Prompt: How can the community leaders help the local people achieve

poverty eradication?

By empowering people in the community, enabling them to gain control, and ensuring they have
the tools to build their future, the community leaders can help them eradicate poverty.

Background Information:
1. Organize a poor community and identify skills and potentials that contribute to the success of
poverty eradication in that community.

2. Community development is about empowerment and not charity work. Train the community’s
people using their potential and skills and teach them how to fish.

3. Tap the community’s local leaders like the Barangay leaders and other resources like teachers,
engineers, fishermen, farmers, and others.

Poverty will not be reduced without tapping into the energy, skills, and motivation of the
people in the community. Increasing poor people’s freedom of choice and action to shape their
own lives are essential tools toward achieving the goal of poverty eradication. There is a need to
change the mindset, from viewing people as the problem to viewing them as important partners
in reducing poverty. Each community member should be allowed to participate in decisions that
affect their lives. Help them realize their worth for being accountable for their actions by making
them responsive to the needs and realities of their fellow members in the community.

Empowering people can help eradicate poverty because those who have been empowered
will become self-reliant from the skills they have learned, and they can have jobs that they will
use to take care of their families. If no one in the family can afford to take care of the children
and other relatives, poverty will increase, so by empowering one person, you have saved many
lives.

Empowering implies recognizing that anyone can make a difference in their life and other
people’s lives. In many countries, governments do not/cannot allocate sufficient
resources/capacities to support programs aiming at poverty reduction efficiently. In this context,
civil society organizations, including a wide range of organizations, may take over this
responsibility and promote/support self-help institutions, volunteer organizations, and groups of
interest to fight poverty eradication. Civil society can play a critical role in achieving poverty
eradication depending on the level of organization and capacity to articulate needs to address
them. However, civil society cannot operate in a vacuum or in isolation. There has to be a
network and connection with government institutions, the private sector, international
organizations, etc. Thus, the role of a community leader is part of the success in achieving
poverty reduction in the locale.
 Community leadership helps develop and nurture grassroots innovations that improve the
quality of life of the community members through active engagement toward common goals
(Martiskainen, 2017). Evidence shows that community leaders effectively support, foster, and
enable community development (Kirk & Shutte, 2004). As a community leader, one has to do the
following:
a. Meet and talk with your neighbors every chance you have to learn about their current
situations. You might collect ideas to improve your community. Also, ask whether people
would like to meet and discuss developing caring community teams. A survey might be a
helpful option to collect ideas and opinions.

b. Recognize the main things people want and decide on a few teams to cover those
things. Organize those who want to help into those teams and identify someone who can
be the team leader.

c. Once you have identified teams, hold a get-together to discuss how the teams might
implement some easy ideas generated from the survey results. Please encourage them to
find an effective communication method to keep connected and keep the community
informed.

d. Offer help and invite your neighbors to join various projects. Be sure to tell them
whom to contact if they need a hand. Even if specific needs are not apparent, you can
start planning a community project like establishing a safety or emergency protocol.

e. Organize a team to cover specific community needs; if the project exceeds the capacity
of your teams, ask additional community members to lend a hand. Usually, people are
willing to help for special causes. Be sure to make all those requests in a way that is
comfortable for the person you are helping.

f. Reflect with your teams and community about how you reached the goal or fulfilled the
need. Ask for honest and constructive feedback. Keep your community constantly
connected through social meetings and events.

g. You can also be a mentor to others on their leadership pathways.