COMMUNITY EMPOWERMENT: Project Design

The Dependency Syndrome
by Dr Phil Bartle

When community members lack attitudes of self reliance, what needs to be changed?

The "dependency syndrome" is an attitude and belief that a group can not solve its own problems without outside help. It is a weakness that is made worse by charity. Why do we fight against dependency?

If an outside agency, be it central Government, an international NGO, a mission, comes to a community and constructs a human settlements facility (eg water supply), it is natural for the community members to see it as belonging to the outside agency. When that outside agency goes away or runs out of funds, the community members will have no motivation to repair and maintain the facility, or to sustain the service In order for a facility to be used, and used effectively, by the community members. In order for the facility to be maintained and sustained, the community members must have a sense of "responsibility" for the facility. That sense of responsibility is sometimes described as "ownership" by the community.

Communal Contribution

Unless the community as a whole has been involved in the decision making about the facility (planning and management) and has willingly contributed to the costs of its construction, the sense of responsibility or ownership will be missing. It will not be effectively used, maintained or sustained. It is impossible to build a human settlements facility or service and not expect that it has to be repaired and maintained. That is like trying to eat once and for all. As their populations grow, governments are getting access to fewer and fewer resources per capita every year. It is simply no longer feasible for communities to be dependent upon central governments for human settlement facilities and services. The same with international donors: rich countries' governments, the UN, World Bank, international NGOs, simply do not have enough resources to give to every poor community, no matter how worthwhile the cause, around the world.

Whereas it was once thought that community self reliance in itself was a good thing, it promoted grass roots democracy, human rights, self development and human dignity, now it has gone much farther than that. If communities cannot become more and more self reliant and empowered, they simply will not develop and so poverty and apathy will eventually destroy them. Counteracting dependency is your prime goal. Dependency in the community must be reduced by every action you take. When training a community organization how to obtain resources, the animator must keep that prime goal in mind and act accordingly. A donor agency should try to avoid giving the community anything for nothing. That encourages dependency. Always encourage community members by stating that they can carry out the project themselves and you are here to offer them some skills and tips, but the work must be done by them. Applying this to financing a community project, you must never offer to obtain project inputs for them. The methods on this web site are called the Community Empowerment Methodology; specifically designed to fight dependency.

You as a mobilizer, can give them guidelines as to how to raise money and other resources, how to ensure that accounts are kept transparent and simple, and how to translate non-monetary donations into financial inputs, but you must always emphasise that the actual obtaining of the resources must be done by the community or its community based organization (eg executive committee) working on its behalf, not you.

COMMUNITY EMPOWERMENT - MOBILIZATION

UNITY ORGANIZING
By Phil Bartle, PhD

What we often call step three in the mobilizing cycle, "unity organizing," can begin even during step one (awareness raising) and continue throughout the whole mobilizing cycle

Communities are Seldom Unified:

The word "community" has the word "unity" in it, but it is a common mistake to assume that any community is united.

Every community has factions and disputes, what we call social schisms, within it. These may be based on religion, clan, class, language, ethnic differences, and other factors.

Note: A "schism" is a divide or chasm between different sides. A "social schism" is a divide between two or more factions in a larger social grouping.

A Community Decision Needs Unity:

Yet when we want the community to make a consensus decision to agree on its priority problem to be solved, that is not possible when the different factions support different goals.

To bring these factions together, then, to promote and encourage unity, is a necessary task for you, the mobilizer. How do you do that?

Techniques to Unify a Community:

When you call a community meeting, insist and ensure that all the different factions attend. Also make sure the meeting includes the disabled, the elderly, the commonly overlooked people.

If you have done your work well in sociology, observing and analysing the community, you will know where the sensitivities lie.

It is useful to be a bit of an actor or "show person" when mobilizing. You can use the match sticks demonstration, for example, but take your time with it. Call for a volunteer or two to help you; repeat yourself in various ways; make a drama out of this. Hold up a single match stick and ask the group to say if it will be easy to break it.

Get their responses. Then ask your volunteer to break it. Congratulate your volunteer and make a big fuss with the group about how easy it is to break the match stick. Then take a hand full of match sticks and tie them together with an elastic band; show the bunched match sticks to the group. Ask the volunteer to break the group of matches as a single item. The volunteer will have difficulty or (we hope) will not be able to break the grouped match sticks.

Thus you say that each match stick is a different faction, but all of them together is the whole community. Poverty and weakness will easily break the community if the different factions continue pulling in different directions.

Show the group the matches again as you explain the analogy (metaphor, parable) again, making one match as you identify it as a faction, struggling to break the bound matches as you identify it as a unified community. Do this in several meetings at different times. (Never be afraid to repeat your principles). Continue it with other demonstrations and stories that you may think up yourself or borrow from other mobilizers.

See: The Role of Food in Empowering Communities.

See: Strengthening Organizations.

Your goal is not to make the community homogeneous (everybody the same); it is to encourage people to be more understanding and tolerant of differences among other community members, and to be loyal and supportive of the community as a whole.

Don't Stop:

Combine this with other unity organizing, efforts, such as ensuring representatives of every faction get on the executive committee, of the CBO that you organize to plan and implement the community project.

The need for unity organizing continues, and you should not stop it before going on to the next steps. Share with other mobilizers, and learn new methods.

EATING WITH FRIENDS

The Role of Food in Empowering Communities
By Phil Bartle, PhD

"Who eats with whom" is a factor affecting mobilization

Introduction:

One aspect of community empowerment, often overlooked in community development text books and teachings, is group eating. Like the celebration of a project completion, and many other important activities, something that may be seen as a vacation or "time off" among the people in general, is an essential part of the work (time on) of a mobilizer.

As a social scientist can tell you, there is far more to food than its physical benefits of nutrition and health. With whom we eat, when we eat, where we eat, what we eat and under what conditions we eat ... are all sociologically very significant. (If logic and nutrition were the only concerns, we would all eat worms).

These concerns are very important, therefore, to the mobilizer, first to know about the community and how to behave in it, and second for including this knowledge in strategies for empowering communities through mobilization.

Community Contribution: Meals for Donated Labour

Commensality:

The word "Commensal" is derived from the Latin (and Arabic) , meaning to share a table. In sociology, the concept of "commensality" is most simply defined as "the people that eat together."

Start with yourself: think of those people with whom you eat, and those with whom you do not eat. In general, the people with whom you eat include your family and your friends.

Those with whom you do not eat, for whatever reason, are more socially distant: much higher or much lower class or social status, strangers, enemies and serious rivals, and sometimes persons belonging to segregated language, ethnic, religious, gender, age or occupational categories.

These, of course are highly variable from community to community, time frame to time frame, and from society to society. They also vary according to social context; some persons you would eat with in a workplace cafeteria, but not eat with them in their or your homes.

As a generality (with many exceptions you can be sure), people tend to eat with other people where there is a sense of solidarity or trust. Sometimes that trust is more apparent than real; some people eat with some others to ostentatiously demonstrate trust when they do not trust at all. Eating with others is, like all cultural things, symbolic, and communicates many values and meanings.

Influence is Two-Way:

The association of (a) social status or relationships and (b) who eats with whom, is known and observable. That does not prove that there is necessarily a causal relationship between them, but it does suggest that there is such a relationship.

Which way is that causality? Experienced community mobilizers know the influence is two-way. How people judge each other may be influenced by who consciously chooses to eat with whom. Conversely, choice of who eats with whom may be affected by how people judge each other.

This has two implications for the mobilizer. (1) The job requirement of knowing the social and cultural features of a community, an important task of the mobilizer, is enhanced by knowing who eats with whom. (2) Setting up situations where people eat with others they might not normally do, is a means of introducing new social relationships, and of enhancing community empowerment by improving unity.

Unity is very important to the mobilizer. See Unity Mobilizing. If bringing people together to share a meal will improve that unity, then this is another tool for the mobilizer's tool box.

Three Eating Situations in Community Mobilization:

There may be many opportunities to allow community or committee members to eat together at a public occasion. The greater the knowledge a mobilizer has of the community, the more opportunities will be revealed.

Three general situations are as follows:
- Feeding communal labourers during construction;
- Refreshments served at executive meetings; and
- Refreshments served at celebrations.

Providing food for community members who come out to a communal "bee" to donate their labour to cleaning the community area, or contributing to project construction, is a valuable undertaking for promoting enthusiasm for the work, and for promoting unity and solidarity.

In rural areas, farmers who may lack cash to donate, are likely to be willing to donate some of their crops for that. Meanwhile some community members, perhaps those not able to do heavy work associated with construction, would be willing to donate their time and effort to cooking and presenting the donated food.

It is easy to dismiss the labour of the implementing or executive committee. They contribute their time, their imagination and their knowledge to a community project. They must also be careful to remain transparent when handling community money, so as to maintain trust and enthusiasm of the people. If community members prepare small amounts of food, even as a token gesture, for their committee meetings, they will be less likely to be suspected of having hidden agendas to enhance their income by misdirecting community resources.

During the public celebrations to recognize project completion, the community is advised by the mobilizer to invite important and well known personalities to attend and officiate. This attracts journalists who will publicize the event. If the community can be seen as providing refreshments to important visitors an, better yet, to all who attend, then the confidence and solidarity of the community will be increased.

Choosing What to Eat:

The mobilizer does not choose what should be served. The job of the mobilizer is to stimulate the committee, if not the community, to decide that food should be served, when, what, where, how much and any other details. If a committee is formed to decide upon food to be served, their choices can be a good source of information for the mobilizer.

The choice of tabooed or controversial food, for example, can be an indicator of factional influence among the executive. Pork, for example, should not be served to Moslems, beef to Hindus, meat to vegetarians. If the committee chooses such food, then the mobilizer has a hint that the committee is biased towards other factions.

The mobilizer should try, quietly at first, behind the scenes, to convince the committee that it should be more sensitive to the varieties of food regulations among the community. If this can not be fixed quietly, the mobilizer might find it necessary to raise the issue publicly in a whole community meeting, indicating that the project is for all members of the community, not only specific factions, therefore the food served should be applicable to all, or else special preparations made to satisfy the food rules of some groups.

In many community projects, especially when important visitors are served refreshments, it has become the practice to serve world famous bottled (or tinned) soft drinks. This author does not endorse the growth of "coca cola- nization" or global brand loyalty by endorsing the use of such drinks. Boiled water, local drinks, and tea and/or coffee are preferable.

Summary:

The culture of food and group eating, "who shares a table," is important to a mobilizer. Knowing eating patterns is an indicator of how well the mobilizer knows the community, and can be used as an indicator of how united or divided is a community.

Suggesting and encouraging the community and its project executive committee to arrange for various occasions where people can eat together will promote greater unity, solidarity and trust, which are important factors in empowering a community.

As with most things done by a good mobilizer, the mobilizer encourages a participatory approach, guiding and stimulating the community and its project executive to make decisions, rather than dictating and making decisions for it.

References:

Food and Culture: http://lilt.ilstu.edu/rtdirks/SOCIAL.html
Margaret Visser: http://www.umanitoba.ca/

Participation is the Key to Empowerment

by Benjamin Fleming

Participation doesn't always lead to empowerment. It takes a supportive environment in which to nurture people's aspirations and skills for empowerment to ultimately occur. Some means of achieving this are:

• Don't underestimate people. Give them tools to manage complexity; don't, shield them from it;
• Divide the issues into bite-sized chunks
• Start with people's own concerns and the issues relevant to them
• Don't superimpose your own ideas and solutions at the outset;
• Help people widen their perceptions of the choices available and to clarify the implications of each option;
• Build in visible early successes to develop the confidence of participants; "Staircase" skills, trust and commitment to the process: offer a progressive range of levels of involvement and help people to move up the ladder;
• Direct empowerment training for participants may not be appreciated - it may be better to develop skills more organically as part of the process;
• If at all possible, avoid going for a comprehensive irreversible solution. Set up an iterative learning process, with small, quick, reversible pilots and experiments;
• Continuously review and widen membership. As new interests groups are discovered how will they be integrated into the process?
• Help people to build their understanding of complex and remote decision processes which are outside the delegated powers of the participation process but which are affecting the outcomes.
• Nurture new networks and alliances;
• Plans must be meaningful and lead to action;
• Manage the link between the private ability of the various interest groups to deliver on their commitments and the public accountability and control of the implementation;
• Build in opportunities for reflection and appraisal;

Make sure people are having fun! (from The Guide to effective Participation by David Wilcox)

Ten Key Ideas about Participation.

1. Level of participation.

Sherry Arnstein (1969) described a ladder of participation with eight steps. Briefly, these are:

1 Manipulation and 2 Therapy. Non participative. The aim is to cure or educate the participants. The proposed plan is best and the job of participation is to achieve public support by public relations.

3 Informing. A most important first step to legitimate participation. But too frequently the emphasis is on a one way flow of information. No channel for feedback.

4 Consultation. Attitude surveys, neighbourhood meetings and public enquires. But a window dressing ritual.

5 Placation. Co-option of hand-picked 'worthies' onto committees.

6 Partnership. Power redistributed through negotiation between citizens and power holders. Planning and decision-making responsibilities are shared.

7 Delegated power. Citizens holding a clear majority of seats on committees with delegated powers to make decisions. Public now has the power to assure accountability of the program to them.

8 Citizen Control. Have-nots handle the entire job of planning, policy making and managing a program.

2. Initiation and process.

Participation doesn't just happen, it is initiated. Someone then manages a process over time, and allows others involved some control over what happens.The process is described during four phases: Initiation - Preparation - Participation - Continuation.

3. Control.

The initiator is in a strong position to decide how much control for. This decision is equivalent to taking a stand on the ladder - or adopted a stance about the level of participation.

4. Power and Purpose.

Understanding participation involves understanding power: the ability of the different interests to achieve what they want. Power will depend on who has information and money. It will also depend on people's confidence and skills. Many organizations are unwilling to allow people to participate because they fear loss of control. However, there are many situations when working together allows everyone to achieve more than they could on their own. These represent the benefits of participation.

5. Role of the facilitators.

Facilitators control much of what happens. It is important they constantly think about the part they are playing.

6. Stakeholders and Community.

A stakeholder is anyone who has a stake in what happens. Who will be affected by any project, who controls the information, skills and money needed, who may help and who may hinder?. Everyone affected does not have an equal say. Use the ladder to think about who has most influence.

The community which participates depends on the project as different people are interested in different issues.

7. Partnership.

Useful when a number of different interests willingly come together formally or informally to achieve some common purpose. The partners don't have to be equal in skills, funds or even confidence, but they do have to trust each other and share some commitment. Building trust and commitment takes time.

8. Commitment.

Commitment is the other side of apathy: committed people want to achieve something, apathetic don't. But what leads to commitment? Not telling people "You ought to care," inviting them to public meetings or bombarding them with glossy leaflets. People care about what they are interested in, and become committed when they feel they can achieve something. Hard selling won't achieve that. If people are apathetic about your proposals, it may simply be that they don't share your interests or concerns.

9. Ownership of ideas.

People are most likely to be committed to carry something through if they have a stake in the idea, or allow people to say "We thought of that." In practice that means running brainstorming workshops, helping people think through the practicality of ideas, and negotiating with others a result which is acceptable to as many people as possible. Apathy is directly proportional to the stake people have in ideas and outcomes.

10. Confidence and capacity.

Putting ideas into practice depends on people's confidence and skills. Many participation processes involve breaking new ground. It is unrealistic to expect individuals or small groups suddenly to develop the capability to make complex decisions and become involved in major projects. They need training or the opportunity to learn formally and informally, to develop confidence, and trust in each other.

Taken from The Guide to effective Participation. by David Wilcox. http://www.partnerships.org.uk/guide/index.htm

COMMUNITY EMPOWERMENT

Preserving Culture
by Phil Bartle, PhD

So you want to preserve your culture.

Nice ideal. You might be surprised to discover, however, that you are a danger to your culture if you want to preserve it.

Does that sound like a paradox? Not if you look carefully at what culture is, and how you can strengthen it. The empowerment methodology of this web site has a focus on strengthening, not on protecting.

Do you want to empower your culture or do you want to preserve it? The choice is yours. Choose one only. You can not have both.

Characteristics of Culture

Before we begin discussing the idea of preserving culture, let us first ensure we agree on the meaning of culture. The most elementary definition of culture is that it is composed of everything we learn.

Several training documents on this site discuss culture. See two of them: Culture and What is community? Both emphasise that culture is the sociocultural system or society, that it is all our beliefs and actions that are not transmitted by genes. They are stored and transmitted by symbols. They include six dimensions: the technological, economic, political and institutional (interactional) dimensions, and the cultural dimension of aesthetics and values, and our worldview, or perspective on the nature of the universe.

The common, every-day, or street definition of culture is what we in the social sciences see as one of the six dimensions, the aesthetic. Drumming and dancing in Africa, drumming and singing in aboriginal North America, ballet and opera in Europe, all of these are part of culture but not the whole of culture.

Since those traditional songs, dances and music are important elements in the identity of those who perform and enjoy them, we strongly support the idea of preserving them and adding to them, as well as increasing their presence and profile in all societies, and in increasing and expanding their content. A strong sense of identity is a valuable element in the strengthening of communities and their culture. See Elements of Empowerment. .. It is in the other dimensions, and other aspects of the values dimension, where preserving culture can cause damage to the strength of that culture.

Characteristics of Preservation

Think of things we know that are preserved: pickles in a jar, butterflies in a glass case, leather on a purse, blackberry jam in a jar, lumber for building, insects in amber, frogs in formaldehyde. They all have one thing in common, They were all once alive (or were parts of something alive) and are all now dead.

The process of preservation is one which modifies something so that it will last, so that it will not change, so that it will not live. To be alive requires something to move, to change.

So if you want to keep something from changing for a long time, kill it. It will change eventually anyway (just ask any Buddhist) no matter how it is preserved.

Let Culture Grow and Become Stronger

If you go back to the documents on culture; you will see that culture is a living thing. It is formed of the symbols, meanings and behaviour of people, but can live beyond the lives of those individual humans who carry it. It is like a living organism, although it is not biological. It transcends the biological.

I can not give you freedom. If freedom could be given, it could be taken away (according to the teachings of Lao Tsu) and then it would not be true freedom.

The empowerment training on this web site is aimed at fighting poverty and oppression, not the poor and the oppressed. The method aims to strengthen the communities of poor and oppressed people. For those communities to become stronger, they must change, therefore their culture must change. They must do it themselves; we can only guide and stimulate, but not do it for them or give it to them.

Since culture is everything humans learn, the changes needed to become stronger require culture change. Growth is change (and so is decay). Let them grow.

A flower will grow if it gets enough water, sunlight, soil and minerals. It will not get taller if you pull it from the top. We can provide the water and minerals, perhaps, but it is the flowers (like the poor communities) that must do their own growing. Pulling it up by the top is like social engineering. Stimulating it by giving it water and minerals to grow and become stronger is empowerment methodology for flowers.

Many people believe in a mythological past where traditional culture was utopian. The evidence is different. The "good old days" never existed. No pre colonial community was unchanging. There was violence, there were wars, there were unfair things, there were change and adaptation. We should not believe in an untrue past and try to preserve something that never existed. Then and now, strength, growth and survival required and requires change and assertiveness.

Pick and Choose

We said above that we encourage the preservation of songs, dances and music, because they enhance the sense of identity, an important factor of capacity development. But we think that some practices and values need to change if a community is to get stronger.

Think of culture as clothing for a moment. In fact, clothing is technology, part of our culture. We put on different clothing according to conditions in the environment. We do not wear a bikini bathing suit to hunt seal on the ice, and we do not wear an arctic parka to go swimming in the tropical sea. To grow and adapt to changing conditions, we must be able to wear different aspects of our culture in different conditions.

Another metaphor: think of culture as our means of transport. (Our means of transport is another technological aspect of our culture). We do not drive a four wheel drive jeep into the ocean to fish for salmon. We do not ride in a fishing boat to hunt giraffes in the Kalahari Desert. We pick and choose what is appropriate and effective.

If some aspect of our culture is hindering us from surviving, growing and winning in the environment in which we now find ourselves, then we must don new cultural traits. See the document on FGM.

Some of those cultural traits are very honourable and praiseworthy, but if they cause us to weaken and die out, they need to be changed like a new suit of clothing or a new means of transport. If we say, "Oh we do not litigate and fight," and we are proud of that aspect of our culture, then when it comes time to fight and litigate for what is rightly ours, and we do not, we lose what is rightly ours.

If we say, "Oh we always respect and obey those who are in power," and if those in power are corrupt and evil, then we must either temporarily put aside that cultural trait and don a more useful set of traits. If we do not, then we will be exploited, robbed and oppressed by our conquerors or leaders.

We therefore should not say that we must choose the best of our traditional culture and preserve that. We should say that we must maintain our identity, but we must be able to adapt our values, our habits, our ways of thinking and acting, to use those which will make us stronger (not those which make us honourable but weak). Much as the parka is an honourable set of clothing, it will not serve us well if we are swimming in a tropical ocean.

Modern post colonial Africa and Latin America, aboriginal communities now in Western or European societies, the poor countries of the world, all of those are living in environments which require changes in some cultural traits. We need to consciously chose those that are appropriate for making us stronger, for our own empowerment.

Conclusion; So You want to Preserve Culture?

In the empowerment training on this site, we emphasise that encouraging community participation and community decision making does not mean automatically and passively accepting everything that community members say they want. It means challenging and encouraging community members to clarify and examine carefully what they want and what they want to do. Ultimately they must take responsibility.

Part of your challenge as an activist is to be clear in your own mind what some of these things mean, what they imply and what they might bring. (That is why we reject poverty alleviation and aim for poverty eradication).

The idea of "Cultural Preservation" when unexamined, has a nice warm fuzzy feeling about it. At first we think we can support it. Closer examination reveals, however, that it is just the opposite of what we really want.

COMMUNITY EMPOWERMENT

Twelve Lessons on Participatory Community Development
Recorded by: Phil Bartle, PhD

1. Communities have a right to participate in decisions that affect their living and working conditions


2. Only participation with decision-making power is sustainable and creative.


3. Genuine participation requires community involvement in all phases of city, town and village improvements: planning, implementation, maintenance and monitoring.


4. Participation must build on gender equality and include youth and the elderly.


5. Capacity development is essential to promote equitable participation between women, men and youth.


6. Communities do have a hidden resource for participating in city, town and village development; capacity development can release this resource.


7. Communities are prime stakeholders among development actors to identify problems, improve and maintain their settlements.


8. Awareness and capacity development can make partnerships among communities, NGOs and municipal authorities more equitable.


9. Community development which is planned by external persons and only requires communities' free labour, is unlikely to be accepted by communities at large.


10. Planning of participation is one of the most frequently overlooked elements of community development.


11. Charity makes communities dependent upon aid.


12. Community development is an essential contribution to overall urban management.

COMMUNITY EMPOWERMENT

Factors of Poverty; The Big Five
by Phil Bartle, PhD

What are the major factors of poverty?

Poverty as a Social Problem:

We have all felt a shortage of cash at times. That is an individual experience. It is not the same as the social problem of poverty. While money is a measure of wealth, lack of cash can be a measure of lack of wealth, but it is not the social problem of poverty. See "Principles." Poverty as a social problem is a deeply embedded wound that permeates every dimension of culture and society. It includes sustained low levels of income for members of a community. It includes a lack of access to services like education, markets, health care, lack of decision making ability, and lack of communal facilities like water, sanitation, roads, transportation, and communications.

Furthermore, it is a "poverty of spirit," that allows members of that community to believe in and share despair, hopelessness, apathy, and timidity. Poverty, especially the factors that contribute to it, is a social problem, and its solution is social. We learn in these training web pages that we can not fight poverty by alleviating its symptoms, but only by attacking the factors of poverty. This handout lists and describes the "Big Five" factors that contribute to the social problem of poverty.

The simple transfer of funds, even if it is to the victims of poverty, will not eradicate or reduce poverty. It will merely alleviate the symptoms of poverty in the short run. It is not a durable solution. Poverty as a social problem calls for a social solution. That solution is the clear, conscious and deliberate removal of the big five factors of poverty.

Factors, Causes and History:

A "factor" and a "cause" are not quite the same thing. A "cause" can be seen as something that contributes to the origin of a problem like poverty, while a "factor" can be seen as something that contributes to its continuation after it already exists.

Poverty on a world scale has many historical causes: colonialism, slavery, war and conquest. There is an important difference between those causes and what we call factors that maintain conditions of poverty. The difference is in terms of what we, today, can do about them. We can not go back into history and change the past. Poverty exists. Poverty was caused. What we potentially can do something about are the factors that perpetuate poverty.

It is well known that many nations of Europe, faced by devastating wars, such as World Wars I and II, were reduced to bare poverty, where people were reduced to living on handouts and charity, barely surviving. Within decades they had brought themselves up in terms of real domestic income, to become thriving and influential modern nations of prosperous people. We know also that many other nations have remained among the least developed of the planet, even though billions of dollars of so-called "aid" money was spent on them. Why? Because the factors of poverty were not attacked, only the symptoms. At the macro or national level, a low GDP (gross domestic product) is not the poverty itself; it is the symptom of poverty, as a social problem.

The factors of poverty (as a social problem) that are listed here, ignorance, disease, apathy, dishonesty and dependency, are to be seen simply as conditions. No moral judgement is intended. They are not good or bad, they just are. If it is the decision of a group of people, as in a society or in a community, to reduce and remove poverty, they will have to (without value judgement) observe and identify these factors, and take action to remove them as the way to eradicate poverty. The big five, in turn, contribute to secondary factors such as lack of markets, poor infrastructure, poor leadership, bad governance, under-employment, lack of skills, absenteeism, lack of capital, and others. Each of these are social problems, each of them are caused by one or more of the big five, and each of them contribute to the perpetuation of poverty, and their eradication is necessary for the removal of poverty.

Let us look briefly at each of the big five in turn

Ignorance:

Ignorance means having a lack of information, or lack of knowledge. It is different from stupidity which is lack of intelligence, and different from foolishness which is lack of wisdom. The three are often mixed up and assumed to be the same by some people. "Knowledge is power," goes the old saying. Unfortunately, some people, knowing this, try to keep knowledge to themselves (as a strategy of obtaining an unfair advantage), and hinder others from obtaining knowledge. Do not expect that if you train someone in a particular skill, or provide some information, that the information or skill will naturally trickle or leak into the rest of a community.

It is important to determine what the information is that is missing. Many planners and good minded persons who want to help a community become stronger, think that the solution is education. But education means many things. Some information is not important to the situation. It will not help a farmer to know that Romeo and Juliet both died in Shakespeare's play, but it would be more useful to know which kind of seed would survive in the local soil, and which would not. The training in this series of community empowerment documents includes (among other things) the transfer of information. Unlike a general education, which has its own history of causes for the selection of what is included, the information included here is aimed at strengthening capacity, not for general enlightenment.

Disease:

When a community has a high disease rate, absenteeism is high, productivity is low, and less wealth is created. Apart from the misery, discomfort and death that results from disease, it is also a major factor in poverty in a community. Being well (well-being) not only helps the individuals who are healthy, it contributes to the eradication of poverty in the community. Here, as elsewhere, prevention is better than cure. It is one of the basic tenets of PHC (primary health care). The economy is much healthier if the population is always healthy; more so than if people get sick and have to be treated. Health contributes to the eradication of poverty more in terms of access to safe and clean drinking water, separation of sanitation from the water supply, knowledge of hygiene and disease prevention -- much more than clinics, doctors and drugs, which are costly curative solutions rather than prevention against disease.

Remember, we are concerned with factors, not causes. It does not matter if tuberculosis was introduced by foreigners who first came to trade, or if it were autochthonic. It does not matter if HIV that carries AIDS was a CIA plot to develop a biological warfare weapon, of if it came from green monkeys in the soup. Those are possible causes. Knowing the causes will not remove disease. Knowing the factors can lead to better hygiene and preventive behaviour, for their ultimate eradication. Many people see access to health care as a question of human rights, the reduction of pain and misery and the quality of life of the people. These are all valid reasons to contribute to a healthy population. What is argued here, further than those reasons, is that a healthy population contributes to the eradication of poverty, and it is also argued that poverty is not only measured by high rates of morbidity and mortality, but also that disease contributes to other forms and aspects of poverty.

Apathy:

Apathy is when people do not care, or when they feel so powerless that they do not try to change things, to right a wrong, to fix a mistake, or to improve conditions. Sometimes, some people feel so unable to achieve something, they are jealous of their family relatives or fellow members of their community who attempt to do so. Then they seek to bring the attempting achiever down to their own level of poverty. Apathy breeds apathy.

Sometimes apathy is justified by religious precepts, "Accept what exists because God has decided your fate." That fatalism may be misused as an excuse. It is OK to believe God decides our fate, if we accept that God may decide that we should be motivated to improve ourselves. "Pray to God, but also row to shore," a Russian proverb, demonstrates that we are in God's hands, but we also have a responsibility to help ourselves. We were created with many abilities: to choose, to cooperate, to organize in improving the quality of our lives; we should not let God or Allah be used as an excuse to do nothing. That is as bad as a curse upon God. We must praise God and use our God-given talents.

In the fight against poverty, the mobilizer uses encouragement and praise, so that people (1) will want to and (2) learn how to -- take charge of their own lives.

Dishonesty:

When resources that are intended to be used for community services or facilities, are diverted into the private pockets of someone in a position of power, there is more than morality at stake here. In this training series, we are not making a value judgement that it is good or bad. We are pointing out, however, that it is a major cause of poverty. The amount stolen from the public, that is received and enjoyed by the individual, is far less than the decrease in wealth that was intended for the public. The amount of money that is extorted or embezzled is not the amount of lowering of wealth to the community. Economists tell of the "multiplier effect." Where new wealth is invested, the positive effect on the economy is more than the amount created. When investment money is taken out of circulation, the amount of wealth by which the community is deprived is greater than the amount gained by the embezzler. When a Government official takes a 100 dollar bribe, social investment is decreased by as much as a 400 dollar decrease in the wealth of the society.

It is ironic that we get very upset when a petty thief steals ten dollars' worth of something in the market, yet an official may steal a thousand dollars from the public purse, which does four thousand dollars worth of damage to the society as a whole, yet we do not punish the second thief. We respect the second thief for her or his apparent wealth, and praise that person for helping all her or his relatives and neighbours. In contrast, we need the police to protect the first thief from being beaten by people on the street. The second thief is a major cause of poverty, while the first thief may very well be a victim of poverty that is caused by the second. Our attitude (as described in the paragraph to the left) ) is more than ironic; it is a factor that perpetuates poverty. If we reward the one who causes the major damage, and punish only the ones who are really victims, then our misplaced attitudes also contribute to poverty. When embezzled money is then taken out of the country and put in a foreign (eg Swiss) bank, then it does not contribute anything to the national economy; it only helps the country of the offshore or foreign bank.

Dependency:

Dependency results from being on the receiving end of charity. In the short run, as after a disaster, that charity may be essential for survival. In the long run, that charity can contribute to the possible demise of the recipient, and certainly to ongoing poverty. It is an attitude, a belief, that one is so poor, so helpless, that one can not help one's self, that a group cannot help itself, and that it must depend on assistance from outside. The attitude, and shared belief is the biggest self justifying factor in perpetuating the condition where the self or group must depend on outside help.

There are several other documents on this web site which refer to dependency. See: Dependency, and Revealing Hidden Resources. When showing how to use the telling of stories to communicate essential principles of development, the story of Mohammed and the Rope is used as a key illustration of the principle that assistance should not be the kind of charity that weakens by encouraging dependency, it should empower. The community empowerment methodology is an alternative to giving charity (which weakens), but provides assistance, capital and training aimed at low income communities identifying their own resources and taking control of their own development -- becoming empowered. All too often, when a project is aimed at promoting self reliance, the recipients, until their awareness is raised, expect, assume and hope that the project is coming just to provide resources for installing a facility or service in the community.

Among the five major factors of poverty, the dependency syndrome is the one closest to the concerns of the community mobilizer.

Conclusion:

These five factors are not independent of one another. Disease contributes to ignorance and apathy. Dishonesty contributes to disease and dependency. And so on. They each contribute to each other.

In any social change process, we are encouraged to "think globally, act locally." The Big Five factors of poverty appear to be widespread and deeply embedded in cultural values and practices. We may mistakenly believe that any of us, at our small level of life, can do nothing about them. Do not despair. If each of us make a personal commitment to fight the factors of poverty at whatever station in life we occupy, then the sum total of all of us doing it, and the multiplier effect of our actions on others, will contribute to the decay of those factors, and the ultimate victory over poverty.

The training material on this web site is aimed at poverty reduction on two fronts, (1) reduction of communal poverty by mobilizing community groups to unite, organize and take community action, and (20 reduction of personal poverty by the creation of wealth through the development of micro enterprise. You, as a mobilizer, are in a key position to have an effect on the big five of poverty factors. By conducting your mobilizing and training for poverty reduction, you can ensure your own integrity, hinder those who would corrupt the system, and encourage all your participants to practice the attack on factors of poverty in the course of the actions they choose, when guided and trained by you.

The big five factors of poverty (as a social problem) include: ignorance, disease, apathy, dishonesty and dependency. These, in turn, contribute to secondary factors such as lack of markets, poor infrastructure, poor leadership, bad governance, under-employment, lack of skills, lack of capital, and others.

The solution to the social problem of poverty is the social solution of removing the factors of poverty.

Community Awareness; Health and Hygiene:

COMMUNITY EMPOWERMENT

Making Neighbourhoods Stronger
by Phil Bartle, PhD

The reasoning behind this methodology: Why Empower Communities?

When we use words, we often convey meanings that we do not intend, or meanings that we do not know we convey. There are emotions and assumptions associated with the words we use.

Take the word "poverty" for example. In the assistance industry (helpers of development), we often see ourselves as soldiers in the so-called war against poverty.

Poverty is what we want to defeat. But what is the opposite of poverty? Wealth. Somehow we do not like to admit we are "soldiers in the war in favour of wealth." Why?

Because while poverty and wealth are technically opposite, there are many assumptions, emotions and hidden values that are attached to both those words, and those are conveyed along with their overt meanings. Somehow it is morally OK to help poor people, but we do not always like to keep in our conscious thoughts that we are helping them to obtain wealth.

The module on income generation is more acceptable when it is named as "income generation" than as "wealth generation" even though "wealth" is a more accurate economic term. (Where the objective is to generate wealth rather than merely transfer money). The term "wealth" comes with hidden emotional baggage that implies it means huge richness.

Poverty is a problem because there are disparities in wealth; some have more than others. If genuine equality were possible (and it is not, you may be happy to learn), then poverty would not be a problem.

Closely associated with "wealth" are "power" and "capacity." Communities (and individuals) that have lots of one, usually have lots of all three, and vice versa (those with low wealth usually have low power and low capacity). So when we want to improve the conditions of people in low income communities, poor communities, marginalized communities, we want them to have more wealth, power, and capacity.

But not too much.

It is nice (we think) to help the poor, but (in our hidden desires) we do not want them to become rich, or at least we do not want them to become as rich as us. We do not want to admit that.

Another of the emotionally laden words we use today is "democracy." We are all in favour of it, apparently.

But are we?

When we look carefully at the meaning of democracy, it turns out that we are not always in favour of it, especially if it means having to give up some of our own relative power (or wealth, or capacity). Many who say they are in favour of democracy are really in favour of a set of institutions that allow people to vote for candidates, putting into power those with the most votes, allowing them to represent the people.

This is "representational democracy." That is almost a contradiction in terms. The meaning of "democracy" is "Power to the people" (demo = people, cracy = power).

The process of voting for representatives takes power away from people and gives it to the vote winners.

When we say we want to empower a community, we mean that we want to democratize it. That does not necessarily mean we want them to have votes to choose their representative (as in the British or American political model).

It means we want the people (not just individuals) as a whole (collectively) to have power. We want to find ways for the community to have more power, wealth and capacity.

The communities most deserving of our assistance, then, are those with the least amount of power, wealth and capacity. And we must be aware of our hidden desires to keep them poor, powerless and incapable just so that we can keep giving them our charity. If we genuinely want to empower them, we must do it in such a way that they become independent of our charity, that they become self reliant, that they can sustain their own development without our help.

Our own desires for wealth and power are normal and natural. We need not be ashamed of them. We must, however, keep in mind that in our desire to help people who are poor and powerless, that we do not do so in ways that, in the long run, keep them poor and powerless -- and dependent upon us.

The training documents on this web site are aimed primarily at the community mobilizer, and emphasize methods and techniques rather than theory or ideology. To effectively use those methods, however, we must be aware of what reasoning lies behind them, what principles apply, and what long term effects they have.

Importantly, we must also constantly examine our own motives and purpose behind what we do.

Getting Stronger through Exercise:

Many times throughout this web site, you are advised to take approaches that can be seen as empowering, rather than those which promote dependency.

We sometimes use the term "charity approach" to name dependency-producing methods of giving help. Charity in itself is not bad, in so much as it is based upon generosity, a value that we strongly support.

What we mean by the "charity approach," however, is a way of helping poor and powerless people that does not help them to become self reliant. Gifts that make the receivers more dependent upon the givers, are not truly generous. They sustain poverty. They keep the givers in a position of giving.

If you give something to a person or group in need, you temporarily alleviate their need. You can be quite sure that when they are in need again, they will come back to where they received their first assistance.

This is not bad; it is human nature, or the nature of survival for any organism.

If you want that person or group to become self reliant, you need to be sure they want something in the first place. Then you must find ways for them to work or to struggle for it, so that when they need it again they will not come begging for it.

If they get something for free, they will know that it was worth (to them) every penny they spent on it.

Several times on this web site, you will see a sports analogy to explain the empowerment method. A coach does not do push ups for the athlete, nor does a coach practice putting the basketball into the hoop for the basketball player.

The person who is to get stronger and more competent has to do the work. Another analogy is found in physiotherapy.

If you hurt yourself and lose the use of your arm, you go to a physiotherapist for help. The physiotherapist may move your arm in the manner you need to move it, but only to show you where it must be exercised.

You need to practice moving it yourself, and that is a painful and uncomfortable process. You need to want to get better. The result is that you get your strength back, and no longer need the services of the physiotherapist.

If the coach does the push ups for the athlete, the athlete does not become stronger. If the physiotherapist does the exercises for the patient, the patient does not become stronger. If the community worker does the work for the community, the community remains dependent, and poverty is sustained. Weakness.

The empowerment approach to community development is one where first you determine that the community wants something (as discovered in a brainstorming session) and then shows the community members how to get it. The process of their getting it is the exercise (struggle) that strengthens them.

Why Choose a Community to Empower?

If the purpose of community mobilization is to increase its power, wealth and capacity, why would you choose to mobilize one community and not another?

The world is not a fair place. There is inequality. There is strife. There is inhumanity towards mankind, by humans. Life is not fair. We need some purpose in life. Trying to set right the wrongs of the world; trying to help poor people to become independent and escape from their poverty, are among such purposes.

Simply trying to become rich ourselves is the main purpose of some people, but it is a very shallow and unfulfilling purpose (the richer that people get, the more wealth they want; there is no satisfaction). There is no evidence, or even hope, that the world will become fair, that poverty will be eliminated. Yet the striving for it is a purpose that has its own rewards.

So we could spend our energy in trying to mobilize and empower a rich or relatively wealthy community, but that has less purpose than trying to help a poor community become stronger. The methods that are explained in this web site can be applied to rich or poor communities.

Choosing to work with a poor community can be a way of putting more purpose in your life. Choosing a community simply because it is the one you were born in is perhaps equally valid, but less purposeful.

The documents on this web site are designed mainly to be applied to low income, poor capacity, poorly empowered communities. Writing them has purpose; no money is earned in putting them here on the internet.

It is an element (regiment? ammunition?) in the war against poverty.

Some people like to quote: "Charity should begin at home." They often say this to justify raising money to give out handouts to poor people in their home communities (which does not end their poverty, as we know). Unfortunately, such people often believe that it should not only start at home; it should also end there. What a short sighted and selfish notion.

The whole world has human beings in it. We are all related. We are one big human family. The people far way in isolated poor communities are our brothers and sisters. If we can help them, we have purpose in life.

If we help them, we should concentrate on helping them to become independent of our charity, able to help themselves in the future. If we have a choice in which community to apply our skills as mobilizers, it is more meaningful (and has greater global effect) to choose the lowest income communities, those with less power and capacity.

Empowerment as a Social Process:

In several places on this site, we point out that poverty is a social problem, and is contrasted with the individual problem of lack of cash or other resources.

We must distinguish between the social level and the individual level, in our analysis, in our observations, and in our interventions. A community is a social organization, and is not an individual. It is far more than a mere collection of individuals.

It is an entity, sometimes described as "superorganic," that transcends the individuals that compose it at any one time. It is easy to see and interact with an individual. A "community," in contrast, is a scientific model, like an atom or a solar system, which can be seen at most only partly at any one time, but cannot be seen as a whole.

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The story of the Seven Blind Men and an Elephant.

The Seven Blind Men and the Elephant

Seven blind men in the village were friends and spent their days discussing things about the world. One day the topic of "elephant" came up. None had ever "seen" and elephant, so they asked to be taken to the elephant to find out what it was. One touched the side, another the tail, another the trunk, another the ears, another the legs, and so on. After their tour they got together to discuss what they had "seen."

"Oh, an elephant is just like a wall," said one (who had touched its side). "No, it is like a rope," said another. "You are both wrong," said the third, "it is like a column holding up a roof." "It is like a python carcass," said the fourth. "It is like a chapati (roti)," said the one who had felt its ears. And on and on they argued.

The story is used to illustrate many principles. None of us see it the same way, and it is far more than what any one of us can experience at any one time.

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A community does not behave like an individual. We sometimes anthropomorphise a community (think of it and talk about it as if it is a human being) but it is more like a social amoeba than like an individual human.

We can make individuals stronger (physically, psychologically) and we can make communities stronger (capacity, wealth, power); these are not the same. In our work as mobilizers, we must be careful to avoid making predictions and assumptions about communities as if a community is an individual, thinking, human being.

It is easy, but wrong, for us to slip into that kind of thinking.

While you, as a mobilizer, can see individuals, can work with individuals, your target is the community, a social organization, which you can not see in its totality, and with which you must work indirectly. To be successful then, in empowering the community, it is necessary for you to understand the nature of social organizations, of the social level, of society.

It is also necessary for you to know something about the relationship between an individual, or individuals, and community, and society. While this web site tries to minimize theory and ideology, and tries to emphasize practical guidelines, methods and techniques, it encourages you to learn about the science of sociology, the nature of community as a social organization, and sociological perspectives, in order to do your work more effectively.

Remember, however, that sociology can not be very precise and very predictive as, say, is chemistry or astronomy, because the factors that affect social change are too many. It is made more difficult because as social organization, such as a community or an NGO, is a construct, a model, that you can not see directly.

Nevertheless, you need to set yourself a career goal of learning more about the social perspective, and to develop skills in understanding the social elements that are revealed by the indicators you can see, including the behaviour of individuals, social and economic statistics, some events, and demographic data.

To help you in this, there are two modules which identify sixteen elements of empowerment. One is focused mainly on capacity development of an organization (such as an NGO or CBO), and the other is focused mainly on measuring increases (or decreases) in the capacity of a community.

These sixteen elements, many of which also can not be seen except through characteristics of individuals, will help you to carefully and in detail look at the empowerment process as a social process.

Why Participation?

Empowering a community is not something that you can do to that community. Because the process of empowerment, or capacity development, is a social process, it is something that the community itself must undergo. Even members of a community, as individuals, can not develop their community, it is a growth process of the community as a whole, internally, as an organism (super organism or social organism).

Trying to force growth, trying to force social change, is called social engineering, and it does have its effects, but usually effects that are far from what you want.

Our method is to stimulate the community to take action. We often refer to that action as a "project." By doing a project, the community will become more empowered, develop more capacity. The action it takes is its exercise to become stronger.

We noted above that the people must struggle in order to become stronger. The basic method of a community mobilizer is to first determine what the community as a whole wants, then guide it in struggling to achieve it.

An outsider can not decide what the community wants. The community members have to agree on what they all want most. That is the first of several reasons why they need to participate in decision making; that participation is needed first to determine what they want most.

The brainstorm session is one of several techniques taught on this site that helps you to draw out of them their priorities. When done correctly it is a process that determines a communal choice, not the choice of a few people, or of a dominant faction.

After that is the decision of strategy, or what path to follow in order to reach the priority goal. Again, there are different ways to choose a strategy, but the more it represents the will of the community members as a whole, the more valid it is.

Their participation is vital for success.

Whatever the project, it will have inputs and outputs. Inputs are the resources put into the project.

An output is an objective when it is realized. While some of the inputs can come from outside donors, including the government, but the community itself, its members should make some sacrifices too.

As well as participation in decision making, we suggest that they also make contributions of resources, as inputs.

Monitoring is an essential, but often overlooked, element of any project. The community should also participate in monitoring the project.

Members should not leave it only to the outsiders -- donors or implementors -- to see if it is going as planned.

In the course of carrying out the project, community members may identify some skills that they lack. These could be in accounting, in reporting, or in technical skills.

If you are able to help them obtain training in such skills, we recommend that the training is participatory also. That people learn best by "doing" rather than listening to lectures or watching presentations.

Participatory approaches are recommended throughout the empowerment process. Participation contributes to strength.

National Development:

The nineteen fifties and sixties (and later) saw the end of colonial period for many new countries. Hope was high that it would also mean the end of poverty as countries became more self reliant and stronger.

The reality was very different, and discouragement replaced optimism as poverty and the number of poor people grew. There are many historical causes for this, neo colonialism, multi national corporations each stronger and wealthier than whole countries, globalization of corporate culture, lack of sophistication and knowledge by leaders, and on and on.

Everyone has her or his own favourite theories.

In Factors of Poverty, we distinguish between (1) historical causes and (2) factors that contribute to the problem remaining. This has a very practical purpose. We can not go back into history and change events.

We can see current factors, and have some influence, however small, on them. The training on the web site is aimed primarily at the community mobilizer (and her or his manager, planner, programmer and administrator).

In the gender module, we cite the slogan, "Think globally, act locally." This applies here, too.

How can we contribute to a strong, self reliant, independent nation? If that country has strong, self reliant, capable communities, then it will become stronger.

You, as a mobilizer, can not (through your work) directly change the national characteristics of a country, but you can contribute to one or more community becoming stronger. Also, by teaching these methods and techniques to others, you can contribute indirectly to other communities becoming stronger.

You may be able, too, to influence the legislature and ministry directives and regulations in ways that will contribute to an environment that promotes and supports strong self reliant communities. As more communities become stronger, the country benefits.

Joseph Marie de Maistre wrote, "Toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle merite" (Every country has the government it deserves) Lettres et Opuscules Inedits (vol. I, letter 53), sometimes incorrectly attributed to the second American president, Thomas Jefferson. If you work towards getting the society you want, you will contribute to getting the government you deserve.

National development will not come through wishful thinking or by bar room debate. It comes as a result of hundreds of thousands of small, steady, changes based upon hard work of many people with vision.

You can be among them, and this web site gives you the tools with which to engage in that hard work.

Find the Best and Enhance It:

A positive attitude with optimism and the willingness to keep trying are not mere luxuries in this work. They are necessities.

No person, no community, no society, is perfect. We all make mistakes. If you spend any time and energy on criticizing, you will emphasize the fault you criticize, and hinder its correction.

You will meet people who promise and fail, people who do not carry out their side of an agreement, people who lie and cheat, people who are inept, inefficient and inaccurate, people who are dishonest and misleading. From the time you were born, no one promised you that life would be fair. That is just the way it is.

To succeed at this kind of work, you need a positive attitude, and you need to accept that failures are inevitable, and be willing to, "Keep on keepin' on," even after failures. To get the best out of people, you need to see but not mention their weaknesses and failures, you need to recognize their strengths and achievements, and you need to let them know you expect their best.

Build on strengths, not on weaknesses.

Conclusion:

Why help communities to become stronger? The world will be a better place; poverty will be reduced; working towards this is a meaningful endeavour. What is the empowerment method? Charity (giving things for free) weakens communities.

Communities will become stronger when they decide what they want, and work (exercise) to obtain it. What communities should you choose to assist in becoming more self reliant?

Choose those in most need, the poorest, the ones with least capacity, the ones with the least power. Why is poverty and development not merely applicable to individuals? Poverty is a social problem and requires social solutions.

Development is not possible unless it affects whole communities. Why should community members participate in development?.Without their participation, there would be no development, and any improvements will not be sustained.

Why not work towards national development? As communities become stronger, they contribute to genuine national development. You as a mobilizer can practically work at helping communities become stronger, whereas work with nations directly is less practicable.

What about all the disappointments, dishonest people, and cheating individuals?. A positive approach is a requirement for community work; accept failures and go on beyond them; accept that we all make mistakes so avoid criticism and build on strengths.

Your work is honourable and valuable, even if unsung.