One of the frustrations I have found in recent years is the inability of some people who should know better to distinguish between community development work and local activism.
The activist is a campaigner who will work with others for improvements to their neighbourhood.
The role and skill set of the development worker are quite different. I have seen successful activists appointed to a community development role make a poor showing - indeed it is a mistake I made in my early days as a community development worker. The activist who enters another neighbourhood as a community development worker and behaves as an activist is grotesque. What right has anyone to enter other people's neighbourhoods and continue their own agenda on the behalf of complete strangers? But even in their own neighbourhood this role confusion is chaotic.
The development worker's role is to help others to improve their performance as activists. This means that development work requires a degree of objective distance. The activist is focused on the success of their campaign. The development worker is focused on the effectiveness of the activist.
The activist in community development worker's clothes takes over the role of local activists and makes it their personal campaign. Such activists invariably over-identify with their adopted community organisation and take on the role of immortal.
This behaviour is far too common in British communities. Why does it happen? As community development emerged in the 1970s, it did so with great ideals. Development workers paid lip service to empowerment of communities and did so by down-grading their own professionalism. In consequence there has never been any career structure for development workers. The skilled workers eventually move to other roles; they do not stay in development work.
This means there are few role models and very little mentoring. It feels like development work starts all over again every 5 years or so. The overall lack of career development; of a corpus of sound development work meant that community development was an easy target for council cuts. Today many organisations put workers in the community but few understand the basics, nothing is learned and passed on. Our communities are littered with the remnants of projects finished before their time and increasingly frustrated activists starved of the stimulation development workers should bring with them.
The churches? Much the same as everyone else. Lay work is devalued and has no career structure. Similar roles to community development such as mission or evangelism workers are similarly devalued. Academics and pastoral workers are afforded more value. It is long past the time for change. I suspect for Britain it is too late and neighbourhood work is dead in the water.
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