Integrating Youth into Mainstream Community Development through Community-Based Planning

Author(s):  
Precious Tirivanhu ◽  
Christian Kudzai Mataruka ◽  
Takunda J. Chirau

The youth constitute a significant proportion of Zimbabwe’s population. Despite their significance in numbers, they continue to be marginalised in mainstream planning, decision-making and implementation processes of local development interventions. This study explored the utilisation of community-based planning as a tool for integrating the youth into local development through an action research process. Two research questions are dealt with: what are the essential activities for implementing a youth-friendly community-based planning process? And, what are the impacts of engaging the youth in community-based planning? The results indicated that the key tenets of such a process include local awareness raising, district level engagement, local level institutional functionality assessment, community youth mapping, and intensive planning and community feedback meetings. Impacts of integrating youths into community-based planning include institutionalisation of youth-sensitive planning at district level, improved cohesion by the youth from various political divides, enthusiasm by youths in ensuring incorporation of youth-related issues in ward plans, and renewed vigour by the youth to participate in local development activities. The study recommends youth-sensitive community-based planning as an approach for mainstreaming the youth into community development programmes.

Societies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 19
Author(s):  
Michal Hrivnák ◽  
Peter Moritz ◽  
Katarína Melichová ◽  
Oľga Roháčiková ◽  
Lucia Pospišová

This exploratory review of the literature provides a comprehensive overview of the settings that are available to the planner when managing participatory strategic planning of spatial socio-economic development on the local level. We contextualize individual potential configurations of participation in local development planning practice, documented in a number of case studies from different parts of the world, in order to reflect the multidimensionality of the participatory planning process. These reflections are used to build a participation plan model, which aimed to help local planners, especially local governments, to optimize the participation of local stakeholders, according to the specifics of the local environment. The paper evaluates the options of planners to manage the participation from perspective of the organization of participation, the determination of its scope, selection of stakeholders, methods and techniques of communication, decision-making and visualization, as well as the deployment of resources, or the possibility of promotion and dissemination of information. As a practical implication of this review, we compose a participation matrix, which is intended to be an auxiliary tool for planners to establish own locally-specific participation plans and that can serve as tool for education, or life-long learning of planners.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Chernykhivska ◽  

The article reveals the conceptual aspects of the implementation of sustainable development at the local territorial level through the application of strategic environmental assessment procedures in Ukraine in the context of decentralization of management. Emphasis is placed on the importance of local territorial development through strategic environmental assessment and implementation of the principles of sustainable development, which our country needs today on the path to European integration. The scientific and practical relevance of the proposed study is due to the need to develop and improve effective regulatory economic mechanisms that can ensure sustainable development at the local level through the effective conduct of strategic environmental assessment of state planning documents. The article is devoted to applied issues of implementation and realization of sustainable development at the local level. The theoretical essence and content of strategic environmental assessment are studied. Sustainable development is considered as a necessary and integral element of local development as a basis for harmonious ecological and economic development of the territory on the basis of the most efficient use of resources and preservation of potential for future generations. The subjects of SEA at the local level and their functions are generalized. SEA has been shown to provide a focus on a comprehensive analysis of the potential environmental impact of planned activities and to use the results of this analysis to prevent or mitigate environmental impacts in the strategic planning process. Examples of ensuring the principles of sustainable development in the conduct of SEA of state planning documents are proposed. The relationship between the basic principles of sustainable development and SEA is revealed. The expediency of integration of strategic ecological assessment into sustainable development of the territory is substantiated. Prospects for the elimination of negative environmental consequences from the implementation of the proposed strategic actions with the conduct of SEA are outlined. The main tasks of SEA in the implementation of sustainable development at the local level are identified.


2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 68-85
Author(s):  
Natalie Marie Lesco

This article describes the impact of a case study of the REDress project on a university campus in Nova Scotia, Canada. The REDress project is a grassroots initiative that operates at the local level to empower Aboriginal women through an evocative art exhibit: the hanging of empty red dresses symbolizing missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls and the emptiness of the societal response to the violence committed against them. Using a participatory-action research model (PAR), which guides the exploration of the kinds of ideas instilled within this community-based initiative, my research demonstrates the potential this project has to mobilize local Indigenous women’s perspectives and voices, in order to break the silence to which they are often subjected through structures of oppression. This process relies on the establishment of meaningful connections with members of the StFX Aboriginal Student’s Society and creating a transparent research process, while also encouraging action in the form of awareness building. The project makes a political statement that resists the ascribed invisibility of Aboriginal women by honouring the lives of missing and murdered Aboriginal women. As a community-based initiative, the REDress project demonstrates the beginnings of reconciliation by cultivating meaningful relationships that provide hope for the future.


Author(s):  
Luiz Roberto Alves ◽  
Marco Aurelio Bernardes ◽  
Victor Gil Neto ◽  
Waverli Maia Matarazzo-Neuberger

This chapter examines how a university can offer mindset-changing experiences to benefit local communities and students; arouse awareness to the way we work, do business and relate to each other and to our environment; and maximise the involvement of individuals and groups in solidarity economy movements. A three year action research programme developed by Methodist University of Sao Paulo in Montanhao, a poor Sao Bernardo do Campo neighbourhood offered supported the development of projects, programmes and management tools, supported the development of a repertoire of community-focused social technologies, and highlighted cultural and local knowledge. The programmes offered a real contribution to the empowerment of communities and the development of the quality of life at a local level, especially adapting business plan methodologies towards the goal of developing the solidarity economy, spreading income more fairly, and increasing the groups’ self-esteem, while developing students’ skills. It also focused skills available in an academic environment on contributing to local development demands, creating a new values platform based in collective development, associational skills, and environmental and local awareness, especially for local women who represented 70% of all solidarity economy movement participants.


10.18060/1938 ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 375-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charity Samantha Fitzgerald

This paper examines fair trade as a community development initiative that challenges unjust global trading conditions. On a local level, fair trade aims to create a sustainable livelihood for farmers, to strengthen agricultural cooperatives, and to fund community-based projects. Fair trade also purports to engender global solidarity through linking Southern producers and Northern consumers in a concerted effort to direct the market towards social aims. The paper examines the strengths and weaknesses of fair trade as a social welfare intervention. Recommendations are provided to strengthen the fair-trade movement in light of social work values.


Forests ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 461
Author(s):  
Ana Luiza Violato Espada ◽  
Mário Vasconcellos Sobrinho

Over the last few years, forest-based communities have faced two different but related phenomena. On the one hand, they have become more integrated with global economies, accessing regional and international markets. On the other, they have been pressured by economic groups into becoming part of the ecologically unequal exchange that exports natural resources and generates social and environmental problems at a local level. However, within new approaches to managing common-pool resources in common properties such as sustainable-use protected areas, communities are finding their own ways to be resilient and to face the two phenomena that are part of the same global economic system. Communities have built a multi-partner governance system for forest management and community development that involves agents from the civil society, state and market. Accordingly, multi-partner governance has proven to be a strategy to protect community-based forests against increasing timber market pressure. The question that then emerges is, to what extent has multi-partner governance been effective in supporting forest-based communities to be resilient and to face pressures from the global timber market in forests under community use? The aim of this paper is to analyze forest-based community resilience to the global economic system in situations where common properties are under governance of multiple stakeholders. The research is based on a singular case study in the Tapajós National Forest, Brazilian Amazon, which is a sustainable-use protected area with 24 communities involved in a multi-partner governance system. The article shows that forest-based communities under pressure have been resilient, and facing the global economic system have created a community-based cooperative for managing timber and engaging all partners in the process to improve their collective action. The cooperative provides timber sales revenue that supports community development both through diversification of agroforestry production and building of infrastructure as collective benefits.


2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-400
Author(s):  
Danijela Milovanović-Rodić

A large number of different strategies at the central, regional and local level have been done in the last decade in Serbia. Studies on their quality show that quite a number of strategic documents meet the standards in their form, but in terms of the content, they do not have a clear strategy and strategic projects, they overlap and are poorly intercoordinated. The paper identifies and discusses the stages and steps in the strategic planning process, that are crucial for formulating long-term sustainable development solutions for a specific territory and the improvement of its citizens' lives. Its main thesis is that the local strategies lack strategic thinking, i. e. that the solutions are not based on its products. Attitudes about the causes of the lack of the strategic in the strategies are illustrated with a specific example: the planning process and the content of the Development strategy of the City of Pančevo.


Forests ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 1753
Author(s):  
Bin Zheng ◽  
Mingchuan Li ◽  
Boyang Yu ◽  
Lan Gao

Community-based ecotourism (CBET) has become a popular strategy to alleviate the contradiction between ecological protection and community development. As the stakeholders of CBET, the community’s participation in the planning process is of great importance to in order to realize the sustainability of CBET. Taking a community in Wolong Nature Reserve as a case study, in this study we developed a decision-making participation mechanism based on the participatory scenario method. Through this mechanism, community stakeholders can effectively reach consensus with other stakeholders on the planning of CBET in the future. The results showed that community participation in the planning process can mean decisions are more likely to reflect their interests. They unanimously proposed that future CBET must adhere to the basic principle of protecting biodiversity and must maximize the welfare of the community. Moreover, achieving the sustainability of CBET in protected areas requires the cooperation of all stakeholders.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (21) ◽  
pp. 9270
Author(s):  
Giusy Pappalardo

Heritage is not only what societies inherit from the past: it is also an opportunity for practicing the principles of sustainability in the making of the future. A community-based approach is pivotal for generating long lasting processes aimed at revitalizing heritage. This assertion has been widely stated in several norms and conventions, such as the 2000 European Landscape Convention and the 2005 European Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society. Some practices aimed at revitalizing heritage with a community-based approach can be ascribed to the organizational form of the so-called ecomuseums, born in France in the 1970s and today spread worldwide. Ecomuseums soon became a tool for organizing community-based processes aimed at protecting and enhancing heritage in its various facets while promoting local development. However, not every existing ecomuseum is also able to grasp the opportunity of including disadvantaged persons and guaranteeing the right to heritage for all. This paper discusses the innovative elements and criticalities of ecomuseums, questioning how could they target heritage’s enhancement as well as justice simultaneously. This paper gains evidence from an ongoing action-research process and provides policy recommendations for EU southern regions that are now starting to experiment with the practice of ecomuseums, such as Sicily (IT).


2011 ◽  
Vol 2011 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Baker ◽  
Maria Beger ◽  
Caleb McClennen ◽  
Albon Ishoda ◽  
Florence Edwards

The development ofReimaanlok, a national framework for the planning and establishment of community-based conservation areas in the Marshall Islands, is outlined. A team composed of international experts and local resource management professionals selected and modified an ecoregional planning approach, defined key concepts, selected conservation features and targets, compiled biogeographical information from scientific and local knowledge and carried out a national-level ecological gap assessment. Past development of community-based fisheries and conservation plans was reviewed and the lessons learned informed the development of a robust community-based planning process for the design and establishment of conservation areas on individual atolls, integrating ecosystem based management (EBM) theory, traditional knowledge and management, and the particular socio-economic needs of island communities. While specific geographic, historical, cultural and economic characteristics of the Marshall Islands have created a framework that is unique, several aspects of this process offer ideas for national strategic conservation planning in other Small Island Developing States where there is a paucity of scientific data, significant and increasing threats, and where decision-making about the use of natural resources occurs primarily at the local level.


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