Community work key to tackling inequalities

Poverty and marginalisation are deeply rooted and change will not happen overnight — but tangible results will be realised in time, with the right interventions, says Anastasia Crickley.

With Ireland reporting on its progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) to the United Nations next month, up to 400 delegates meet at the World Community Development Conference 2018 in Maynooth from June 24- 27 to consider community development as a response to social and economic inequality, poverty, climate justice, rights realisation and other global challenges.

One of its organisers, the International Association for Community Development, argues that there can be no sustainable development without community development.

Another, Community Work Ireland, suggests that the vibrant, inclusive, and participative civil society essential for reaching SDG commitments is created and supported by community development.

Echoing and reinforcing these concerns the other key organiser, the Department of Applied Social Studies at Maynooth University has, for nearly 40 years, prepared practitioners for empowering practice which focuses on a just and equal world where rights are recognised and realised.

All support former President Mary Robinson, the opening keynote speaker for the conference, in her objective of seeking to empower communities to mitigate the dangers of climate change and to drive sustainable development in some of the world’s poorest regions.

Another keynote speaker is activist and academic Lynne Segal. In her most recent book on Radical Happiness, she wrote of how the markets of misery leave many behind and measure well-being in ways which put the onus on increasingly marginalised individuals in private spaces. She calls for a return to our collective dreams of a better future for all.

But are these aspirations realistic or achievable? Is today’s world capable of being changed even partially from the bottom up? What has community development contributed in Ireland and elsewhere, what might it contribute, and what is it anyway?

There is no doubt but that community workers are realistic both nationally and in global engagements. They know that many of the issues which hold back communities cannot be resolved by local work only.

They recognise the intersectional nature of poverty and oppression which multiplies forms of injustice and rights abuse experienced by women, children, and men, and systematically ignores and undermines the diversity of cultures and peoples that form part of our world. For example, the experience of racism and oppression is different if you are a woman, sometimes violently and dangerously so.

As a community worker and community development educator all my life, and one who as part of that has worked against racism locally and globally, I know that there are no simple answers, one size does not fit all.

Poverty is an enduring feature globally which is being deepened by neo-liberal economic systems and structures. Community workers themselves also come from different backgrounds, cultures, and concerns.

Community work contributes to society cohesion and progress but cannot do this if reduced to a delivery mechanism for imposed actions or instrumentalised as an alternative provider of what should be state services.

To echo globally understood and nationally recognised definitions community development has both task and process dimensions. It is about working collectively for change linked to rights, justice and equality through applying the principles of participation, empowerment and collective decision-making in a structured and co-ordinated way.

Community development involves an analysis of social and economic situations and collective action for change based on that analysis. It is centred on a series of principles that seek to go beyond consultation to participation and beyond capacity building to consciousness raising and empowerment.

It recognises the changing and often hidden nature of structural inequalities based on ‘race’, class, gender, and disability, to name a few. It seeks to be transformative rather than conforming; empowering rather than controlling. Community work is not a process that takes place in a short timeframe, as it works to address deeply rooted inequalities and marginalisation. It takes varying lengths of time to achieve tangible results.

Community work has a long tradition in Ireland and its contribution is visible and tangible. Muintir na Tíre, based on local parish structures, played a very significant role in the modernisation of rural Ireland.

Initiatives like that of Connemara West in Letterfrack, which courageously purchased the old industrial school at its closure, continues to enhance life there including through the students participating in the globally renowned third-level furniture college.

Supported by community development groups Fatima, in Dublin’s south inner city successfully negotiated a regeneration programme and St Michael’s Estate Resource Centre, Inchicore, continues to shine a collective light of resistance against violence towards women and for decent housing.

Community work and community work methods have been key to the success of emerging strategies for Traveller rights and inclusion; for women’s involvement and for the rights of migrants and refugees, and asylum seekers seeking refugee recognition in Ireland.

The work of Pavee Point, not least with Traveller women as health workers in their own communities, is recognised throughout Europe. The Migrants Rights Centre Ireland equally contributes to global as well as local campaigns through engagement with the shaping of the UN Compact on Migrants.

While many of the recent changes for women in Ireland were not community development initiatives but rather led by broad groupings, there is no doubt but that community development over the past 30 years has created the conditions for active engagement and participation by women in issues that affect our lives.

Conference contributors from all of the world will give testimony to the contribution of community development to the changes that face their countries including post-conflict and post-war.

Work with indigenous peoples in Guatemala and Colombia; work to empower women and communities to achieve the rights to participate in Liberian society; and organisations led by local communities in these countries will demonstrate how this is a truly global way of working.

Other contributors will speak of initiatives in Nepal, Vietnam, Mongolia, Mauritius, Nigeria, and Uganda. All of these speak to a world-wide discipline and a discipline which has also been shaped by thinkers from various backgrounds globally as well as by the women’s movement of the mid-twentieth century.

The history of community development globally, it has to be said is located in and linked to both the resistance movement and colonisers attempts to maintain influence in the post-colonial period.

However one of the foremost influences is the shaping of community development is the work of Paulo Freire, the Brazilian philosopher and educationalist. In effect, the key influence globally is not reducible to the global north dominating the global south but rather key ideas from the global south inform empowerment and liberation in the global north.

These are challenging times for community development everywhere. After huge cuts and assimilation into other structures in ways that denied autonomy to organisations, community development is now successfully included in policy frameworks and programmes in Ireland.

However, many previously independent organisations are implicitly controlled by local authorities who have an important role for communities, but may at times be part of the problem, for example on Traveller accommodation issues.

They are also challenging times globally as civil society in Gaza struggles to assert people’s rights; the Rohingya languish in refugee camps in Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh, and other places; the Black Lives Matters movement in the US contests racial profiling; and, closer to home, women in Northern Ireland seek not to be left behind in the fight for reproductive rights.

However, the present time, though challenging does provide some opportunities for change and there is an atmosphere of hope that such change, here, and elsewhere which is concerned with equality, rights and justice can be well supported by community development. For this to happen, those involved need knowledge, skills, and values based practice. Good intentions are not enough on their own. This requires education, such as is provided by the Department of Applied Social Studies in Maynooth; support and reinforcement as is provided for and by community workers nationally by Community Work Ireland and internationally but the International Association for Community Development.

The upcoming conference will provide a unique space for the critique, debate and discussion required to progress what is an old tradition in Ireland and globally, by a young and unique inclusive profession which also provides roots for participation and progress for all.

Anastasia Crickley is with the Department of Applied Social Sciences at Maynooth University.