The Promise Neighborhood Initiative and Harlem Children Zone

In any of development program or in institution building process, the role of leadership plays vital role in shaping the process and intended outcome. Under the adaptive and creative leadership of Geoffrey Canada, the Harlem Children’s Zone has been evolved as an innovative social model, in which a creative and productive space for children in their neighborhood to be developed and space to be facilitated under the guidance of critical mass of caring adult. This innovative model imbibes the core value of sustainability of development approach in itself, where involvement of external agents and actors help in designing the implementation process of the program by coordinating with the contextual reality. Geoffrey Canada believes that a comprehensive approach of development, in which he identifies ‘sound health care, intellectual and social stimulation and consistence guidance’, brings positive change in the life of children, who born and brought up in vulnerable neighborhood like Harlem.

Apart from integrated program model, Geoffrey Canada also recognizes the role of staff members and their contribution to make the model to be effectively implemented and administrative aspects of the organization to be efficiently evolved. This seems a challenging task for the leader to involve everyone in the same pace and process in designing the implementation strategy. However, involvement and regular visit of Geoffrey Canada with the staff members and centers very useful in capacity building of staff members to recognize the significance of doing and why they have been doing this project?

In fact, this kind of involvement stimulates the process and enables the staffs to understand the core value of implementing the project in broader perspective. This process of sharing and learning from each other was a useful exercise within the organization to evaluate the ongoing process and also to build capacity of the staff members, which would make effective and efficient. The organizational structure and its management of HCZ provides evidences to understand the delegation of responsibility, decentralized decision making structure and direct involvement of Senior level staffs in providing guidance and building confidence seems a core organization philosophy to evaluate output and impact of ongoing program in the working areas of organization.

Geoffrey Canada was firm believer of deepening the organization’s efforts rather than broadening the scope of implementation on the basis of ‘externally perceived needs’ and assessment. In many instances, this has been acknowledged that there is missing link of collaboration between deliverable outputs and coordination within the delegation of responsibility. However, the Harlem Children’s Zone’s mission to bring structural changes in life of children and youth by building safe and enabling environment in and around neighborhood. But, the situation could be better if the organization evolve strategic clarity about its priorities on the basis of available resources (both financial and human) and its performance measurement indicators at initial stage of program implementation. This seems challenging in the context of nonprofit organization like HCZ, because its serve to generate public value, which benefits the community at large. Both internal and external evaluation of HCZ’s programs appreciates these efforts and outcomes.

In many studies including Dobbie and Fryer Study, there are many key findings such as,

·         HCZ should introduce lottery system in its charter schools

·         High quality of schooling impact positively rather than community services

·         HCZ’s educational initiative enhance achievement level in elementary school and math in middle school

·         High per capital cost of investment is major concern

These studies have critically evaluated the organization as well as other external agents, but findings suggest HCZ for introspection and to build its data systematically. During this study, both researchers and staffs members had tough time in collecting and selecting data from the field. In fact, this is also true that working in a vulnerable situation and context, an integrative and comprehensive approach of development is required for.

The HCZ highlights multi layers of community services, which ensure involvement of parents and children since birth to college education. In fact, this is one of the important push factor for upward social mobility of those children, who born and brought up in a kind of context, where consistent supportive system is required for their cognitive and physical development. This is a fact that education is single most effective approach to end the cycle of intergeneration poverty, but this does not mean that other non-educational initiatives go in vain in long term. Both educational and non-educational initiatives need to be coordinated effectively and enabling environment assists individual to attain healthy adulthood, independent and responsible personality.

During the Presidential Campaign in 2007, Mr Obama presented an outlined of an initiative that was primarily evolved to help those families, who are in high poverty zones and to build healthy urban neighborhood. The foundation of his design of intervention was based on the core philosophy of HCZ.  In 2008, $10 million fund was developed to build The Promise Neighborhood in 20 cities in the United States and the allocation of fund was the responsibility of Department of Education. After legislative measure, the Promise Neighborhood is now a reality and the HCZ’s learning and struggle is being incorporated for enabling the community to look after and implement Promise Neighborhood Initiative in their respective community.

I agree that the HCZ’s is still in the process of shaping up its program and also in struggle to address the core issue of development at organization and field level. But, this should also recognize that the programmatic interventions and integrative approach of HCZ has positively affected the community at large. Why poor children are not able to successful in their life? Not simply because of their origin, but they don’t find any supportive mechanism in and around their surroundings to make their destination better. I completely agree that the Promise Neighborhood Initiative would create an ecosystem at community level, where a group of people able to identify the process to implement some program, which already being implemented in HCZ’s working areas.

The success of HCZ is based on time and proper coordination of leadership. 

Scope and Severity of the Rural Youth Problem in India

Youth is the period which corresponds to the transition from childhood to adulthood, marked by the onset of puberty and sexual activity and the development of adult mental process. Clearly this is a critical period for laying the foundation of an individual’s lifetime. In recent years, globalization and shifting social norms have eroded the traditional bases and defining points for youth behavior and values.

Rural youth account for around 55 percent of the world youth population. They are among the most disadvantaged of groups. Often they have limited access to educational programs that are geared to their situation and needs - not surprisingly, many rural people drop out of school at an early age. Class-work is often geared more toward academic accomplishments and to the urban areas than to learning skills useful to rural life, and preparing for adulthood. In many cases too, there is a genuine need for the young person's labor on the farm or in the home adding yet another reason why parents see little reason to keep their children in school. Rural young women have even greater difficulties than young men as they are often not given the same opportunities in education, training and involvement in rural development activities.

The prevailing situation in the context of youth development in rural areas presents a complex challenge. Rural youth, in the age group of 14-20 years, face a dilemma in dealing with contemporary society. While relevant knowledge and the ability to articulate views on various issues, is considered an essential trait for the pursuit of a healthy and productive life, a large part of the young rural population is unable to read and comprehend a written text. This gap is not limited to learning texts and books. Many young populations do not know basic facts that could save their lives. This gap needs to be filled with skill building efforts.

At the same time, youth are in the period of their lives when they begin to be heard and recognized outside their families, and they establish their identities as unique individuals. This intensifies various facets of the complex situations, which rural youth face in their daily lives. Another feature of the rural youth is their engagement with economic activities, both within and outside their natural habitat. A large number of youth, both males and females, migrate out for work and livelihood, away from their homes and villages, for a large part of year. Their life in work places is not always easy. Often they face economic and sexual exploitation. Therefore, there is a need to equip them with confidence, awareness and capabilities so that they can resist exploitation when they migrate.

As the rural youth grows up, they often become alienated from their communities. Sometimes they even become distanced from their family. There is a need to prevent this alienation and create means and opportunities for the youth to engage with their communities and families.

As future adults, rural youth need to be prepared in

·         Improving their capabilities to produce food and to conserve productive resources in the rural environment,

·         Improving their skills and abilities in carrying out income generating activities in rural areas

·         Relieving population pressure and improving nutrition and the well being of farming families and

·         Developing leadership and the ability to work well with others in group and community situations.

Their knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behavior are of vital importance in the implementation of sustainable agricultural and rural development programs.

One of the consequences of the rising population and lack of opportunities rural areas is urban drift - young people consciously decide to move to the towns in the hope of greater opportunities for employment and better education for their children. The education, the media exposure is so often urban oriented that it adds to their belief that their prospects will be better in the towns. The push of poverty in rural areas is at least as great as the pull of the bright lights. As a consequence the towns become increasingly overcrowded putting pressure on limited services.

For some, opportunities are indeed found in the urban areas, and this increases the lure of the towns for the many others who then find themselves worse off than they would have been in the rural areas. The challenge is to develop the rural areas to make them attractive to young people in terms of employment prospects, education and training opportunities, health services and social life.

The vulnerable nature of poverty is major challenge in the rural Rajasthan. Even small household events (Krishna, 2003) put the family down in the poverty. The illness of any family members in the rural household increase the financial burden and over the family and this also may be important factor to put the family in deep indebtedness. Many policy interventions and rural development programs largely focus on welfare measures rather than skill enhancement of rural people. Even the government policies related to the rural development concentrate on developing physical structures, such as road, community halls, and water harvesting system, small dams and others.

The rural youth issue and problem become complex when the caste and tribal identity of the rural youth make them to face discrimination and deprivation because of their ascribed identify. Prof Robert Chamber righty says that “the poverty line is not concerned with wealth or material possessions, nor with aspects of deprivation relating to access to water, shelter, health services, education or transport, nor with debt, dependence, isolation, migration, vulnerability, powerlessness, physical weakness or disability, high mortality or short life expectancy; nor with social disadvantage, status or self-respect, but the members of elite groups find these less threatening aspects of deprivation to measure and tackle”.

Education is powerful instrument of youth development. According to 2001 census report, there was only 61.03% population literate, while half of women population is illiterate in Rajasthan state in India. In a study (Annual Status of Education Report 2009- Rural) facilitated by an NGO “Partham” reveals the state of rural education in Rajasthan. In 18 out of 13 district of the state, the out of school children are from 10.5% to 25.6%, while 37.7% girls in the age group of 15-16, never enrolled in the school and 22.6% of boys in the same age group never enrolled in the school in the state. This age group is potential rural youth in the Rural Rajasthan. Education and schooling provide direct and indirect motives for the rural youth migration.

The identity of the youth is recognized on the basis of transition, which underlines the specific characteristics that make them a distinct demographic and social category. Youth is always treated as future citizen of the country, highly risk taking and vulnerable in nature while, the youth is also one of the marginalized communities in India. The rural areas in many states in India, youth are unable to engage in the agriculture and the unavailability of livelihood options in the villages force the rural youth to migrate towards city and town. The migration towards city is not solving their problem and they directly face many problems in the city and the city is also get overcrowding. The unavailability of job in the city also encourages them indulge in criminal and anti social activities. The recent attacks on migrant labors in Maharashtra state also accumulate the problem of migrant rural youths. However, a significant number of the rural youth population migrates to the cities with the state and neighboring state for the seasonal employment.


Migration is not a very new trend in rural areas of many states in India, as consistent droughts forced people even around 30-40 years back to migrate. However, the volume of migration seems to be increasing over the years. Lack of livelihood security within the village and increasing options outside the village have been some major reasons for the increase in migration among the rural youth in India. Apart from the migration, the rural youth unable to connect themselves with the villages and unable to involve themselves in the decision making process at village level. The rural youth are facing multi dimensional problems on the one hand, the scope of livelihood in the villages is almost negative, and the government also not able to address their issues both at policy and institutions level.

Youth Development Approaches but strengthening ecosystem a big challenge in India

The field and approach of youth development narrowly define it is generally moves around the broader perspective of development. Youth development as a field or approach is defined narrowly, which eliminates those surrounding, locality or neighborhood in which youth develop and learn. Many literatures identify different kind of approach and model for youth development, but in the field of practice, the youth development is largely identified in two types of settings, such as “activities offered by community based organization serving youth during gap periods, and add on or insertion programs in school, evenings, weekends and summers” (edited Benson and Pittman, page 293). There are three basic approaches, which are widely recognized as milestone of youth development. However, every approach is not free from its own weaknesses and strengths. 

Prevention Approaches:

This is generally believed that youth are high risk individual and they show various symptoms of problems. The preventive approach reduces risk factors and enhances the protective factors in the society. In building youth program under this approach, youth is target as risky group and they are bound to create problem in future. To prevent them from creating future problem, there is need to prevent them by enhancing their skill or competencies to cope with the stress or challenge that may result in future problems (Durlak, 1997).

In the contemporary period, the prevention approach emphasizes on building ecosystem, which effects youth day to day life and motivate them to take decision. Therefore, this approach shows that youth problem should be evaluated on the basis of multiple settings, where family, community, neighborhood, peers group, school etc. The limitation of this approach is that it defines youth in ‘what is wrong with youth rather than what is right’. The application of this approach often leads to ‘identification, labeling and stigmatizing of youth, their families and their communities’.

Resilience Approach

This approach emphasizes on developing various initiatives which enable youth to deal with the stressful situation effectively. This is also known as target oriented approach in youth development. The approach identifies disadvantage youths and foster resilience among them. In broader perspective, the approach focus on strengthening social institutions, such as family, community where disadvantage youth live and spend most of their time.  Generally, resilience develops in youth when they have healthy and effective interaction between internal and external factors or agents. The main critic of this approach is that it’s involved those youth who have minimum level of understanding about the external situation. A resilient individual is a combined effort of one’s personal characteristics and accessibility of social protective environment and support for one’s struggle.

Positive Youth Development Approach

This approach differentiates youth from ‘risk paradigm’ to ‘youth as asset’ paradigm. The significant aspect of this approach is that it recognizes ‘the existence of adversities and development challenges that may affects individual in various ways, it resist conceiving of the development process mainly as an effort to overcome deficit and risk’. In this approach, a youth is identified as active partner in the relationship with community and enable them to share one’s rights and responsibilities. The positive youth development approach is based on some basic assumptions, which as follows,

·         Helping youth achieve their full potential is the best way to prevent them from experiencing problems

·         Youth need to experience a set of supports and opportunities to succeed

·         Communities need to mobilize and build capacity to support the positive youth development of youth

·         Youth should not be viewed as problem to be fixed but as partner to be engaged and developed

These basic three youth development approach is quite prevalent in most of the youth development initiatives at macro and micro level. The failure and success of these approaches are dependent upon the framework and institutional mechanism, which inspire and involve youth in meaningful ways. At global level, since the declaration of “International Youth Year” in 1985 and 2010, a range of policies addressing the issue of youth have been formulated, implemented and evolved by multilateral agencies and governments. How far these policies and programs have been able to address the issue of youth in their respective countries, is a matter of inquiry and research. But, the basic understanding shows that youth are born and brought in family and its neighborhood, in this situation the influence of social factors play vital role in shaping the youth identity in significant ways.

In India, the First Youth Policy in India was declared in 1988 after the success of Asiad Games in Delhi in 1982. However, a comprehensive youth policy at national level was introduced in 1993. Even at the policy level, the youth development still means that a youth, who is obedient to the family members, don’t raise voice in front of elder, respects everyone and a submissive personality of youth is true Indian face of youth. The basic approach to develop youth as a web of responsible well being needs a close coordination with capabilities, livelihood security, equity and sustainability. The youth policy does not emphasis on establishing this coordination to develop youth as critical human resources to change themselves and to accelerate social change in the Indian society.

Why there is need to build synergy between community based organization at micro level and government at macro level for involving youth development as core agenda? For answering this question, this is important to recognize that working with youth requires a different kind of strategy, synergy as well as a long term approach.

Normally, a youth development program symbolizes youth as ‘delinquent’ or ‘immature’, therefore, many preventive measures, pre determined value based activities, such as teaching promoting discipline; promoting good behavior, involving educational inputs etc are incorporated in the program. The absence of strong tie between the youth development program and ‘what actually happens in the daily life of youth’ not able to produce effective results. Youth development is not an approach but a process, where identification of ‘goal and methods, ends and means’ is intertwined. 

Rural Youth missing in Youth Development Approach

Youth Development constitutes a core component of development in the context of building human resource. It is well accepted that young people constitute a rich reservoir of resources and wealth, yet, the potential contribution of youth in the development process remains untapped. What exactly the youth development? Is this a vague idea or misnomer or a specific concept?

In fact, the symbolic and constructive identity of youth is not free from the conceptual challenges both at local and global level. Generally, youth is defined in age specific indicator but this is not sufficient to analyze the youth development. In many societies, the difference between the childhood to adulthood is quite short period. As soon an individual physically grow up, one starts earning to support family. While in some societies, period of adulthood is supported by the family as long as an individual not able to build one’s career moves up in ladder of socio economic mobility. Therefore, defining youth development in specific concept needs a comprehensive understanding about the contextual reality and also requires a different kind lens to see the diversity among youth themselves.

Adulthood, the most important period of human life cycle, but this is either most neglected or not fully evolved area of concentration in policy arena. The World Bank in its report entitled “The World Development Report 2007: Development and the Next Generation” proposes a three dimensional approach, “expanding opportunities, enhancing capabilities and providing second chances in which, this have been intended that these three dimensional approach would successfully help the youth to make the smooth transition into adulthood. The report underlines the significance of youth as important human resources, and recognizes the diversity of youth population at global as well as local level.

When we examine the youth policy of many countries (Brown, Larson and Saraswathi, 2002) that shows that youth has been evolved as homogeneous group and these policies identify few areas, such as sports, HIV/AIDS, Crime Prevention, Building morality etc where youth participation to be ensured rather evolving them as a critical partner.  However, the youth policy in many European Countries because of historical tradition of youth involvement in these countries, policy towards youth development seem comprehensive and well structured. The involvement of local level community organizations in many developed countries as implementing partners provide ample space and opportunity for the youth to evolve themselves as catalyst of change at local level. But, the situation is not optimistic for the rural youth in almost every developing country, where a large number of population lives in the rural area. Even some developed countries also not able to address the needs and aspirations of those youth, who are living in marginalized urban areas.

‘There is nothing to do here on the street’, a girl child in Herlam, New York told to Dororthy Stoneman, Founder of YouthBuild, USA. The statement of girl child itself provides ample evidence that there is scarcity of youth space in their own locality. Many youth development programs do not emphasis on target oriented effort to mobilize and involve youth within their locality. However, youth development programs effectively involve schools and educational institutions to engage youth population in effective manner in certain extent, but how to engage those youths, who are not enrolled, dropped out and unemployed is quite challenging at the program and policy level.

This is also to acknowledge here that youth is not a homogeneous group. The nature of variation in the youth group depends upon many social, political, geographical, and cultural factors. Even the variations within the youth groups at urban and rural setting make the situation complex and challenging for the society. Gender identity is another dimension of diversity in youth group. Building youth policy cannot be comprehensive document, unless there is incorporation of the needs and aspirations of different youth groups identified and to be ensured an institutional arrangement to implement these policy options on the basis of the needs and aspirations of different youth groups at community level.

There is need to evolve innovative approach and effort to explore a possibility to understand the rural youth problem in India and how NGOs or local organizations can effectively evolve a youth oriented program to build youth space in rural setting. However, youth space cannot be seen in isolation but the isolated rural youth needs specific kind of program and intervention at local level to address their capacity building process through different kind of creative and innovative activities, which ensure their civic engagement and participation as core objective of program and intervention. 

Fostering Collaboration, Sociability, Social Capital and Community Governance

I asserts here that social capital is not a final output to resolve the problem of collective action in one hand, but social capital is seen as a process to build confidence and capability of everyone in the communities and to scale up in every situation. The availability of social capital is abundance in the community, but the significant aspect is that how mediating agencies (CBOs, NGOs or government agencies, Local organizations) formulate strategy to use it as an effective mechanism and tools, which enable communities to deal their urgent issues and needs collectively.

My argument here is that how social capital is formed? Does social capital grow as form of culture or structure or functional body of rule and regulation? Does social capital play limited roles between mediating agency and collective action? Why the basic tenets of social capital active among the vulnerable section of community, but not able to recognize their status at community level? This is also important point is that why social capital is seen as important for the community development in last ten or fifteen years?

I have tried to put an effort to understand the significance of social capital, whether this really helps in enabling the community to participate actively at local level? Social capital has been clearly identified and evaluated, but how far external assistance requires for strengthening the existing community organizations or building new organizations? In some cases, the gap between formal and non formal institutions negatively affects the social capital, which may be potential cause of project failure or diminishes the possibility of collective active for certain period of time.

There is a paper entitled “A Social Science Perspective on Social Capital: Social Capital and Collective Action” precisely shows that defining social capital needs multidisciplinary approach and denying the other aspects (human, physical etc) of social capital is not advisable. The economic growth and development is not simply a combination or function of capital and labor. There are many other unseen cognitive forces, such as norms, trust, relationship, engagement, institution (formal and non formal), which have always been significant elements for motivating and inspiring both individual and institutions for making and implementing economic policies. This is the dilemma of defining the social capital and its utility for promoting economic growth and democracy development.

In minimalist view, an Individual is interrelated, interconnected and also interdependent with the society, but the combination of many individuals help in formation of society. Defining social capital as ‘informal norms and cooperation between two individuals’ (Fukuyama, 2000) elaborates the instrumental value of individual, who sometime assists the process of group formation and after a period of time, the social norms, establishing rules; guiding principles of the organization develop collectively. This defines a process, which probably possible in a kind of social structure, where associational affiliation of individual as a member of trade union, club, and professional organizations etc, is important for his or her personal growth and networking. Here, this is not meant to say that the role of individual is not important for building and strengthening social capital at community level, as ‘naya neta’ (new youth leader) in Prof Anirudh’s Active Social Capital (2002) enlarges the definition of leadership, which  manifests  a new kind of individual identity emerging within the community. However, the sum up of this article is that the social capital is complex concept and derives from various means. But the meta question is how social capital is built? Why this is essential? Is theory and practice of social capital different from each other? How to evaluate and assess social capital in the development perspective?

Before going further, I would like to bring Parson’s General Theory of Action in this discussion, in which he argues that the evolution of society or it structure, is based on four systems, such as the cultural system, the social system, the personality system and behavioral organism as a system. The effective coordination and coherence between and among each of these systems help in building ‘social capital’. But, a well developed (active) social capital is not enough to address the policy issue and development problems at community level without the ‘coordination between the government and local based organization’ (Krishna, 2003). Active social capital involves both instrumental as well as cognitive elements, which evolves collective action. Krishna’s argues that institutions matters in establishing ‘link between social capital and societal performance’, capability of agents and institutions (formal and non formal) ensure ‘community development, establish communal harmony and improve people participation in democratic process’.

The study of social capital in Indian villages empirically proves at first instance that the social capital is not static in nature. However, the instrumental nature of social capital in the Indian villages are not free from the identity politics and also not clearly provide enough space for women empowerment and involvement of youth in decision making at community level. Is this a dilemma of existing social structure or is this a deep rooted believe system, which helps in maintaining the status quo in the society?  When we evaluate the social capital in the context of ‘social construction of reality’ (Berger and Luckman, 1966), in which they argues that ‘man is social product’, where the process of socialization and internalization of knowledge play important role in shaping the social structure. In this situation, the cognitive elements of social capital need to be examined deeper.

Prof Anirudh Krishna of Duke University has captured the new pattern of leadership in the Indian villages and how an individual (naya nata) matters for promoting and strengthening the collective action. The emergence of these new breed of leaders is based on many factors, but one of the important factor is that the consistent failure of the government intervention and institutions, and irregular availability of government officials in the local offices has created space for new leaders at village level. This space has been captured by those youth members, who are well connected with the political parties, political leaders and able to play a mediating role between the government officials and villagers. Again, in many ways, these young leaders are different than the traditional leadership in the village and the community. Education and exposure with many types of government offices and officials has enhanced their skills of negotiation, skill to get the work done and enable them to explore incentive for doing work.

Coordination and trust among the group of naya neta in these villages seems challenging because there is hardly any constructive youth space available in the Indian villages, where these neya neta and rural youth have to have regular interaction. Even the community based organization and NGOs address the issue of development, but miss to include these important actors in various activities. Despite of the presence of strong social capital in many villages, there is challenging situation to sustain this social capital for building collective action in future.

The interesting aspect of social capital here is that there are many villages in this study show that these villages have high social capital and high agency capacities, but these villages are not role model of development. This shows how complex is the web of development paradigm? In Indian villages, the capacity and capability of agency is important and these agencies able to facilitate the social capital for the collective action. Generally, villagers do have faith and trust to each other. They do also have knowledge accessing the quality services, but they want their skills to be enhanced in multi dimensional ways to facilitate the collective action process. In this situation, the role of mediating agencies and institutions are significant.

Prof Anirudh’s study about the active social capital precisely asserts that the Indian villages are not homogeneous and state agency and its activities try to fix the development in common parameter. Here, the role of active social capital is significant, which enable community to get advantage of maximum benefit. In many villages in this study, this has been positively correlated that the active social capital in the village able to coordinate with the mediating agencies and individual to get the work done in their village.  The study shows that educational activities in villages are positively correlated with the political activity. This does not mean that this makes villagers politically conscious to make political decision. In fact, educational infrastructure and its space in many villages is widely used by government agency and even political leaders use to organize meeting with villagers in the school premises.  Second, local elected body is responsible for the educational activities. Villages where coordination between elected members and villagers are positive, the educational activities are regularly monitored, but this coordination in many villages also unable to ensure that teachers are regularly coming and classes are being held on time. This affects the quality of education in broader level.

The case study of Watershed development and soil conservation shows that success of program depends upon the combination three strategies, such as technical, social and administrative, which play significant role in involving the villages and this combination ensured the success of the project. This is valuable lesson for the mediating agencies and outside intervention that a comprehensive understanding about the stock of available social capital can be effective tools for the development activities. In last, the discussion of social capital and its measurement are losing the importance of small elements and events, which regularly rebuilding the community and revitalizing the social capital in day to day basis. What I have observed that there are two neighboring villages in conflict to each other. Both of these villages are highly active social capital within each other, but at the time of crisis and happiness, they are together and they work together. Is this a social capital works without any mediating agency? Or is this basic need of human survival and security of human being in the community set up?

This is also a fact that there are large number of vulnerable population, who unable to share their voice in front of village council and leaders. For example, women, children and youths are almost non existences in the decision making process, even the mediating agency don’t actively involve them, but the basis ethos of social capital is preserved or practiced by these groups regularly in their respective sexual and age group. Women group show tremendous level of cooperation and trust at the time of domestic violence and communal disturbance at village level on each other. In the same ways, the youth group is best connector in any of the village. I believe that an alternative set of evaluation and assessment of social capital could be developed or evolved for building development programs and activities for promoting collective action in the present scenario.

Management, Technology and Information

Whenever we go through the different facets of communities and its development, we acknowledge that every effort to bring community together for collective action is neither great nor insignificant. In this week readings, we have drawn many lessons, but one lesson is clearly coming out from these readings that there are two theoretical aspects; one contains the idea of encouraging the technical intervention, in which, ICTs, organization, management, professional human resources are considered as important ingredients for involving and helping people in decision making. While other facet underlines the significance of learning, reflection, local knowledge, involvement, information, knowledge as a sequence of building local organization.

In reality, these two different theoretical aspects of community involvement and development are neither exclusive, but can work effectively in combination. Readings of this class covers both social and technical aspect of community involvement at organizational level and show that there are web of methodologies and directions, which enable us to ‘unlearn’ what we have learned for addressing the issue of community development in effective ways.

Community is not a well developed structure but a conglomeration of natural, social economic diversity and also diverse group of human beings, and they have their own experience, knowledge, learning and acculturation process. In the similar manner, the outsider understanding about the community is also based on his or her interaction, where he or she gets educated, worked and what he or she is intended to do? Robert Chamber has tried to capture the reality on the basis of biases, which impediment the development process. In fact, Chamber’s idea of biases is also not free from ‘stereotyped presentation’ of actors and actions. For example, rural development is not an easy area, where merely increasing the agriculture productivity would not able to solve the entire problem. The biggest challenge of rural development is generalization and mainstreaming with macro perspective. The lack of comprehensive planning, long term perspective and monitoring mechanism also make this problematic further.

 In fact, rural development demands target oriented efforts, context specific intervention and consistent capacity building and training program for both implementing agencies and stakeholders (rural people, including women and youths). Breaking stereotyped and go away from the different set of biases is quite challenging at both organizational and individual level, but not impossible. The effort of many organizations has addressed these issues effectively.

Robert Chamber coins “rural development tourism” and argues that the urban based educated professionals want to get to know and experience about the rural condition and about the rural people within the short span of visiting time in the rural areas. On the basis of this short term interaction, they are intended to develop ‘effective strategy’ for inclusive development of people. Chamber believes that development procedure and development practice is not the same concept, former is related with ‘things’ and later is related ‘people’. Chamber believes that every methodology, which encourages people participation, should be fragile in nature, so we would able to recognize and integrate the innovation and creativity of local people. He has cited many important methodologies such as PRA, RRA, ILS etc, which are still evolving and developing whenever these are practiced with the local people.

Ensuring involvement of people and their participation, there is need to be evolved a kind of organization at local level, which would create enabling environment to establish synergy with the ‘product’ and ‘people’. This coordination between both, product and people’ is significant and this allows envisioning future course of action and replication. What I believe that every organizational efforts of community development at local level have its own valid points, because nature of developmental issues are quite complex and there is no black and white kind of solution available. I agree that an effective coordination between these organizational efforts is possible, when local people recognize the challenges and build their own network at local level.

In many successful case studies, this has been acknowledged that vertical nature of organization at local level have played vital role in bringing the community together and also enabled the community to build effective communication channel for better result. In vertical organization, the scope of learning and reflection is high and encourage every member to share themselves. The philosophy of participation and its value are core issue, and the local organization helps in creating the enabling environment to ensure participation of everyone. Again, the nature of participation and its social dynamics depend upon deepening the value system of local organization, because ensuring the participation of everyone at local level is complex issue. This can be resolved if the organization recognizes the different layers of ‘local knowledge’, considering this for building the development planning and program.

The local organization or any kind of organization is not a single entity and even in the successful cases (Gal Oya, NDDB, SANASA, Grameen), this has been recognized that the term of reference of these organizations not predefined and preplanned, but managerial functioning of the organization has been both evolved and devolved through a process of local participation, building people capacity and creating right kind of environment to ensure active participation for collective action and most important was the coordination between local leaders with the people. Building human resources for the local organization is an easy task. A different range of training programs and exposure with diverse nature of methodologies are required for sustaining the organizational effort. For building capacity of participants and staffs, organization recognizes technology is important assets. This recognition is called as “improved hardware”. However, the utility of technology in problem solving at organization level is crucial and helps in record keeping and monitoring the resources at lower level. The technology does not help significantly in improving living standard of local people and also not able to address the real issue of development effective, because the technology is guiding force not the guiding principle for the community development.

Here, we have to recognize that digital divide is quite prevalent in every community and within the organization. The ICT is a kind of value addition in the existing system of local organization and people participation in decision making process. ICT is not panacea but this is playing a vital role in bridging the divide between the information sharing mechanisms, functioning of the organizational offices and also creating a culture of transparency and accountability.

The world is not flat in real sense, but in virtual sense and macro level, the world is connected to each other. The important point is here that does ICT help in building knowledge about community development or poverty alleviation or share the information, which is filled from the external source? Chamber already has raised questions over the intention of external sources. Many rural development projects have been successfully implemented, when the process to involve the people is integrated to build their own rules and regulation for the functioning of local organization. There are three main critics of technology as followed. Technology cannot be used at local level without minimum level of operational infrastructure and functional literacy. Second, the digital divide is widely prevalent and third is that a special kind of training methodology is required for building the capacity and capability of people.

Both cases in today class provide convincing evidences that people matters and they lie in the centre of development process. But the importance of other centrifugal forces and instruments such as local organization, management, training and development. Human resources etc assist the circle to move smoothly. The best of agriculture program in Guatemala was that the program recognized those techniques, which were able to produced ‘visible success’, therefore, the program involved those kind of equipments which were comfortable to be used by the people. As Schumacher has called this as ‘intermediate technology’ (in his book, Small is Beautiful). 

In last, this is not easy to provide a set of management and technological tools, which can create wonder, but the effective utilization of these tools can produce wonderful result. The utilization of these tools is based on the skills enhancement and building capacity of local people and staffs. The propensity of technology is not sustainable in nature; therefore, to enable the local organization as technologically viable is also not a sustainable future. In this scenario, the program and project, which builds human capacity and involve them collectively to resolve the basic problem provides blueprint for the development and management of local organization. In last, the unlearning should also be encouraged for deepening the idea of participation and involvement of local people and to distinguish about the information and knowledge. Gathering information is not true meaning of knowledge.