Community Mobilization Leadership and Empowerment

By Prof. Shadia AbdelRhim Mohamed Daoud and Dr. Nagwa Babiker Abdulla Yousif

The book, with its four chapters, addresses three important processes in the development sphere: namely mobilization, leadership, and empowerment. The book explores the relation and the link of the three processes, explaining their action implementation at the community level. The book advocates the use a human inclusion approach to development. Relevant literature are critically reviewed from published International and national books, articles and reports.
Chapter 1 of the book introduces some related concepts that usually assist of the explanation of three processes.
Chapter 2 gives an understanding of the community mobilization process: its methods of action planning and implementation.
Chapter 3 explains the different perspectives of community leadership. Community empowerment as a new concept emerged recently in development is cortically explained, its understanding related to different community groups.
The book is recommended for development and community-work students, researchers, and workers who are using bottom-up and human-development approaches of development.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781664127913

Prof. Shadia AbdelRhim Mohamed Daoud

Dr. Nagwa Babiker Abdalla Yousif is an assistant professor in the Sociology Department, College of Humanities and Sciences, Ajman University (AU). She taught a diverse number of courses in the fields of sociology and social work. Before joining AU, she was an assistant professor at Ahfad University, teaching various courses in the fields of psychology, community development, social work, research methodology, and preschool education. Also, she worked with the British organization HelpAge International, in the position of National Programme Coordinator–Sudan, and as UN Expert in the fields of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation of Social Projects (in Yemen and Bangladesh), Planning Manager Advisor for Decentralization Policy (in Malawi), and Gender Trainer and Community Development Specialist (in Jordan) with the United Nations Organizations. She also worked with GTZ as programme manager consultant in Yemen’s Integrated Development Project. She did her PhD in development studies at the University of South Africa; her master’s degree and postgraduate diploma in social development at Reading University, United Kingdom; and her graduate diploma in psychology and preschool education at Ahfad University for Women, Sudan. She is a faculty of Sociology and Social Work disciplines. Her research interest lies in the areas of multidisciplinary researches, assessments of social work and social development programmes and projects, women’s socioeconomic empowerment, gender issues, youth, elder people, early childhood education, and people with special needs. Dr. Shadia A. M. Daoud is a professor in rural social development for the School of Rural Extension Education and Development (REED), Ahfad University for Women, in Omdurman, Sudan. She has taught a diverse number of courses on research methodology, rural development, rural extension, cultural and social aspects of food and nutrition, nonformal education, peace education, and community development. In addition, Shadia has more than twenty-five years’ worth of national and international working experiences and research in community development, social exclusion, gender equality and women’s empowerment, socioeconomic impact of development projects, and management of natural resources. Shadia Daoud has conducted more than twenty short assignments as advisor-consultant for international and national organizations—for example, WHO, FAO, IFAD, World Bank, Dutch Consortium for Rehabilitation, Red Cross and Red Crescent, GIZ, UNICEF, Concern, IGAD, UNIIFPA, Tufts University, SMEC International, Aslo University, Cape Town University, and Plan–Sudan. Shadia Daoud has worked for six years as a gender trainer and community development specialist in Pakistan, Zanzibar, and the Maldives Islands. She has work contributions to local communities and participated in mobilizing and organizing more than one hundred community-based organizations in different parts of Sudan. She has also published four books and ten training manuals at national level in community development and rural development.

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Copyright © 2020 by Shadia AbdelRhim Mohamed Daoud

and Nagwa Babiker Abdulla Yousif.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Rev. date: 09/11/2020

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CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter 1    Related Concepts to the Three Processes of Mobilization, Leadership, and Empowerment

1.1.   Community Development

1.2.   Community-Based Development Activities

1.3.   Community Organizations

1.4.   Community Contribution

1.5.   Community Participation

2.6.   Participation and Development

1.6.    Social Exclusion

Chapter 2    Community Mobilization

2.1.   Understanding the Process of Community Mobilization

2.1.1. Concept and Definitions.

2.2.    Community Mobilization Process Goals and Objectives

2.3.    Community Mobilization Principles, Requirements, and Challenges

2.4.    Community Mobilization Process Steps and Methods

2.4.1.   Community Mobilization Process: Some Important Issues and Tools

2.4.2.   Prerequisites for Mobilization

2.4.3.    What Is Needed to Mobilize a Community?

2.4.4.   Key Tasks Involved in Mobilizing Communities (Agukoh 2006; Shadia et al. 2007)

2.4.5.    People Need to Be Prepared before They Mobilize

2.4.6.    Criteria for Designing Mobilizing Actions

2.5.    Plan of Mobilizing the Community

2.5.1.    Introduction

2.5.2.    Preparing to Mobilize

2.6.    Mobilizing the Community

2.6.1    Background

2.6.3.    Description of the Mobilization Process

2.6.4.    Steps of the Community Mobilization Process

2.6.5.    Methodologies Used for the Community Mobilization Process

Chapter 3    Community Leadership

3.1.    Leadership: Definitions, Characteristics, Principles, and Styles

3.1.1    Definitions

3.1.2.    Characteristics of Leadership

3.1.3.    Guiding Principles of Leadership

3.1.4.    Leadership Qualities

3.1.5.    Leadership Styles

3.2.    Community Leadership

3.2.1.    Definitions

3.2.2.    Community Leadership Development

3.2.3.    The Importance of the Community Leader

3.2.4.    Characteristics of Community Leaders

3.2.5.    The Role of Formal and Informal Leaders

3.2.6.    Community Leadership Styles

3.2.7    Skills Needed for Community Leaders

3.2.8.     Community Leadership and Change

3.2.9.    Organizing People for Community Leadership

3.2.10.    Females and Leadership

3.2.11.    Community Leadership and Youth

Chapter 4 Empowerment

4.1    Background

4.2.    Understanding the Concept of Empowerment

4.2.1.    Definition

4.2.2.    Empowerment Is a Concept Shared by Many Disciplines and Fields

4. 2.3.    Empowerment as a Process of Changes

4. 2.4.    Empowerment Is an Enabling Concept

4..2.5.    What Are the Five Types of Empowerment?

4.3.    Community Empowerment

4.3.1    Understanding the Concept

4.3.2.    Participation and Community Empowerment

4.3.3.    Why Community Empowerment Is Important

4.3.4.    Perspective on Community Empowerment

4.3.5.    Principles of Community Empowerment

4.4.    Empowerment-Related Issues

4.4.1.    Exclusion, Inclusion, and Empowerment: Community Empowerment

4.4.2.    Women Empowerment

4.4.3.    Empowerment and Leadership

References

About the Authors

PREFACE

Community development work has passed through different evolutions, from economic growth to human development, then to social inclusions and protections from top-down to bottom-up approaches. The idea of human development has, in recent years, strongly influenced evaluations, development debates, and policies a process of enlarging people’s choice and strengthening human capabilities. The human development concept is inspired by Amartya Sen’s capability approach, the term has been seen as an expansion of human capabilities, a widening of choices, an enhancement of freedoms, and a fulfillment of human rights. It provides dignity to the human race because the economic model of development has reduced people to the status of unresponsive producers and consumers. The economic growth models disempower people, but the capabilities approach makes their empowerment a central issue. Rather than talking of some theoretical equality of people or seeing them in terms of numbers, the capability approach explicitly recognizes the differences in individuals. It also accepts that people’s abilities are affected by external factors coming from interaction with other people, social arrangements, access to infrastructure and public services, prejudices and discrimination, opportunities to participate in social and political activities, freedom to speak and influence state policies, and so on.

Comparison between Economic Growth and Human Development

• The difference between economic growth and the human development is that the first focuses exclusively on the expansion of only one choice, i.e., income.

• The human development approach embraces the enlargement of all human choices—whether economic, social, cultural, or political.

• Economic growth in the human development approach is seen as the means and not the ends of development (Pettinger 2018; Grubaugh 2015; Gopalakrishna and Rao 20120).

Bottom-Up Approach

Owing to well-documented criticisms of traditional centralized, top-down approaches to development practices in least-developed countries during the past sixty years, many international development agencies, professionals, and academics have begun to emphasize the importance of bottom-up, participatory avenues to reduce widespread poverty and inequality (Pretty and Ward 2001; Schwarzkopf, Tersine, and Morris 1988).

To achieve the involvement of masses of people in community development, participatory methods and tools emerged as main methods of community mobilization leadership and empowerment. A participatory approach helps to secure the ownership and commitment of the communities involved. Active participation by local citizens and other stakeholders aims to enhance both the quality and relevance of the suggested interventions. . . . Participation at this stage increases commitment, relevance, and sustainability. Participatory approaches as tools have emerged to ensure the participation of rural communities in development. It takes different techniques and methods. Attitudes toward development approaches have changed over the years in exactly the same way that attitudes to development itself have changed. Originally, academics, theorists, social planners, and development practitioners thought they knew the answers to the problems of community development. A participatory approach helps to secure the ownership and commitment of the communities involved. Active participation by local citizens and other stakeholders aims to enhance both the quality and relevance of the suggested interventions. . . . Participation at this stage increases commitment, relevance, and sustainability (Pretty 1994; FAQ 1990 ., undp1987 Chambers, R.,1984.)

Participation evokes involvement of the community in the decision-making process of the implementation of development projects (Maser 1997). According to Oakely (1985), the term participation refers to harnessing the existing physical, economic, and social resources of rural people in order to attain the objectives of community development programs and projects. Paul (1987) also refers to participation as the shift and a self-transformational process and learning by practice. Development literature shows two main typologies of the advantages of participatory development. First, it is viewed as an alternative approach of development to the traditional, expert-led, externally driven approaches which have been ineffective to bring any substantial change in lives of the poor across the globe. Second, the participatory process is viewed as helping to promote inclusion, equity, and justice through a process of empowerment of the poor and marginalized (Kyamusugulwa 2013).

The Main Understandings of Participatory Development Approach and Inclusion of Excluded Communities

The participatory development approach stresses the participation of the majority of the population (especially the previously excluded components such as CBOs, women, youth, and the illiterate) in the process of development program.

Participation as a process failed to include majority of excluded people to development. Mobilizations and empowerment of excluded people is an approach to social inclusion and protection. The social exclusion lens is well suited for the analysis of the effects of social protection interventions. Social exclusion serves as a framework for understanding the political, economic, social, and institutional context that shapes human vulnerabilities. Its application to social protection allows greater emphasis on the local context and the