Consensus Building and Collaboration in Community Development
Consensus building and collaboration is a strategy applied in community development whereby, each member involved is accorded equal right to participate when making decisions pertaining to that community. This strategy is beneficial to communities because every member is responsible for the decisions taken by the community and hence develops a sense of ownership and accountability. Taking into consideration diverse group of people in the contemporary communities, consensus and collaboration strategy is important in accommodating their different interests. This strategy is also a recommendable approach that allows every citizen to participate in solving challenging problems affecting the society in an acceptable manner to all inhabitants. The strategy also allows fully participation and every persons input in decision-making process is paramount and eliminate making of decisions capable of arousing controversy in the hands of few representatives. The community also harbors a wide range of knowledge that can be used to solve problems that are affecting them directly. This strategy could be useful today when making complex decisions that are affecting community at large and to make them own up the development projects to be implemented.
Challenging The Status Quo in a Conflict Mode in the Early 1900’s Community Development.
Strategy to challenge the status quo was applied in early community development as a way of changing mentality of people toward each other. The strategy was meant to develop a community that embraces equality, freedom and equal opportunity for all members. The importance of this strategy and its core objectives was to shun down all injustices committed towards minority groups in a community. The strategy was meant to enhance personal freedom from injustices and treatment of all people equally. The strategy was also meant to bring into the picture that people can be catalysts for change and do not necessary have to follow commands from top down but bottom up can apply as well. Changing of status quo can be applied today by use of movements, for instance labor movements to fighting for employees’ rights.
Comparison of Grassroots Approach and Traditional Social Model.
Grass roots methods are cornered in fully involvement and participation of the community in programs affecting them. The local people are involved in decision-making process, which will empower and enable them to be economically stable community. Weakness of this approach is on the question of self-sufficiency of community’s of local economy to support all members of the society. Grass roots approach advocate for down –up strategy in making decision, which is less hierarchal and enables the communities develop intelligent development programs. In contrast, traditional social planning model is suitable for complex problems requiring specialized technical expertise. Society members could be experts in the information to do with the community available resources and assets, but lack technical expertise of converting them into beneficial forms.
Grass roots method is better compared with the traditional social planning approach. This is because grass roots technique involves and engages the community in developing programs affecting them. As a result, community would identify and employ perfect solutions specifically for problems affecting them. In Addition, technique would eradicate poverty, empower society and at the same time bring about sense of community. Tradition social planning model is more useful when addressing the complex problems affecting the community, which requires expert intervention to come up with a solution. This could be in the case of securing funds, managing financial resources and maintaining of mutual relationships with the external environment, which is critical to community development. Grass roots approach is suitable when empowering community, eradicating poverty and eliminating hierarchical leadership in the community development.