Community Development: How Does It Work?

During the first week of my internship with FSD, I acquired some valuable knowledge about the world of “community development.” I studied some about this topic at SPU, so I was relatively familiar with the subject as a whole. But the biggest new thing I learned about is the importance of community buy-in. There are more organizations that anyone wants to count that are trying to do “community development,” “sustainable development,” “alleviate poverty,” “economic liberation,” “helping the poor,” whatever you want to call it. But how many of these organizations factor in whether or not the community in which they are working is excited about their work?
When the aim of development work is for it to be something that will be sustainable, something that will be long-lasting, the support of the community plays the biggest role. Large sums of money are great, but more often than not these contributions won’t last very long. They may help some population get access to water, food, or health services, but what happens the next time these people are in urgent need of help? They should just rely on other donations? That doesn’t sound like a sustainable plan to me.

When an organization embarks in development work, there must be some form of community buy-in. This is most often seen in the form of that community committing resources to the project, so they feel like they contributed something to what was built or developed, rather than “the white man” coming in and trying to help them. And even if the community does not contribute its resources to a project, the organization must at least consider the community’s culture and have their support for the project for it to succeed in the long run.

Here’s one example of a large organization forgetting the importance of community buy-in. An unnamed organization was working here in Uganda, building wells so the community could access clean water. They had huge amounts of money, and brought in hundreds of people to build these wells. But while they were here, they did not involve the community in this project. Then, when the wells were finished and it looked like so much good work had been done, they left. The locals were supposed to start using the wells and benefitting from all this work that had just been done, but that’s not what happened. The community continued life as usual, simply ignoring these wells. No one had instructed them on how to use the wells, and this organization never talked with the community about the possible impact these wells could have. A year later, when representatives from this organization came back to check up on the work, they were surprised to find that the wells had never been used. So this organization’s money, resources, and time produced no tangible results, no improvement in the quality of life of the community.

So what’s the solution? I don’t know. Big NGOs have the ability to bring in large sums of money and the infrastructure to work efficiently. But they sometimes do not have a corresponding impact on the community. But small grassroots organizations aren’t perfect, either. They are often inefficient, lacking the resources to make a large-scale impact. But they tend to make at least some lasting change in the community.So how do we combine the community emphasis of small organizations with the efficiency of big organizations? I think we need to continue seeking new, innovative means of successfully fighting world poverty through sustainable and holistic community development. (I know, that’s not really an answer. But I’m not the one with all the answers, I’m just asking questions.) And in the meantime, we need both big organizations and small ones to continue doing work in the developing world.