Community development Higher Technician in Sociocultural and Tourist Animation

Design of community projects

The UN approved a document outlining the foundations for community development.
the document proposed the need to promote processes of improvement of living conditions
a community with:

The collaboration of public authorities

The technical assistance of professional experts
The participation of the interested population.

These approaches still seem valid for both disadvantaged countries and
the rich who do not secure decent living conditions for everyone at the same time
that face new demands and new requirements that they do not know how to respond to in a way
adequate.

Currently, it remains necessary to implement processes to improve conditions.

of the community's life, which we can define as community development processes in which the
community is the main axis.

According to Ander-Egg, a community is the group of people who inhabit a geographical space.
delimited and deliminable, whose members have a consciousness of permanence with some local symbol
and that interact with each other more intensely than in another context.

A community is not a fixed and static entity given a form and a structure because
is always in the process of becoming.

Montero defines community as a group of individuals in constant transformation and evolution.

that in their interrelation generate belonging, social identity, and self-awareness as
community.

In addition, Montero points out the following constitutive aspects of the concept of community:

Common shared aspects (needs, problems...)

A space and a time
Usual social relationships
A level of integration much more concrete than that of other collective forms of organization
social (religion)
Sense of belonging to the community
Forms of power produced within the realm of shared relationships

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DEVELOPMENT

Development: social construction. It is a product of the imagination of some and others, an imagination
It is always the result of a social, cultural, and material history.

Community development as a method of intervention that incorporates all agents that

they make up the community and establish processes of participation and articulation among the population
and the institutions. It will enable us to achieve common objectives to improve the conditions
economic, social, and cultural aspects of the communities.

The traits that characterize community development are:

It is a social action technique and requires specialized technicians.

It is aimed at those communities in a situation of sociocultural or economic underdevelopment or without
utilization of existing resources.
Educational process aimed at achieving qualitative changes in the behaviors of the population.

Community development allows for an intervention in the own environment of an integral nature and
count on the people to whom the intervention is directed.

The community, made up of territory, population, and resources in constant interaction, goes
being built with the interests and aspirations of the people who make it up.

ANALYSIS OF THE COMMUNITY STRUCTURE

Community structure: mechanisms for distributing work and responsibilities.

The analysis of these structures aims for an understanding of reality in order to change and overcome it.

Its main objective is to highlight the reality of a community, the scrutiny of its
available resources, the history of their practices and experiences and the evidence of their problems,
needs and interests. And this not only based on an external and objective observation, but also
through the participation of the members of the community itself. (Participatory diagnosis)

SWOT methodology: to understand multivariate situations that occur in communities. Strengths

and internal weaknesses. Opportunities and threats of an external nature.

The expressions community organization and community development are used

indistinctly.

In Anglo-Saxon areas, it is called community organization.

In developing countries, community development.

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Currently, there is a tendency to unify both expressions and replace them with social planning and
community organization.

Community analysis:

Structural basic (demography, economy...)

Community sector (educational, health...)
Population groups (childhood, youth...)
Cross-cutting themes or issues (Security, school failure...)

The organization is the structure given to a group of people to function in accordance with
a method and a common goal.

Any work done by an organized group must have in common:

The same objective

The same interests

The organization process begins when members of a group, interested in finding a solution
common problems, they voluntarily gather and decide to actively participate in the search for
solutions.

ORGANIZATIONAL PROCESS OF THE COMMUNITY

Members gather voluntarily and decide to actively participate in the search.

of solutions.
They plan the necessary tasks to achieve their goals and give them an appropriate order to
carry it out
They carry out tasks that they have proposed to do.
They evaluate all the tasks.

BASIC CRITERIA FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ORGANIZATION

Community organization is important because it is where we share our values.

humans and individual talents to effectively solve social and economic problems
and politicians from the community.

The basic qualities in the development of community organization are:

Common interests to most: the interests or needs for which a group comes together.
they are the ones shared by most members of the community or neighborhood.
Free and voluntary decision of organization: the decision to actively participate and take
decisions within the process must be free and voluntary.

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Majority decision-making: In this way, clashes of activities will be avoided and will
will ensure that everyone can participate in the execution of the activities.
Joint planning of all actions
Benefit the largest possible number: the alternative solutions to the problems must
benefit the maximum number of group members.
Solidarity, cooperation, and shared responsibility: the spirit of must be strengthened
cooperation, solidarity, sharing responsibilities, always acting in accordance with
group and never in a personal capacity.
Achievement of social and economic development: it must produce social and economic changes.
important, that cover the largest number of beneficiaries and achieve an improvement in the standard of living.

AUTHORS TERMINOLOGY FEATURES

ANDER-EGG COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
MARCHIONI PLANNING AND ORGANIZATION OF THE COMMUNITY
QUINTANA COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

AGENTS OF THE COMMUNITY PROCESS

For the designation to be community process agents, they must take into account the
next actions in your intervention:

a) Establish and maintain relationships with key community agents

b) Promote citizen participation in community projects and resources
c) Dynamize the planning, development, and evaluation of interventions and projects
community and citizen participation that develop among the different agents that
they configure a community or a territorial area.
Establish communication and dissemination strategies for the various projects and actions
community.
e) applications, processes, and techniques of mediation in conflict management between agents
community
f) Incorporate the gender perspective in social intervention projects
g) Intervene, support, and accompany the creation and development of associative fabric.

THE COMMUNITY TEAM AND THE COMMUNITY DYNAMIZER

Community team: group of professionals who provide technical assistance to the organization.
community using existing resources, valuing new ones and seeking other resources. It has
that can address the process from a global and integrative perspective of social aspects and
economic

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The community team is responsible for coordinating the development process. Their work
It will consist of involving professionals from different resources, services, associations, and of the
citizenship.

It must ensure that participation is real and achieves the expected effects. It takes on a
educational and pedagogical function in the sense of teaching citizens to learn to participate.

The team must be composed of individuals committed to each of the members to

achieve a high level of performance. A good team functions as a single organism. Not only
they work together, but they complement and support each other so that it seems their work is done
without effort

Ultimately, it is about performing the function of promoting and stimulating development.

community under two basic coordinates:

The planning, management, organization, and execution of the action and intervention process
community.
A community education for participation and self-organization.

The implementation of these functions will require collaboration in interdisciplinary teams.

and a dialogical, inclusive, and coordinated interrelation with the Administration and the Social Action Group
and local.

The functions of the core team must be based on two major reference factors:
The purposes
The participatory methodology

The participatory methodology indicates the three main areas of functions that the base team has.
to ensure as a whole:

1. Area of community organization: work dedicated to organizing resources of type

institutional or formal. this work is realized in the action of coordination, programming and
planning.
2. Area of community development: consists of support for existing groups and associations
for the promotion of the same purposes, in fostering the emergence of new groups and
associations of all types and in promoting participation processes.
3. Area of knowledge and study: we need knowledge of the community (problems,
needs) to carry out a global community diagnosis and individualization of
general priorities. We need to listen to the community.

PARTICIPATORY ANALYSIS OF REALITY

We need to conduct an analysis of reality. Its objective is none other than to determine whether our
the intervention is timely.
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Knowing the environment in which we work is essential for the good development of our
participation and for its effectiveness.

We must free him from prejudices, not to confuse what we feel and think with what is felt and
Think about the people around us and we must strive to distinguish objective reality from reality.
Subjective. Only with a clear idea as accurate as possible of reality can we act upon it.
to transform it.

HOW TO ANALYZE REALITY PARTICIPATIVELY?

To analyze reality, one must dedicate time and do it methodically, with methodology and
appropriate techniques.

The necessary steps to analyze reality are:

1. Description of the environment and context in which we find ourselves: complete description of the
context where we find ourselves
2. Existing social knowledge: knowing people's opinions and what their values are,
especially of the people destined for our action.
3. Analysis of the information: the collected information must be analyzed in a way that provides us
to learn about the most relevant aspects, with a coherent explanation and
identifying the elements and the causes that cause it to be that way and not another
4. Alternatives: identify the aspects we want to intervene in so that a
a certain situation changes. From this phase, ideas for our projects will arise.
5. Actions to develop: once we have selected the ideas and proposals that
We want to implement them; we will study what resources we have to carry them out.
This is the first stage to design a project.

PARTICIPATORY PLANNING

Planning involves design, always from an open, dynamic, and flexible perspective.
a community intervention process.

This planning will allow different levels of specificity depending on certain criteria or
areas:

Amplitude: global and sectoral

Temporal: long, medium, and short term
Operational scope: plan, program and project

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Deciding what we are going to do to address a need allowing the participants of a

community talk about their problems, look for ways to solve them and agree on
the solutions.

Developing it allows the exercise of rights and duties of citizenship and access to information.
real, establish agreements, work in teams, make our plan and propose solutions.

Planning is the critical point of community action. Thus:

To pretend to be the source of social dynamization processes or their structuring when they are already in place.
generated
Stable and autonomous initiatives of various types, which will come to have their own method of
operation and its specific strategy, which will ensure the continuity of the actions
undertaken.
It aims to increase and optimize existing resources in the context with a view to
population development.

Advantages of participatory planning:

Propose solutions to common problems

Working in a team
To have real information
Make the plan our own
Establish agreements

If a person believes that their particular needs are not being addressed or understood, the fact
participating in a planning process allows you to explain your particular situation, which
possibly in another way it would not be taken into account. If we are part of a community,
we have the responsibility to participate in its development

The participation of people will depend on different variables:

Aspirations, interests, and needs

The socioeconomic and cultural level
The degree of activity or passivity of individuals.
The existence of grassroots organizations
The participatory history
The level of resistance to change
The existence of community leaders.

The database management system is an integrated set of programs, procedures

and languages that provide different types of users with the means to describe and
manipulate the data stored in a database and ensure its security

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Two examples:

ProQuest Entrepreneurship serves as a bridge between theory and practice. Its content covers
from academic publications to forms
Social Services Abstracts: bibliographic coverage of current research related to
with social work, human services, and similar areas.

The steps to follow in the database design process are:

Determine the purpose of the database

Determine the necessary tables
Determine the necessary fields
Determine the relationships

SELECTION, CLASSIFICATION AND FILING OF INFORMATION

Information is an indispensable resource for strengthening and developing

society in all its aspects

All countries have begun to include in their legislation, as a way to promote access
to the information of the documents contained in the files, the right of the citizenship to the
information.

Access to these files is of dual importance

They function as essential support organs for administration.

They constitute an indispensable source for the development of research.

The document: all material records of information, irrespective of the contribution in which it is
find and the purposes for which it was created. Types:

Bibliographic material
Graphic material
Material in other formats

The materials produced by the Administration in public and private institutions. They are classified

Functions
Organic structure
Material or subject

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The application of the classification gives rise to the following set of documentary groupings.
hierarchically related to each other:

Its background or background section

Documentary series
Documentary unit composed or file
Simple documentary unit.

PARTICIPATORY DIAGNOSIS IN COMMUNITY WORK

The diagnosis constitutes the first stage within a planning process. Through it,
the reality that is of interest to transform is interpreted.

Generally, it starts when there is a need to face problems that are already beginning to
to manifest in the community.

Acquire the necessary knowledge to plan viable actions and solutions.

Acting without a diagnosis can have consequences:

Making a mistake with the selection of problems to solve

Address secondary problems and those that are not primary or urgent.
The possibility of misunderstanding the causes and relationships between the problems. And thus, getting it right.
partially in the solutions wasting work, time, and resources.
Planning and executing unfeasible actions, due to insufficient knowledge of the different
aspects of the problem.

The diagnosis should be made by a work team accompanied by the affected community.
problem. In that sense, a diagnosis must be participatory.

It is necessary to seek the broad and active participation of its members.

A participatory diagnosis allows:

Better understanding one's own reality, the problems and their causes, giving special relevance to
point of view of those who live that reality.
Select intervention areas according to common prioritization criteria
Motivate the community towards the search for viable solutions.
Raises shared solution proposals between the community and public institutions
and private

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The steps to make a true diagnosis are:

Identify the central problem.

Work plan for the diagnosis
Make the diagnosis
Communicate the results to the community

Following Juan Herrera (2007), the elements or dimensions of the community are:

DIMENSION OF THE DESCRIPTION PSYCHOSOCIAL ASPECTS

COMMUNITY
TERRITORIAL Place where people live Territorial roots
PSYCHOSOCIAL Psychological links and Interdependence,
social relationships linkage...
Sociocultural Culture, history, and experience Values, visions of the future,
shared project as a community
POLITICS Shared power for Empowerment
achieve common goals

For Felner (1983), the basic components that structure the community could be:
Natural environment
Resources
Characteristics of the population
Social systems

1. What are the characteristics that define the community?

All community work always contains a more or less explicit conception of community,
that governs the relationships between researchers or social interveners, as the case may be, and the members

of the community. The characteristics, therefore, that define the community are:
Occupation of a specific geographical area
2. Individual social relationships
3. Share advantages, benefits, objectives, needs, and problems
4. Presence of some form of organization based on the above.
5. A united and a feeling of permanence
6. Historical and Dynamic Character
Establish a specific level of integration
8. Existence of a shared culture, as well as skills and resources.
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2. What categories structure the community according to García and Guilini?

They consider that the characteristics of the concept of community can be categorized into:
1. Structural: include aspects related to the people who make up the community and
with the environment in which she exists
2. Functional: interaction between the people who make up the community, as well as with their
environment and the forms that this interaction takes
Direction of characteristics: determined by shared interests and needs.
by the members of the community.

3. What are the 5 basic and complementary components to define the community according to Alipio?
Sánchez?

It states that there are five basic and complementary components to define the community:
[Link] geographical location that allows them to compete for resources.
2. Temporal stability, minimum shared time among people.
3. Shared facilities, services, and material resources: schools, parks, markets...
they are the material basis for the provision of services.

4. Structures or social organization: cultural, economic, political... are related to the

cohesion, type of bonds that develop among people in the community
5. Psychological component: sense of individual permanence and the validation of ties with
the community.

What are the four elements that make up the community according to Marchioni?
The community is the group of people who inhabit the same territory, with bonds and interests.
common, made up of four elements:
1. Territory: a physical and social entity, not only urbanistic, where they come together and
facing contradictions, creating conflicts and social relationships. In them act the
institutions and the population. An analysis of the territory and knowledge of it is
fundamental to be able to work in any community. (geographical space, transport,
locales...)
2. Population: members of a community among whom lively interrelationships occur,
interests, common values that create a sense of belonging to it. We must
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to know those who live in it, their social, cultural and economic distribution, the
demographic characteristics and their evolution.
3. Demand: it is necessary to have knowledge of the needs of the community. All
The integral intervention depends on the dimension in which the demand is located and the time.
of demand in question.
4. Resources: the community and its members are the first and main resource as it depends on
they carry out the action. Resources are formalized into services and social benefits
Services are the means made available to the public members of the
community for collective use and benefit
The benefits are means provided to individuals or families for use.
private but that serve a social function.

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