COMMUNITY participation is an essential prerequisite for a project's success. In other words, the bottom line of any development work is involvement of the local community. Many development projects were fully successful in identifying local problems, developing the best ways to address them, and creating the best mechanism for implementation that incorporated community participation.
A good example of a successful project was "Polio Vaccination" that helped make the country polio-free since 2006. The programme was initiated jointly by the government of Bangladesh and WHO. It was very effective particularly for the newborn babies and young children. Another aspect of the project's success was its contribution to local capacity building, because local people know their problems best and can suggest best ways to reduce them. Their engagement creates a sense of belonging for them and they would be able to share later their knowledge achieved this way. So participation would be like a sandwich with bottom-up participation supported by top-down supervision.
Some may argue that organising local community for a development project is extremely difficult and at times impossible. But best efforts should be made to achieve the goal of community participation in development as there had been ample examples of failed projects globally only due to lack of it.
The design of the project should not be donor-driven but community-based, and it should ensure decentralisation of resources and delegation of authority to local government. Normally people do not participate in different forums, but if they could understand the importance of such participation, they would obviously volunteer to do so. They could act on their own with support from local community development associations, self-help groups or social movements and campaigns.
Community engagement is so important that it helps people to be better citizens, that is, people who are aware of their right to participate and are more confident of their ability to work. It also helps develop civic skills so that people become more aware and more effective citizens.
Another positive outcome of community engagement is development of knowledge. Local people learnt how to protect themselves and cope with disaster from many NGOs in Bangladesh working on disaster management. There are conclusive evidences that local participation can make a difference, but often in ways that are not donor-created. The most challenging job now for both donors and development practitioners is to take a broader and longer-term view on what community participation is all about.
Mahiul Kadir, MBA Student
ASA University Bangladesh
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