Dunbar (1972): “a series of community improvements which take place over time as a result of the common efforts of various groups of people. Each successive improvement is a discrete unit of community development. It meets a human want or need.”

Long (1975): “an educational process designed to help adults in a community solve their problems by group decision making and group action. Most community development models include broad citizen involvement and training in problem solving.”

Oberle, Darby, and Stoweres (1975): “a process in which increasingly more members of a given area or environmental make and implement socially responsible decisions, the probable consequence of which is an increase in the life chances of some people without a decrease in the life chances of others.”

Voth (1975): “a situation in which some groups, usually locality based such as a neighborhood or local community …. Attempt to improve [their] social and economic situation through [their] own efforts . . . using professional assistance and perhaps also financial assistance from the outside . . . and involving all sectors of the community or group to a maximum.”

Darby and morris (1975): “an educational approach which would raise levels of local awareness and increase the confidence and ability of community groups to identify and tackle their own problems.”

Ploch (1976): “the active voluntary involvement in a process to improve some identifiable aspect of community life; normally such action leads to the strengthening of the community’s pattern of human and institutional interrelationships.”

Huie (1976): “the process of local decision-making and the development of programs designed to make their community a better place to live and work.”

Wilkinson (1979): “acts by people that open and maintain channels of communication and cooperation among local groups.”

Ravitz (1982): “the active involvement of people at the level of the local community in resisting or supporting some cause or issue or problem that interests them.”

Cawley (1984): “a deliberate, democratic, developmental activity; focusing on an existing social and geographical grouping of people; who participate in the solution of common problems for the common good.”

Rubin and Rubin,(1992): “the following definition of community development is accepted, namely that “it involves local empowerment through organized groups of people acting collectively to control decisions, projects, programs and policies that affect the community”.1

 

(Maser, 1997): “The capacity of people to work collectively in addressing their common interests.”

 

Other often used definitions or typologies that have appeared in major books include those of Roland Warren, Irwin Sanders, and the as “a process of helping community people analyze their problems, to exercise as large a measure of autonomy as is possible and feasible, and to promote a greater identification of the individual citizen and the individual organization with the community as a whole.” Sanders (1958) present a fourfold typology of community development: 1-process, 2-method, 3-program, and 4-movement (see table 1).

Table 1 Four Ways of Viewing Community Development

1.A PROCESS

CD as a process moves by stages from one condition or state to the next. It involves a progression of changes in terms of specified criteria. It is a neutral, scientific term, subject to fairly precise definition and measurement expressed chiefly in social relations; e.g., change from state where one or two people or a small elite within or without local community make decisions for rest of the people to state where people themselves make these decisions about matters of common concern; from state of minimum to one of maximum co-operation; from state where many participate; from state where all resources and specialists come from outside to one where local people make most use of their own resources, etc. emphasis is upon what happens to people, socially and psychologically.

 

2.A METHOD

(Process and Objective)

CD is a means to an end; a way of working so that some goal is attained. Other methods (such as change by decree or fiat: change by use of differential rewards; change by education) may be supplementary to the CD method which seeks to carry through the stages suggested under process in order that the will of those using this method (national government, private welfare agency, or local people themselves) may be carried out. The process is guided for a particular purpose, which may prove “harmful” or “helpful” to the local community, depending upon the goal in view and the criteria of the one passing judgment. Emphasis is upon some end.

3.A PROGRAM

(Method and Content)

The method is stated as a set of procedures and the content as a list of activities. By carrying out the procedures, the activities are supposedly accomplished. When the program is highly formalized, as in many Five-Year plans, the focus tends to be upon the program rather than upon what is happening to the people involved in the program.

It is as a program that CD comes into contact with subject-matter specialties such as health, welfare, agriculture, industry, recreation, etc.

Emphasis is upon activities.

 

4.A MOVEMENT

(Program and Emotional Dynamics)

CD is a crusade, a cause to which people become committed. It is not neutral (like process) but carries an emotional charge; one is either for it or against it.

It is dedicated to progress, as a philosophic and not a scientific concept, since progress must be viewed with reference to values and goals which differ under different political and social systems.

CD as a movement tends to become institutionalized, building up its own organizational structure, accepted procedures, and professional practitioners.

It stresses and promotes the idea of community development as interpreted by its devotees.

 

Source: James A. Christenson (1989). Community Development in Perspective.

The United Nation’ definition of community development has also served as a basis for community development work. Community development is: “the process by which the efforts of the people themselves are united with those of governmental authorities to improve the economic, social, and cultural conditions of communities, to integrate these communities into the life of the nation, and to enable them to contribute fully to national progress. This complex of processes is, therefore, made up of two essential elements: the participation by the people themselves in efforts to improve their level of living, with as much reliance as possible on their own initiative; and the provision of technical and other services in ways which encourage initiative, self-help and mutual help and make these more effective. It is expressed in programmes designed to achieve a wide variety of specific improvements (1963).

Based on an analysis of key aspects in these diverse definitions, we can come to define community development as “a group of people in a locality initiating a social action process (i.e., planned intervention) to change their economic, social, cultural, and/or environmental situation”. This definition seems to encompass and address many elements from the definitions presented. We prefer this definition over Warren’s definition because we do not fell that promotion of autonomy and community attachments are central elements in defining community development. Sanderes’s typology provides a more historical and philosophical background for defining community development, and we see his model as a useful elaboration of our definition. Finally, we chose not to adopt the United Nations’ definition because of its emphasis on government control, nation progress, and self-help. It excludes any consideration of conflict or dissension.

Regarding to what I mentioned before, I believe definition of community development has changed during a few years as follows;

Almost all of the definitions insist of economic aspect of development in the first years of appearance of community development. Many of the community developer believed that the main goal of this action is providing capital and means for community members and gain other products and goods of them. In this view of community development well being of community members and social progress was less stressed. In other word capital and product were the most important and the main aim of community development.

It is a historical fact that this approach to community development failed after a short term of conducting its various plans all around the word. Especially those plans who was conducted in different colonies in Asia and Africa was totally unsuccessful. Passing few years of providing capital and means for those community most of tools disappear and those who remain left workless.

After that scholars of community development understand that they should provide community members with capital beside a serious regard to costumes and traditions of community. So the new age of community development started. In this new concept of community development, human was the core of development and social progress, human resources and human capital find more significance among community developer.

Today community development almost has the same meaning with social “progress” and “enhance the life standards of community members”. Human rights, social justice, traditions, customs is regarding as significant fact in community development. Today human and its natural needs finds as goal of community development.