Approaches in Community Development Work

Community works are often confused with community-based work. The similarity is that they fall under the discipline of
community development approaches. To differentiate, community work requires the efforts of the people in greater or
larger degree whereas community-based work involves the community but in a smaller scale from what is essential in
community work.
Community development approaches are defined by the following:
1. Sustainabilty (long or short-term)
2. Area of concentration (local, national, global, and overseas)
3. Field or specializations (e.g., education advancement or religion affairs)
4. Objectives, vision, and mission (e.g., social security or rural domination with the use of kindness)
The categories listed are not guaranteed absolute, for community development works itself is still broad. So are the lists
that will be specified below as the different approaches to community development work, nonetheless, these are the
random, more specific lists of approaches.

Specific list of approaches

1. Technical assistance approach is involved in the efficient delivery of improving programs or services that allow
communities to access outside experts in areas that may be highly technical or that may demand credentials for
further funding or implementation.
2. Self-help approach encourages people within the community to work together, empowering communal
independence. Individuals who are vulnerable, voiceless, and powerless can develop enormous strength in self-
help groups. This approach may be demonstrated through activities that involve a visioning and goal-setting
process.
3. Con approach deals with confronting the forces that are blocking efforts to solve problems by building human
capacity to address local issues with either and concerns and altering the structure of the community in terms
of engagement. The practices under this approach value confrontations in a sense that conflicts provide impetus
for improvement and encourages critical thinking and the individual thought.
4. Structural or brick-and-mortar approach is more concerned with the foundation of the community members in
terms of constitution. It may involve the process of constructing infrastructures that meet human needs or
expectations. It can also be an understanding of the multiple and intersecting forms of oppression that occur at
personal, cultural, and structural levels, with each level influencing oppression on the others.

5. Social justice and human rights approach focuses on the behavioral, cultural, ethnical, and social affairs as a
leading target for communal development in or outside the community. The concept of social justice involves
finding the optimum balance between people's joint responsibilities as a society and people's responsibilities as
individuals to contribute to a just society. Human rights provide an internationally agreed set of principles and
standards by which to assess inequality. The two concepts are correlated in a sense that human rights clearly
define and authorize what is globally and legally accepted from the various contexts on social justice.

6. Ecological or environmental approach targets crises as major focal point for developmental, radical alternatives
to address the natural make-up of the earth. The approach focuses on the ecological or environmental
protection and advancement.

7. Multi-method approach combines methods that will most likely ensure the progress and success of communal
work goals that are inherently unheard of. A multi-method approach crams more than one kind of approaches
into one-of-a-kind, hybrid-like approach, which has been unconsciously practiced today by many organizations.

Approaches in community work are vast and still growing. How the communities interpret the meaning of these
approaches is up to them. What is more important is how they express those interpretations into values that will lead to
outcomes to better the community and society.