Post date: Oct 15, 2009 6:11:22 AM

Community Driven Development

Community-driven development (CDD) is based on the empowerment of local communities, whereby local governments and rural and urban communities drive forward development with a new set of powers, rights and obligations. In order to achieve best practice in Community-Driven Development, Contnuum is focusing on distinct but overlapping areas of:

• Community-Based Management

• Development Planning,

• Rethinking Governance

Dimensions of Community-Driven Development (CDD)

These include:

• Empowering communities with resources and authority. Communities which make the best use of funds deserve increased grants.

• Empowering local governments - community empowerment needs to be embedded in an institutional framework of local governments. Central/State government staff for frontline services may need to be transferred to local governments. Local governments will need powers to levy taxes and user charges. Municipal/ local finances currently represent only 2-3% of national revenue in most countries. Sustainable decentralization requires that local governments get an assured share of central/state revenue.

• Realigning the centre/state - decentralization implies a far-reaching change in the role of the centre, as many responsibilities and resources will shift from the centre/state to local governments. Central governments, instead of running services directly, should focus on facilitating local government activities, setting standards, monitoring outcomes, providing training to lower levels, and providing rewards and penalties to improve local government performance.

• Improving accountability - The empowerment of communities and local governments will enable local social capital to be harnessed, and provide downward accountability to users of frontline services. Traditional forms of upward accountability also need to be strengthened, e.g. training communities in participatory monitoring and evaluation.

• Building capacity - untied matching grants to communities will help develop their capacity for problem-solving through learning by doing. As they take on more responsibilities, they will find they need to upgrade their skills. This can be facilitated by technical assistance from central/state governments and NGOs. CDD can play an important role in private sector development.

Community-based Management

The Community-based Management Practice aims to demonstrate a framework for community members to participate in their own development.

Community based management (CBM) is about communities being involved and active in managing their own development. The intention of CBM practice is to demonstrate a framework for community members to participate in their own development, acquiring the skills and resources to assess their well-being and then to plan, implement and evaluate actions that change their environment to improve their livelihoods. This concept entails communities making decisions about their future. It is about strengthening local ownership of local problems and solutions, as well as designing actions to deal with identified challenges. This does not imply that communities must take responsibility for everything but rather promotes an integrated approach to problem-solving between different stakeholders. It puts communities in charge of their own development in a flexible partnership with supporting agencies including local government. Such partnership allows for sharing responsibilities between supporting agencies, and communities. The division of responsibilities between these partners can vary considerably, but should be agreed upon in advance so all know what is expected of them. Communities can then hold governments accountable (claiming their community rights to services) to agreed areas of action. 

Development Planning

Planning is a key tool which influences decisions about priorities and resource allocation, and aims to influence the direction, and pace of development. Sectoral planning focuses on one particular sector, while integrated development planning can be at different levels - local, provincial or national. It also often involves linkages between different levels of government, and so is an opportunity to enshrine micro-macro links, as well as to integrate actions of different government and non-government agencies. So planning is a major point where integration - and the Sustainable Livelihoods principles of holism and partnerships can be fostered. Undertaking development planning requires an understanding of the development process as well as planning skills. Implicit to the concept of development planning is the need for learning through doing so that mistakes of the past are not repeated.

Rethinking Governance

Governance and the management of Sustainable Community-driven Development

The interplay of the essence and components of governance that underpin most approaches to development imply a more comprehensive and integrated concept rethinking governance as the "transparent development and management of a legitimate and responsive state and non state policies, institutions and systems, including power and conflict resolution structures, that give voice and choice to communities and transform development systems in order to improve the livelihoods of poor people."  The creation of political space for articulation, mobilisation, distribution and confirmation of citizen voice and choice, and the support for positive interaction between markets, the state and citizens can make states more capable, legitimate and effective in creating conditions for active and empowered citizens to manage their own development on a sustainable basis. (Governance and Transparency Fund, 2007; DiFD 2007).

In the final analysis, the utility of rethinking governance in relation to sustainable community driven development lies in its efficacy as a diagnostic tool and/or postulate that Khanya uses to conceptualize desired normative states or conditions. In addition, rethinking governance has to be contextualized at all levels (or spheres) of governance in order to give practical guidance to development practitioners to strategically manage human (community) development. Practical and implementable tools, techniques and methodologies are required to operationalise these frameworks.