(developed for another class, but relevant here)

There are some design principles that can help you organize your thinking about community development, help figure out how to think about community agency and members of the community treated with respect and dignity who are partners in their own development:

1. Grassroots participation. From the bottom up. We can design the greatest project in the world, but if it doesn’t meet the needs of its intended beneficiaries, we may need to revisit the definition of greatness. Sound development begins by making partners of the people we work with, understanding their living situations, the obstacles they face, listening to their stories and problems, enlightening them to some of the possibilities that exist, and working with them to identify needs, set goals and make plans to achieve them. Easier said than done, but we’ve discussed for instance how a city council could be organized in a way that expanded participation.
2. Sustainability. In the big picture, sustainable development refers to people meeting their needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. When we use resources up faster than they are being generated, development is unsustainable. The globalization model is unsustainable in its current state, undergirded by fossil fuel consumption and industrial processes that generate wealth but also generate volumes of waste that the planet can’t absorb. We’re essentially fouling our nest, ask someone who lives and breathes in Mexico City. So sustainable development has an environmental component–not using up resources faster than they’re produced (what kinds of data would indicate what a community’s carbon footprint might be?). But it also must be sustainable culturally–people have to accept it–and economically (there have to be opportunities that people will take advantage of). For instance, I used to pilfer iron-enriched vitamins from the Peace Corps office for the pregnant women in the village where I was stationed. Is this sustainable? Could it continue in my absence, or in the absence of outside support? If a town has a great mayor, and she retires, and her successor is a preening slacker, well, it wasn’t sustainable development. Now that doesn’t mean that outside help is not permissible–it just means that it shouldn’t create dependencies that may some day be removed. Or at the least, insulate a community to the extent possible from external forces (resilience).
3. Collective action. There is greater transformatory potential when people act together, when they interact, than when they are ‘atomized,’ isolated in their homes and households. Think of the suburbanization movement in post WWII U.S. Families moved out of cities. Technologies were to make women’s lives ‘easier,’ to liberate them. But the suburban woman was isolated more than liberated. Women’s movements for greater equality have happened when people organize collectively, not when they are divided and acting as individuals.
4. Flexibility. Projects and initiatives that have cookie cutter recipes are likely doomed to failure. What works in one community may not work elsewhere in the same way, or may at the least have to be tweaked. Development must be able to respond to change. Remember that development occurs as all these other social processes are happening, and can affect anything we might be trying to do deliberately (in other words, trying to anticipate unintended consequences is the province of the wise). Often times it is these unintended consequences of development that make it into history books, despite our best efforts. Flexibility allows for learning and adaptation.
5. Scalability. The idea here is that you should start small, build on successes and learn from failures (obviously related to flexibility). Pilot studies are often developed to help projects learn and plan more effectively. Once you have something, you can try to apply it somewhere else, to another population, on a larger scale, and see what happens. Take a giant dam projects to produce hydropower, irrigation, etc. They relocate anyone living in the flooded valley. People’s ancestors might be buried there, the land is sacred, not a piece of property to simply be bought, sold, or flooded. When a project displaces people from the place where they are masters of their environment. The reservoirs’ lives often become shortened by deforestation and siltation along the hillsides, the electricity produced creates problems for those not used to the expenses of city life (in agrarian countries), irrigated agriculture may pose problems for the soil (e.g., in Pakistan irrigation has brought salts to the surface and the salinization of the soil has rendered some areas with lots of irrigation potential practically uncultivable). Start small. If it’s a giant failure, you’ll lose less. Scalability allows for learning and adjusting as you go.
6. Social capital and local knowledge. We know what capital is–usually money, that can be used to produce something, to invest, to generate wealth, etc. Land, labor and capital are the factors that underlie commodity production. Human capital implies the skills and expertise of individuals–we often think of job skills. A college education, training in a trade, management experience, things that make us more employable in the job market. Social capital is this same idea, but applied at a higher social level, such as the community. Communities have all kinds of existing resources that could and do help them address problems, churches provide food and shelter. Food banks provide boxes for the food insecure. Organizations do food drives, or hygiene drives. Social capital is essential for investment in the community. Women often have traditional ways in which they organize in the third world. Every community has a network of social capital, and while not readily accessible to all, it does provide resources that can lead to a job, a loan, a box of emergency food, etc. Local knowledge refers to what people know–culturally, technically, etc.–especially as it might be useful and integrated into project design. Locals can have considerable knowledge of a community, yet often times we discount or devalue their knowledge and local wisdom, seeking to replace it with technical solutions. 
7. Leverage. We all know what leverage is–it can help us gain the upper hand in a negotiation, for instance. From a physics point of view, leverage increase our power to do something, for instance a lead pipe on the end of a tire iron could help loosen a rusted lug nut. Some projects or initiatives can serve multiple functions. For instance, an unoccupied building converted into a community center. Leverage can mean using resources or skills as a vehicle to reach other goals. Imagine a network of retirees who can be organized to provide tax assistance to people. EOU sports teams do community service, for instance raking leaves in the Fall for elderly residents (also social capital). At EOU I work on a project called Haven from Hunger. One of the projects we have worked on is a cookbook, using a limited number of low cost ingredients mentioned by survey respondents at food banks as most useful. How to get the recipes? We’re developing ways to test them, to ensure that the recipes in the book are not only easy to fix, but taste good. We’ve even asked a local chef in the past to help ‘jazz’ them up. But we want to go further. We want the recipe testing to be a community event, to raise awareness of the problem of hunger in La Grande, and to bring people together and help erase the stigma of seeking help. In the end, the cookbook is almost a side benefit–what really counts is the building of community, the awareness-raising, students learning how to do bottom-up development work and develop systematic methods for achieving an aim. Leverage.
8. Appropriate technology embodies many of the principles discussed here. It’s sustainable ecologically (e.g., a diesel-powered grain mill versus a hand-crank model), it builds on familiarity and local knowledge, it addresses problems expressed by the people who will be affected by any changes, it is relatively small in scale, and doesn’t rob the user of the skill involved. Think broadly here, like backyard gardens that grow food instead of pumping petrochemicals onto grass. Or composting to reduce landfill need and chemical fertilizer. Bicycle- and pedestrian-friendly streets.
9. Transparency. This implies openness. Decisions have to be made and people held accountable. This is the way democracy is supposed to work–not working very well here these days, I’m afraid. A lack of transparency tends to erode people’s trust, and can marginalize some groups, make them feel powerless. On campus several years ago there was a debate, amid budget cuts, about cutting the Gender Studies program. The social scientists thought it was grossly unjustified–the program was growing, students were enthusiastic about it, the coordinator was passionate and her students fiercely loyal. Colleges in the rest of the U.S. were expanding their gender studies offerings. So why was the program funding cut (along with Geology, Geography, and German)? The official reason given was that ‘we’ve carefully considered these cuts over the last year, and no majors were eliminated’ (just four minors). In the absence of a transparent process, there is wild speculation. Many administrators have never had a gender studies course, didn’t understand its value as an academic pursuit and recruiting tool, even though 60% of our student body on campus was female, and merely ignored bottom-up decision making and cut the people least likely to be able to mount a challenge (‘fixed term’, non-tenured faculty). The point is, in the absence of an open process for airing differences and discussing decisions–most of what emerged was canned responses to student letters expressing dismay and outrage–in the absence of transparency, we’re left to speculate and trust is difficult to maintain.
10. Transformatory potential. Important enough to repeat. Development that brings people together, that changes the structures that prevent some in the community from achieving equal opportunity and protection in the economy and under the law, can have a much broader impact than merely helping individuals in households. 

But keep in mind, there are other processes going on. Capitalism as a dynamic economic system comes to mind. Communities to not have control over many external factors. For instance, if the price of lumber drops, that could affect the viability of a local mill. Corporations, located elsewhere, will make decisions based on what’s good for the bottom line, not what reflects their longstanding commitment to a community, regardless of how shareholders feel about it. That’s not how capitalism rewards investment. A community with a more diversified economy can perhaps better withstand rapid economic change, and while not comparing to biological evolution (which deals with differential reproduction), some entities in the local economy will possess traits more likely to be selected for in a changing landscape (e.g., 

And then there is Stoecker. Some concepts/principles:

• Community development, change and values–any tension (e.g., between different groups)?
• Divergent models–top-down, elite, specialized professionals vs building local capacity to understand and define what development means, how to organize to address it
• He mentions ‘systems’ … sound familiar?
• Key concepts: capacity, local knowledge (leadership, organizers, insiders, etc.)
• Organization is the key, according to Stoecker (p. 52): ‘The organized group is the most important outcome of any community organizing process. The goal of any truly powerful community organizing process is not to just identify and mobilize leaders to win on a specific issue. It is to build and maintain the community’s power (think … agency). And that requires keeping the community organized to address each issue as it arises, and maintain a public presence through a recognized community organization.”
• Organizing models–neighborhood groups, church (faith) congregations, identity communities (meaning?), stakeholder groups with shared interests
• Diagnosis–(prescribe, implement, evaluate)
  • Needs assessment
  • SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, strengths)
  • Research prior to action (what a concept!), and the need for data (and a systematic process to collect and analyze them