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in August 2018 (Resolve Foundation, 2018b).
This need for democracy and democratic processes for underprivileged communities is increasingly valid in Hong Kong as the social inequality of the city widens and those living beneath the poverty line remains unchanged over the years (‘Record 1.37 million people living below poverty line in Hong Kong’, 2018; ‘Any hope for the poor?’, 2017). There is a need for sustainable change in the way underprivileged groups are included into society and how their needs are met.
5. Conclusion
CD is a fluid term but its most important qualities are those defined by Bhattacharyya (2004) as agency and solidarity. These two qualities ensure that communities benefit from the change and improvements made by CD programmes. Whichever form that CD takes, the targeted community itself must be included in the aims and processes in order for there to be sustainable and lasting change. Resolve manages to do this through their Fellowship Programme, an academy style programme of workshops intended to empower, educate, organise, and inspire selected community leaders. These leaders are then expected to, and assisted in, raising awareness in the larger community of Hong Kong through Resolve and its alumni network. Their style of education can be considered sustainable by incorporating both ESD1 and ESD2 theories established by Vare and Scott (2007), and as CLDE since they focus resources on certain members of different communities who are then expected to go on to educate others. Resolve’s work in reducing the social inequality in Hong Kong is increasingly needed and although it is still a young organisation, it looks promising through its community based establishment and sustainable educational practises.
6. Key Definitions
‘Underprivileged groups’ include:
- members of ethnic minority groups excluding those categorised as ‘White’ or ‘East Asian’, such as Japanese or Korean, according the Report on Ethnic Minorities issued by the Government of Hong Kong SAR (Thematic Report Ethnic Minorities, 2017)
- members of the LGBTQ community
- asylum seekers and refugees
‘LGBTQ’ includes people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer.
‘Community’ is defined as a group of people, of any size, who live or work in a specific locality, and have a shared government, and often have a common cultural, historical, or religious heritage.
7. References:
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Bhattacharyya, J. (2004). Theorizing Community Development. Journal of the Community Development Society, 34(2), 5–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/15575330409490110
Census and Statistics Department. (2017). 2016 Population By-Census, Thematic Report: Ethnic Minorities. Retrieved from https://www.bycensus2016.gov.hk/data/16bc-ethnic-minorities.pdf
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About the Author
Sarah C. M. Scanlon
MEd, The University of Hong Kong
Email: scm.scanlon@gmail.com