Community Development

This is just a reflection on some of my work at Lynedoch from my Learning for Sustainable Community Engagement course at Lynedoch Primary school. The experience I have had at Lynedoch has been humbling, rewarding, challenging and emotional.

The Development Context
I have learned that development is a process and you can’t rush that process. Grant's analogy of a flower opening organically puts it well. You can’t open the flower yourself or then it dies. In the development context you must always allow things to work organically while considering factors and dynamics of a community. If you create space for growth and hope, within a community, then levels of ignorance decrease. I have grown as a community member because I have listened to my classmates and tried to really process their opinions. I have remained open-minded and continue to try to let things work out as they will. I always try to make time to reflect because this is a very important step in my development as well.

Relationship Building
Relationships are essential in the community development context and I have understood their importance more and more as the class has progressed. My relationships with my small group are important because everyone should feel comfortable enough to be honest and hold each other accountable for our work in the classroom. When there have been small problems we have talked them through and seen where the other person was coming from. I have learned how important it is to not be lazy in my relationships with the kids and my group because this is holding me and the people around me back from learning more. I am sometimes physically or emotionally drained when I come to or leave class, but try to remember while at Lynedoch I must stay energized so that people can work better with me. It is better to under promise and over deliver than it is to make big promises to people and not keep them (learned this from Grant). I have to remember that I made a promise to my class to be attentive and I also have to keep my promise to complete the designs for the playground in a timely fashion.

Reciprocity and Enabling Empowerment
I have not always been a good listener and I think that it is really important when it comes to enabling empowerment. You have to be able to give people a chance to share their opinions and you have to listen so you can consider how they may be helpful in the community. This means that you must give up some of your power and privilege of decision making so everyone has a say. You are giving up a bit of control and trusting the people in the community that you have made relationships with. I like that the educators are always reminding students that they have a choice and I have seen the students think creatively when they remember that. Recently we taught the kids about their rights and I think it is important for them to know that even as children they have rights. This connects again to the empowerment because when children know they have choices and rights they will be empowered.

Poverties
It is hard to completely understand the poverty that these children live in on multiple levels, because to really understand poverty you have to feel poverty. That is perhaps why Ghandi said “Poverty is the worse form of violence.” You can sometimes only do so much for an impoverished person, especially if the poverty is family poverty or individual poverty. To separate poverty up a bit has been helpful for me, because I think that many people live in poverty in this world but it is on many different levels. It is helpful for me to connect poverty to the Bio Ecological System because you can better find on what level someone is experiencing poverty. These kids may be getting the essential things they need to survive but because their social environment is lacking they are still impoverished. I am trying to remember that poverty can’t be addressed alone, it has to be eradicated.

Creating New Knowledge Spaces through Community Engagement
A new knowledge space was created for me from the first day at Lynedoch. I was already looking at things differently after the first class. Things are so hierarchical in the US sometimes and thinking about working on the same level of everyone in a community is a new way of thinking. We have to work collaboratively not only with our group, but with our educators and with the students. That is why we have to understand that things are always changing and be open to letting them flow. IN a new knowledge space you have to be able to adapt because you are in a community learning about how things function for the people in it. This class has created learning opportunities in incredible ways for me.


Good Leader within the Community Development Context
I believe to start with the idea that “people are more important than the process” (Grant Demas) in the community development context is best because you are aware that you must create a space to build relationships first thing. You cannot position yourself higher than the people you are working with, but rather place yourself beside them so that you can understand them. This connects to the round table idea, where people can all sit in a circle at one level and see each other equally. The good leaders in our history have been people that went in and worked with a community, rather than for (Christ, Mother Theresa, and Nelson Mandela). Because you are working with people, you must be able to be flexible and adjust to the dynamics of people and processes. It must stay an organic process as much as possible.
If you don’t have a passion to work in community development you will not be able to place yourself correctly with the people in the community and so that is a necessary quality. You must love what you do because “the opposite of love is laziness” (Grant Demas). If you see everyone as an equal and love on them, they will learn from you, as a leader, how they should treat others. You have to consider where persons have come from and the dynamic of the group as a whole. This must be done with patience so no one gets frustrated in the process of working. There also has to be respect which comes from loving people properly. You have to respect and love the people you make relationships with so that you can challenge and support one another, no matter who is on what level. Lastly, don’t forget to take time to reflect on what you are learning about a community and the people you are creating relationships with.