Background
Over the last decade, terms such as community mobilization, citizen involvement, community participation, community organizing, community dialogue, multi-stakeholder processes, interactive decision-making and social learning have been frequently used in the literature of community development. These terms all embody the idea of bringing together different stakeholders (actors) who have an interest in a problem situation and engaging them in processes of dialogue and collective learning that can improve innovation, decision-making and action. For the purpose of this paper the term organizing communities will be used to discuss the benefits and challenges of organizing communities for community economic development a case of Mwananyamala Women Development Community Based Organization in Kinondoni. The paper will sight some literatures, on what is community and community organizing. It will discuss why need to organize community by pointing out advantages and challenges faced in Community Economic Development programs and finally recommendation will be given.
The term community is a changing and complex that might mean differently at different environment or situation and can have very different implications in practice. Various scholars have defined community in different ways as follows:
Stewart E. Perry defines community as is commonly used in two different senses. The first definition refers to any category of people who are related to each other by virtue of specific common interest and values, for example the disabled, the members of Catholic Church, women, low income people, artists. The second meaning specify a category of people who are related to each other by virtue of living in the same particular locality which implies that they also have shared values and interest, arising from their common locality.
Alinsky Redux define community from a public health perspective as "a group of people with diverse characteristics who are linked by social ties, share common perspectives, and engage in joint action. It is the term "joint action" that changes a “field of shared meaning” into a community of solidarity and joint action does not come out of a vacuum, it always needs to be organized.
UNAIDS defines ``community'' in its widest and most inclusive sense by pointing out that a community is a group of people who have something in common and will act together in their common interest. A community's ability to act together may have existed for centuries, or it may be triggered in a very short time by some urgent problem. Many people belong to a number of different communities – examples include the place they live, the people they work with, or their religious group.
Therefore for the purpose of this paper community is a group of people with shared interest or goal within a specific locality.
Community organizing
Pat Short (July, 2005) defines Community organizing as “a process by which people who are brought together to act in common self-interest. It is any activity involving people interacting with one another in a formal manner;
Livable communities@work vol. 1 no1 ( November 2002) Community organizing is a social change strategy by which disadvantaged people re-engage in civic life, and redefine their own relationship to people in positions of power. Community organizing is a transforming experience for those involved, because it engages community members normally excluded from public. The core of organizing is building a cadre of community leaders accountable to their community, capable of defining their self interest and exercising power in increasingly complex situations
Peter Dreier points out that Community organizing involves mobilizing people to combat common problems and to increase their voice in institutions and decisions that affect their lives and communities. They include public safety, crime, and drugs abuse; environmental and pollution; community reinvestment, economic development; youth, education, and recreation. Some community organizations focus on a single issue, while others tackle a variety of issues under a single organizational umbrella. Some groups focus solely on problems on their block or in their neighborhood, while others tackle issues across neighborhoods, either by expanding their own locality or by forging alliances and coalitions with counterparts in other neighborhoods
Community organizing as a process
Community organizing is a process that starts with clear goals by involving community members to give definition of what the community is, the identification of the key stakeholders, the recruitment of a team or board, knowledge about the issue, analysis of what the constraints are, an action plan, and people empowered to act. Central to the process is that the community itself is both listened to and informed by creating a relationship of trust, through which credibility is built and key stakeholders participate and feel ownership.
Community organizing process helps the community members to refine the goals and increase understanding of the issue and the impact on the community
The objective of community organizing is to strengthen the community’s capacity to identify the problem and come up with the solution, carry out the action plan, as well as monitor the progress and make an appropriate evaluation, measurement, and analysis of impact and results and give feedback to the stakeholder community and others who wish to learn. Community development practitioners are involved in community organizing process through various approaches these can be through organizing community meetings and conducting community dialogue/ conversation Participatory Rural Appraisal has been one of the most approach applied within a community to identify problems, resources, locate resources, analyze local power structures, assess human needs, gender relations and investigate other concerns that comprise the community's character. By doing that the community becomes organized and are aware of the shared concern or common need, and decides together to take action in order to create shared benefits. This action may be helped by the participation of an external facilitator either a person or another organization. The momentum for continued mobilization must come from within the concerned group for sustainability over time. Communities organizing go through a sequence of activities these includes: assessing needs, developing plans, mobilizing resources, and finally implementing and monitoring activities. Community organizing is ideally involving the community at every stage of community economic development cycle.
Advantages of community organizing:
Firstly, community organizing emerged as an alternative approach to community economic development as it is founded in the belief that problems facing community need to be solved by the community itself as they know what are real problems and solutions for their problems. Members are aware in a detailed and realistic way of their individual and collective needs. This can be observed from the of Mwananyamala Women Development organization (MWAWODE) whereby women organized themselves to solve the problem of getting loans so that they can start income generating activities. The group started with ten members whereby they organized themselves by starting a saving a credit group (upatu) that would help them to access loans. The group now has been registered with a 60 members that are accessing to loans and dividends at the end of the year.
In community organizing that is where we can achieve equity in decision making processes, resources and benefits of the community Economic Development regardless of race, gender, income, age and ability as it encourages active participation and involvement of all members of the community in planning, decision- making. Removes the barriers that limit the participation of women, youth, disabled people and members both are motivated to participate in decision-making on what actions to take, evaluate the results, and take responsibility for both success and failure. MWAWODE all members have equal decision making and use of the resources and benefits among the members through the elected leadership that runs for two years
Further more community organizing build the capacity of the community by encouraging the acquisition of relevant skills and the development of supportive structures and institutions by sharing relative experiences and knowledge among the community. The community seeks outside assistance and cooperation when needed. Community members have practical knowledge of the different options they can take to reduce their vulnerability, members take action within their capability, applying their own strengths and investing their own resources including money, labor, materials or whatever else they have to contribute. MWAWODE is in partnership with Help Age International, Civil Society Forums and Kinondoni Municipal Council who provide with them technical and financial assistance. For example the group members do receive training on financial management and business skills from Help Age international and Kinondoni Municipal council department of Community.
Challenges in community organizing:
There are certain things that can hinder community organizing, when countries’ political and legal structures do not encourage or give room for community organizing. There is too much bureaucracy such that people can easily give up even when they are willing to participate for development that involves community organizing or involvement. Most community organized programs do get problems in getting registrations from the NGO registration board to register as Community Based Organization as a result they fail to accesses funds from donors for project implementation in communities. The case of MWAWODE it took them more than two years to get the registration certificate as a result they were not able to receive grant from Global fund that would have supported them to support orphans and vulnerable children in Mwananyamala ward.
Furthermore rigid and pre-set expectations when community organization is triggered entirely from within the community, the community leadership understands the community's customary priorities and ways of organizing itself. In contrast, external facilitators that of Government and NGOs that come to work with communities are often primarily motivated by their strong sense of urgency about achieving their preset objectives and timeline. They are likely to be frustrated by what they perceive to be a lack of progress. At the same time, community members can be irritated, offended or simply confused by the expectations of the facilitators. For example most of government and donors funded project do have pre-determined life spans of initiatives. Many community projects have a pre-planned project design imposed on them without the wide participation of community members. Typically, such a design has a specific schedule, including a fixed end-date and rigid reporting requirements. This builds inflexibility into the project from the start and frequently imposes an unrealistic pace on it. Inflexible planning often cannot adapt to events that are highly important to community members. Taking the case of MWAWODE had a planned a training workshops on business management that was aimed at equipping the members with skills of running business. The schedule coincided with the holly month of Ramadan most of group members are Islam’s who were supposed to be at home to prepare evening meals this necessitated to end the classes for half day as a result eventually the results were not good as the topics were not fully covered within the targeted target.
Moreover incomplete participation or representation in any initiative, there is always a risk that community leaders or spokespersons whether traditional or external will not represent the whole community, but instead will focus on their own concerns or agendas. At the same time, certain groups within the larger community whose participation can be highly important to community economic development may be marginalized or ignored due to culture and classes in the community. These is observed also at MWAWODE group where women who often are reluctant to speak publicly due to culture and religious norms, or have no experience in doing so. women are not allowed to speak in the public as a result are not able to participate in various decision making process which some times through their participation they would have made a great impact.
Recommendation:
Firstly is by ensuring that community members ``take ownership'' of the initiative It is generally accepted that a true community-based initiative is one in which local people will say, ``we did it ourselves.'' This basic principle of community organization is frequently forgotten in the haste of many community initiatives. Facilitators and sponsors may rush the mobilization process in order to meet planned goals, and in doing so jeopardize its long-term success. The assessment and planning phases of an initiative must take into account the need for community feelings of ownership to be created.
Secondly creating strong links to outside resources as communities is not closed, self- sustaining systems. The ability of communities no matter how well organized and motivated to meet all of their needs is limited. These limits must be recognized and then planned for. For example now the government of Tanzania is organizing communities to construct classrooms which most of the communities have done and are continuing to do so, but that is not helpful if there is no consistent availability of teachers and teaching material. Community-level initiatives should identify and create linkages to other levels or support. For the case of schools construction this to include District Education officers who would allocate teachers to the community constructed schools. A case of MWAWODE they need to work on with the Kinondoni Municipal Council, FINCA, PRIDE and other financial institution for technical and financial support.
In addition in order to secure long-term and maintaining the momentum of a community organized responses needs regular skills capacity building in and resources in community organizing by supporting with skills building workshops and advice from experienced leaders in another community to maintaining momentum community organized initiatives.
Moreover optimal community leadership and optimal representation must be invested not only in supporting good leadership but in ensuring optimal representation. The participation of marginalized groups such as women, youth, old and poor class is an important part of this, particularly when they are among the most affected by the problem. Whenever possible, widening the established discussion or decision- making mechanisms of the community. The Tanzania government is in the process of implementing the Local Government reform that is aimed at empowering the District council to involve communities to work on their community economic development. This is through Village councils and Ward level development committees.
For a successful community organizing requires a strong, skilled, indigenous leadership through a process of leadership development, organizational capacity building, education, and consciousness raising. Successful community empowerment efforts depend a great deal on indigenous leadership development and organizational capacity building on how-to organize communities that encompass such skills as chairing meetings, negotiating with government and NGOs institutions, fundraising, and handling budgets etc. Through the local government reform communities are requested to come up with their plans that include budgets and through these plans government is giving funds to villages to implement their plans. In such situation there is a need to develop the skills that will empower them to succeed in the implementation of the projects. . Local government leaders are no longer supposed to largely direct and control, they are in charge of a sector that is expected to create an enabling environment and facilitate partnership and contribution of all stakeholders.
Last but not least Government need to promote community empowerment and support by encouraging grassroots self-help efforts like MWAWODE in several ways, including funding direct operations, training, and ancillary activities of community groups; making public information accessible to community organizations; and giving community organizations a legitimate role in the public policy process through the local government reform that advocate for community organized activities.
Conclusion
Community organizing is a vitally important strategy in efforts to work with community to improve their Community Economic Development. Community organizing is a strategy that respects the rights and ability of indigenous other community members to design and implement programs within their community. Community organizing opens the way for community members to act responsibly. Whether a participatory approach is the primary strategy or a complementary one, it will greatly enrich and strengthen programs and help achieve more sustainable, appropriate, and effective programs in the field. For real Community Economic Development is through organizing the people for their viable development.
References
1. Alinsky Reax- Organizing principles found in http://www.epi.org/downloads/docs
2. Deborah King , (April 1, 2002)Labor strife sows idea for Chavez rose- (AP)
3. MacQueen et al- American Journal of Public Health- December 2001
4. Peter Dreier, Community Empowerment Strategies: The Limits and Potential of Community Organizing in Urban Neighborhoods Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research • Volume 2, Number 2 • May 1996 Cityscape 121
5. Pat Shortt (July, 2005) Putting the unity back into community Rise: London United festival
6. Saul Alinsky, The Education of An Organizer
7. Save the Children Community Mobilization manual
8. Stewart E. Perry 2001 – 2003 Community enterprise
9. UNIAD April 1997 community mobilization and AIDS UNAIDS technical updates
10. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development • Office of Policy Development and Research
11. http://www.cedworks.com
12. http://wwwdata.unaids.org/publication/irc
13. http://www.apialif.org/apidivinstitue pdf Community engagement report
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