Community Development Approaches, Activities, and Issues

Abstract

By recognizing the increasing focus on community development projects and programs, this chapter discusses the concept and changing nature of communities and various agents (people and communities, faith-based organizations and charities, government and nongovernment organization, corporates and philanthropies/foundations) engaged in and approaches used for community development activities. Further, in a summary form, the chapter looks at important strategies for and a range of community development activities. Finally, it points out some of the important challenges such as enhancing participation, dealing with top-down approaches, a lack of consultation, incongruence between needs and programs, low uptake of or dependency on services, a lack of coordination, elite capture, and reaching out to rural and remote areas in community development work with a hope that these challenges can be proactively overcome to sustain community development activities.

A District Level Analysis of the Status of Financial Inclusion in Assam, India: Implications for Social Development Policies and Programmes

“…Furthermore, increasing access to micro, small and medium-sized loans can lead to more employment opportunities, higher income and financial inclusion. More developmental activities focusing on all dimensions of social development (Midgley, 2014; Pawar, 2014) in the least developed districts are needed to facilitate further financial inclusion.…”

The Impact and Implications of COVID-19: An Australian Perspective

“…Policy responses may need to prioritise the needs of vulnerable population groups that have been disproportionately affected by physical distancing measures and may struggle to recover from the sociocultural, health, educational, economic and digital disadvantage that the pandemic has exacerbated. Involving all population groups in policy planning is especially important from a social development perspective (see Midgley, 1995, 2014; Midgley & Pawar, 2017; Pawar, 2014).…”

The Global Impact of and Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…The impact of coronavirus all over the world has proved that without valuing human beings and their health, economic development is not possible. Many dimensions of development (Midgley, 2014; Pawar, 2014) and social determinants of health need to be equally attended to, including the dimension of economic development, not economic development alone. Economic development without valuing human beings is meaningless.…”