New & Evolving Ideas

A Synthesis of the Discussion
Edited by,
Dr. Alison Mathie, PhD and Gord Cunningham, MA
Coady International Institute, St. Francis Xavier University

Introduction

Participants at the Roundtable on Assets, Livelihoods and Governance in New York on April 23, 2002 consisted of three university-based centres for community-based development (two US and one Canadian), two large donor organizations (one, an arm of the UK government, and the other a private US foundation) and a private US-based Institute. The following is a brief synthesis of: the development approaches of the participating organizations, the complementarities between the various organizations and approaches; and the potential for collaboration which emerged from the discussion. A detailed transcript of the proceedings is available from the Coady International Institute.

The Development Approaches of Participating Organizations

Synergos Institute

The Synergos Institute is a New York based non-governmental organization promoting the development of: community foundations; leaders with skills to bridge social, political, economic and ethic divides; and global philanthropy through peer to peer learning, in nine countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

The underlying tenet of the Institute is that "everywhere in the world, families, and individuals would like communities to be good places to live and work". The Institute works in partnership with organizations with which it has shared values. "We put our mission statement and their mission statement on the table and we find a place where we overlap and we form a long term relationship". The Institute sees itself working through relationships and not projects.

The overall focus of the Institute is on building human capital to create and strengthen community capital. Community capital is defined as the human, institutional, social and financial capital in a community. A particular focus of the Institute is on the building of institutional capital at the community level - largely through the development of community foundations and leadership that can build and bridge all forms of community capital.

The Asset Building and Community Development Program, Ford Foundation

The Ford Foundation is one of the largest and best known foundations in the world.

Within the Foundation's Asset Building and Community Development Program there are now two sections - the Economic Development and Community Development units. The underlying philosophy of the ABCDP is that in order to raise long-term income levels of people the asset base from which they are operating must be understood and developed.

The asset base includes:

1. individual skills and assets - i.e., focus on workforce skills, education, health;
2. financial assets - i.e., housing, access to financial services;
3. social capital - i.e., building of relationships of trust and reciprocity;
4. natural capital - i.e., access to natural resource assets, environmental services.

There is an overall focus on creating the enabling conditions for asset-building, for example, land tenure or access to natural resources or financial markets. This can mean efforts to change legislation (i.e., people's access to forests in India), or finding points of leverage in financial markets (i.e., making access to housing loans for low income people possible) or building the capacity of people to participate in global processes (i.e., changing the openness or transparency of these processes so there is a space for community participation).

The British Department for International Development (DFID)

DFID is a bi-lateral, cabinet-level, development agency tied philosophically to the World Bank's Millenium Development Goals. DFID has a twelve-year strategy paper for each goal laying out how the goal will be achieved.

The Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA) is used by some departments within DFID and not by others. The Sustainable Livelihoods Support Office was set up to support the application of the sustainable livelihoods approach inside and outside DFID.

The SLA is a framework for viewing livelihoods, assets and activities. It is not a rigid framework. The SLA recognizes five main capital assets: human social, natural, physical and financial.

The SLA tries to establish how the policy and institutional environment influences people's access to, or their ability to transfer, assets and how it influences the vulnerability context of households and communities. It tries to "separate the contexts which can be controlled from those which are less malleable to intervention."

The SLA operates from several principles:

1. people-centred (driven) approach to development;
2. building on strengths not deficiencies;
3. developing macro-micro linkages;
4. thinking holistically yet acting sectorally;
5. stressing environmental, economic, social and institutional sustainability.

The Center for Community-based Development - Clark University

The Center for Community-based Development is part of the Department for International Development at Clark University. Clark University has been one of the original developers of 'Participatory Rural Appraisal' a development approach influenced by the work of Gordon Conway and Robert Chambers.

The Center for Community-based Development does not explicitly use an asset-building or asset-based approach. The Center sees the identification and mobilization of community assets as an essential method of dealing with the difficult problems facing communities in the global South.

The Center has an underlying belief that communities have enormous knowledge, information and experience with their particular environments, livelihood systems or cultural contexts. However many communities need help in organizing and mobilizing these internal assets. Thus the Center places great importance in capacity building and conflict mediation.

The Center recognizes the importance of "community driven" development: "If a community develops its own information system in systematic ways, and if a community can mobilize its own resources in systematic ways, then that is the beginning of dealing with external agencies on the community's own terms. The assets the external agencies may make available become assets that compliment the assets of the local community".

The Asset based Community Development Institute

The ABCD Institute is part of the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. The Institute sees itself as "militantly local" thus its work is focused mainly at the neighborhood or community level.

The overall focus of the Institute is in "building citizen power" (social, economic and political). The ABCD Institute has been a leader in critiquing the needs-based approach to development, which it concludes, "disempowers communities".

The Institute believes that even the poorest communities have assets. It sees this asset base consisting of:

1. the skills and capacities of individuals;
2. the assets of local, informal, voluntary associations;
3. the resources of local institutions (public, private and non-profit);
4. the community's physical resources (including environmental and natural resources);
5. assets of the local economy (such as the savings/purchasing power of citizens, businesses and institutions).

Understanding the distinction between associations and institutions is seen by the ABCD Institute as critical to promoting citizen-driven development. In the Institute's view it is associations and not institutions that must be seated at the community development table. Institutions can play important supporting roles but when they displace citizen's organizations at the table, community-driven development will not occur. The Institute further believes that mobilized associations can be powerful forces for change.

There has been a growing recognition that being militantly local is necessary but not sufficient. The Institute sees the need to bring the lessons and voices of local community building to national and international policy levels.

For this reason the ABCD Institute is now working increasingly with 'gappers'; people who live in the gap between institutions and communities. These individuals work for institutions but their practice, understanding and spirit is in the community.

The Coady International Institute

The Coady International Institute is both an educational institution and a direct technical assistance provider for development organizations and practitioners in the global South.

A fundamental belief of the Institute is that community development is an endogenous process. It must, by definition, be citizen driven.

The Institute is beginning to work with a handful of NGOs that are willing to critically examine their own relationships to community groups in terms of who is driving the development process. These organizations are learning for themselves how to "lead by stepping back".

The Coady Institute emphasizes the importance of:

1. strengths-based tools such as Appreciative Inquiry;
2. the associational base of communities, (social capital) where community driven development is initiated, where bonding and bridging activities mobilize assets and lever external resources on the community's own terms;
3. participatory approaches for helping engage communities in community building efforts;
4. community economic development initiatives that place priority on assembling collective will;
5. efforts to strengthen civil society in the context of the decentralization of governments.

Complementarities between these Approaches to Development

As Bruce Schearer pointed out early in the Roundtable discussion "We are all struggling for healthy communities, not solutions to problems". Even though some organizations work primarily at the local level, while others put more emphasis on changing institutional and policy environments, all six organizations seemed to share some philosophical ground:

They all seemed to:

1. be uncomfortable with the needs-based approach to community development;
2. see themselves as helping people to move from being "clients to citizens";
3. be involved in strengthening and creating new forms of agency;
4. recognize the importance of acknowledging, strengthening, and sustaining the full range of community assets.

Further, they seem to have many of the same questions around agency at the community level:

1. how do we as actors develop or stimulate the real agency of change in communities - a process where citizens have ownership over the community development process?;
2. how do we assist in building inclusive communities that offer a series of invitations and opportunities where everyone can contribute?;
3. how can we shift the way institutions relate to communities - from driver of the development process to catalyst, facilitator or convener?,
4. how can communities best identify and mobilize their own assets?;
5. what is the relationship between social capital and community economic development?

Similarly the organizations seem to share many of the same questions around agency at the donor and government policy levels:

1. how can donors fund sensitively?
2. how can an approach that helps people in communities move from being clients to citizens be scaled up, for example through local government, to influence policy?
3. can the scaling up of such an approach lead to a redefinition of rights and entitlements?

Discussion and debate

Discussions focused on:

• the issue of power differentials in communities and how these are addressed;
• roles, processes, ownership and agency in community development;
• the importance of understanding social, economic, cultural and ethnic structure;
• community-generated information and its potential to elicit greater institutional accountability;
• entitlements, responsibilities and opportunities of citizenship and the changing roles of government, market and civil society given government down-sizing;
• leadership;
• challenges of scaling up in contexts of dysfunctional political structures and the role of social capital in such contexts;
• the relationship between social capital and economic development;
• shifting from mobilizing against, to mobilizing for;
• how external institutions shift from controller to catalyst;
• Funding projects sensitively;
• Creative ways to resource community development: diaspora money, volunteer contributions of professional services, community foundations, local philanthropy

Potential areas of collaboration

The potential areas of collaboration identified could perhaps be divided into two main types: 1) a series of specific tasks and, 2) an ongoing network of people and organizations that share this approach.

A number of suggestions were made as to how the complementarities between the organizations can be channeled into effective action:

1. Hold other similar convenings. There was a feeling that this group should be enlarged to include: leaders and voices from the communities we are talking about; individuals such as Michael Sherraden, Anthony Bebbington, John Gaventa, Michael Edwards, Robertson Work (UNDP), David L. Brown, CARE Atlanta; and other organizations such the Community Driven Development Group (World Bank), some of the Rome based agencies (FAO, IFPRI etc.), Action Aid, and others. One specific suggestion for a venue was a Coady Learning and Innovation Institute on 'citizen-driven development'.
2. A scan of who is using the rhetoric of 'asset-building or asset-based community development' and/or 'community-driven development' and what is actually happening on the ground.
3. A book that identifies and describes international experiences with citizen-driven development, including analysis as to why citizen-driven development was taking place.

   One suggestion was to use email contact and another (expanded) roundtable to establish the initial filters to identify stories for the book. Suggestions for initial filters include:

   1. the activity is shaped and driven by local citizens (Are citizens at the core of the process? Do they exercise real citizen influence and power?)
   2. they start with local assets and resources
   3. it results in a stronger community - there are tangible results
4. Action research with partners who have made the shift from drivers of the community development process to facilitators of citizen driven development. The book would document and analyze the processes used and results achieved. The book could use a collaborative process for documentation and analysis - i.e., a "writeshop" format.
5. There is a need to critically examine the relationship between social capital and economic development. Even a resource list of who is working on this worldwide would be helpful.
6. A publication that identifies ways in which donors can provide sensitive funding for asset-based/asset-building community processes.
7. A study on how to strengthen the capacity of local institutions to influence national policy. This might provide recommendations for policies at the municipal, regional and national levels that invest in and strengthen local communities.

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