Community Resilience: An Untapped Resource for Sustainable Development?

A post by guest blogger, Clement N. Dlamini, Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Development Management based in Matsapha, Swaziland

Communities have inherent in their systems, means of survival and a tenacity that has seen them through very difficult times. There is heart in communities that keeps pumping and keeping people alive even in the midst of poverty and adversity.

Am I saying communities don’t need development interventions? Not at all, but the issue at hand is how development workers can harness these “in-built” community strengths. How can community resilience lead to sustainable development?

Resilience in Action

The process of continuous survival and coping even in the hardest of situations is called “resilience.” Masten (2009) defines it this way: “Coping may result in the individual ‘bouncing back’ to a previous state of normal functioning, or simply not showing negative effects [from shocks].” In Sub-Sahara we have seen the principle of resilience in action in rural communities. Sub Sahara is in trouble, but there is a remnant that continues to survive and thrive in the face of all these challenges.

Irrespective of government or development practitioner intervention, the elderly in Swaziland tend to demonstrate a high level of resilience in the face of perpetual poverty and HIV. In Swaziland, because of the high HIV prevalence rate (26%) the country is faced with an orphan challenge, the burden of which falls on older relatives, often female. Modeling by the U.N. SPECTRUM indicates that by 2015 there will be about 110,000 children who will have been orphaned as a result of AIDS in Swaziland, a kingdom of just over 1 million people. In the absence of a state organized social security system, the burden of care is accepted because of emotional bonding, duty, guilt and/or the lack of other available services in the community. It has been acknowledged for some time that the traditional homestead has long ago ceased to offer the social safety net it once did, but to understand how these systems functioned in the past is key to building a brighter future.

Are typical development interventions at odds with resilience?

As development workers continue to design interventions on behalf of communities, the question I ask myself is, “How can development workers harness people’s resilience and use it for sustainable development?” Here I am not referring to a sustainability that just focuses on the workers trying to keep their jobs by getting more funding to replicate a program so that it can be called a best practice. Rather sustainability is largely to do with a program being able to continue generating benefits for the community even when donor funding has been finished. When communities are empowered to do more—that I call sustainability.

For development workers to facilitate sustainable development by using people’s personal strengths, there is need for a shift in their mindset, especially where their approach is concerned and how they integrate the views of the communities. At the end of the day, communities must be able to integrate bottom-up development programs into their daily routine.

What seems to matter to us as development practitioners is we want change the way we perceive it. From where I stand this push for change is usually service provider and/or donor driven, and less about the lived realities of the people we are serving. In effect, we forget who really matters. If we push the agenda of development from our perspective and forget that communities have survived and continue to survive in spite of our efforts, then we are bound to fail in any attempt to bring about sustainable development.

Meaningful consultation with communities must become a “must-have”

Sustainability is asking ourselves what is really the change that we want to see during and after an intervention, beyond outputs. And there is no way we can ask this question and get an answer without proper consultation with community members. Often the argument of practitioners against consultation is that the cost is too high. I have seen a few projects designed on behalf of communities that have done well. However, the cost of consultation versus the cost of a white elephant or an ineffective program means its long-term dividends cannot be overlooked.

To properly consult with communities is banking on the fact that communities are a resilient lot that will survive, even without interventions. Lessons learnt from my work is that inherent in community systems already is development—communities know what they need and what to do to come out of their poverty situation, but simply lack technical know-how and resources.

So as an outsider coming into their system, development workers need to develop a mentality that will appreciate who people are, rather than just disrupting the way they do things with a short-term intervention. Systems approaches allow development workers to understanding how things influence one another and see communities as a whole, i.e. the forest rather than the trees. 

Conclusion

Households survive in hard times without technical expertise provided by the development community.  The act of care giving has continued to sustain families even in the face of perpetual suffering, disease, sickness, unemployment and high levels of poverty. Tapping into community individual, family, and community resilience is one of the ways countries like Swaziland can achieve sustainable development.

At the heart of resilience, there is an underlying ability for human beings to sustain themselves and push for development. It is internal strength that pushes rural communities to fight for survival and development workers need to find ways to better leverage these strengths.

 

***

Clement N. Dlamini, from the Kingdom of Swaziland, is an International Development Practitioner who is a Social Worker by training and at heart. Clement has 12 years experience working in development with local and international civil society organizations, the U.N., and government and has a Masters in Social Work from the Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas.

 

 

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25 Comments

  1. Ofentse Morake

    This is an interesting article. It sets a true reflection of where I come from and demonstrates how my resilent local community has evolved into a frustrated community which came as a result of the government introducing temporary programs to improve the lives of the communities. However, these programs which are not well implemented taught the community to depend on the government thereby loosing their ability(resilent) to do things themselves such as farming.

  2. Leigh Ann

    I love this! It articulates ideas that I’ve been rambling about for the past few months. We need to appreciate the existing strengths of communities, help them celebrate all that they already have – releasing them from the idea that some external agent will come in and give them the solution. The true value add is to facilitate a conversation that helps communities to realize their strengths and resources, to organize to figure out how to fill the small gaps, and to inculcate this process for sustainable grassroots development.

    My question is how to fit this model into logframe/result framework-driven projects?

  3. This is an excellent piece of work. I still harbour hope that it would be shared with our development partners as they map out assistance programmes for the communities without the participation of/’meaningful consultation’ with the communities. Change as perceived in flush offices is not what the rural folks need. Some of these programmes have contributed to dampening the fighting spirit of communities. For example, you have the Mshandane ‘food aid programmes’ have created a dependency syndrome where communities no longer fend for themselves. Fields lying idle due to the expectation of ‘free food rations’. I do not want to also downplay the impact of HIV/AIDS. The surge in the number of orphans is a serious developmental challenge for the country. It is unfortunate that relevant policies such as that of decentralisation have been shelved. That policy brings services to the rural communities and also allows stakeholders including development partners the opportunity to harness the ‘heart’ of the communities. I am very glad you shared this piece. It is my hope that Swazis and indeed Africans would become increasingly involved in mapping the development path of their local domain.

  4. Gugulethu Dlamini

    Interesting read indeed, however my take is that our communities have been so inflitrated by development assistance that this has tended to diminishif not wipe out the resilience and has created over dependancy. we do need to find a balance and a way to harness that resiliance and indegenous knowledge in our bid for “community development”.

  5. Themba Manana

    I’ve always believed that what delays progress and change in any situation is looking outward instead of inward for solutions. Most of the time, the power within and the in-built ability to turn things around in any setting is underrated. Perhaps the focus of most interventions should be to develop those inner abilities. This I say of individuals as well as communities as the article says. Surely we can tap into the potential that people have and help them sustain themselves in the long term. Again one wonders how many interventions actually prioritize the well being of the said communities…. One wonders how many projects are actually run with good motives and intentions. I could go on and on ….all I’m saying is great article Mr Dlamini – we need more critical and constructive thinking like this – Let us have the people at heart in all our interventions and of course the sustainability matter too. People are stronger and more able than we sometimes think – it is those strengths that we should develop!!

  6. Pamela Notununu

    Hi Ps Cle,I enjoyed reading your article. I was once exposed to the concept of “livelihood strategies”… A friend considered the concept in the face of RDP Housing ”Beneficiaries” selling and or leasing their housing units.

    I like: “communities know what they need and what to do to come out of their poverty situation, but simply lack the technical know-how and resources…”

    The point made in the study was that the interventions of the state (where Housing delivery i sconcerned) often fail to understand and appreciate the strategies that are employed by individuals and communities in an attempt to survive. The lack of understanding results in the wrong ‘technical know-how and resources’ being implemented and later rejected…

    For me, ‘development workers’ and ‘communities’ find themselves in a scenario where there are conflicting rationalities… As with the state, the intention, over and above meeting the constitutional mandate of providing shelter, seeks to impose a certain level of order, and functionality within urban settings by eradicating “slums/shack”… For beneficiaries, a house is not just a house… Design-wise it relates to family structure and may even have a bearing on ones ability to engage in their cultural practices. Location-wise it relates to Economics(proximity to employment opportunities), social ties that serve as a safety net in tough financial times.

    So what the development worker implementing these interventions fails to do is to understand what the community needs and to balance those needs with available resources…

    All I’m saying is that I appreciate the notion of “community resilience” and there certainly is a great need to do more UNDERSTANDING. If the state and or development workers fail to do so they run the risk of being rendered useless…

    God bless!

  7. Khodani Nematei

    This morning a colleague and I were discussing how we as citizens have inherited a dependency mentality when we got our freedom, i.e. South Africa. Unfortunately the leadership that ushered us into our freedom thought fixing everything for us while we heal and give accolades instead of earning it crippled our perspective for life (the motive was reasonable). We now have this mentality that the world owes us something and we fail to tap into our God given potential to achieve things for our self. There are countries who have grants to develop their rural areas but they meet their citizens half way i.e. Scotland (I stand to be corrected); Now such balances out what assistance is about; you can only assist a person who is doing something already. With what I have experienced with a project we are piloting were I am employed, I have seen how powerful such development has when you give the community ownership and strengthening what they are involved in/or assisting them in realising what they can do and help them start but we unfortunately also encountered the downside of such developments were people still feel they are owed something, suppressing the power they have in their own development. I look forward to seeing a generation that wants’ to be strengthened were they have started than those who sit and wait for handouts. Its time to shake off the mentality of, ‘I can’t unless I am held’ and welcome “I have so this is how you can help me”. I see it in me as well so this I so it must start with ME. Thanks for the article sir;-)

  8. Congratulations Clement. I have read through and have really got an appetite whetting to read more of your articles please continue to write more on community development issues!We need more of this in Swaziland.

    This will also set IDM a cut above the rest.

  9. Cliff

    Interesting reading, sounds to me like hunting and gathering philosophy. Is resilience compatible with our post-modern society? where do you place the role of the socio-political enviroment? I am weary of resilience as the ultimate pursuit, when will the change come? I am not sure if I understand the link between resilience and sustainability.

  10. This is so wonderful and I give witness that my own community last month was battling with development partners rejecting the water project to build boreholes. They believed their water source was safe for it has sustained generations.

  11. Clement N Dlamini

    Thanks everyone for the comments on this article, it’s exciting the kind of discussion it is generating. And I have been thinking about some of your comments especially the question by Leigh Ann on where resilience fits on the log frame, having worked in M&E especially where development evaluation is concerned, I have observed a narrow focus of practitioners on outputs rather than outcomes. The question I always ask myself is “so what”, because our inputs are wasted if they don’t result to positive outcomes and more importantly resulting in change/impact. Our tendency of celebrating the number of schools built, nurses hired, people receiving food packages should come to end because that may not result change. Rather than focus our attention on the log frame we need to develop a Theory of Change, what is the change that we want to see??? Otherwise, I believe communities contribute as a resource and input this resilience because it is a strength that can be harnessed to facilitate sustainable change. I hope this is clear.

    Cliff I share your sentiments with regards the socio-political environment, the playing ground needs to be level (even though realistically in never is) to facilitate partnerships between development partners, government and the communities themselves. Political commitment is very necessary…but in the case of Swaziland and other Sub Saharan countries it is very minimal, which is why I was saying communities have inherent in them survival and resilience that keep them going in spite of government commitment or not. Therefore, my question is, how can we tap into this resource – I believe community resilience is an untapped resource which may lead to sustainable development.

  12. Clement N Dlamini

    By the way Cliff I believe with my heart that resilience is compatible with any kind of society in view of the fact that it is inherent in human beings who form communities. So where there is a human being you will find a certain level of resilience, others elect to call survival, but in practice if we can decide to focus on the strength perspective approach to development rather than a deficit approach, then we can be on our way to sustainable development. Every system has its own flaws but nothing beats the human spirit that is hungry and takes ownership of the change they want to see. Which is why we advocate for combination of bottom up and top down approach that have a focus on empowering communities to demand services. I have learnt in the few years in practice that communities can make or break any development interventions, which is why they need to be handled with care and be allowed to lead their own development process.

  13. thank you so much for this article and for comments. I am deeply inspired by what you write about the necessity and potency of resilience in community to sustain development. Can we deepen this converstion with shared actions which promote resilience in community. I have been working in Haiti over the past two years – originally training health workers and educators (trained and volunteers after te earthquake) in using narrative to strengthen reslience, empower individuals and communities with inner capacities for presence, creativity, focus and expression. It seems to me that the combination of developing programs that provide inner nurturance side by side with development that serves the needs of community becomes sustainable and intelligent from within. What are other projects and approaches. thank you so much for your important contribution!!

  14. Harriet

    Nice Reading…

    The only way I think that development workers can harness community resilience is by not interfearing with community resilience! Back in the early 2000s, communities in northern Uganda lived in concentration camps (to protect them from a vicious and notorious Lord’s Resistance Army rebel group). A typical camp could accommodate up to 2000 households on a 2kmsq piece of land. Each household had only enough space for 2 grass thatched huts and a make shift washroom would be constructed near the cooking area. The huts would burn very so often especially in the dry seasons when there was no rain; this was because they were constructed so near one another due to limited space available to a household. Each morning, this happened in any particular camp, community members were up on their roofs rebuilding it, with such visible resilience. By the time ‘we’ often arrived with ‘our’ relief (famously called non-food relief items), say after 24 hours, which would surely be fasted time we could make it to them, they would have completed re-roofing their huts. ‘Our’ tarpaulins which ideally should have relieved them would be used to dry their beans or maize in the sun. In spite of these repeated state of occurrences, ‘we’ did not learn a thing. ‘We’ simply continued to provide non-food items to the communities when huts got burnt.

    Let development workers not interfere with community resilience.

  15. Clement N Dlamini

    Harriet this is a beautiful story of communities members doing what they know what to do, living for each other. And my observation has been we as development workers come in as outsiders with our interventions and disrupt their way of doing things instead of harnessing these strengths . This is the very question I am asking in this article how can we tap into community resilience to enforce sustainable development? What I love with this particular community you are referring to is that they found use of your tarpaulins “dry their beans and maize”. This would have offended other practitioners, BUT I love that you allowed them to find use of the tarpaulins.

  16. B. Madlela

    This is the opinion that some of us have been waiting for. This perspective if you can allow me to call it needs to be discussed and debated exhaustively especially by us Africans who have been psychologically conditioned to depend on perishable handouts. Cliff asks an important question about the link between resilience and sustainability. To answer his question it is important to ask him a question. Is the dependence syndrome in most of our communities sustainable? The answer is NO.The best way of remedying this dependence syndrome is to use resilience from our communities to implement durable rather than perishable programmes. Food handouts are perishable. You don’t give the man a fish but you teach him how to fish. Teaching him how to fish will enable him to combine his resilience and newly learnt fishing skills. This will enable him to sustain himself and his family. I used the word fishing figuratively. On the issue of politics and change, it is simple. All these politicians and change advocates must not forget to tap the golden community resource ‘resilience in persuit of their agendas. Failure to utilise community resilience would result in politicians coming up with fragile projects, and change advocates coming up with cosmetic changes. Let us use community resilience as a strong foundation where we can build our developmental projects and also play a fair political game. Depending on donor handouts will never sustain our communities and generations to come but wisely utilising resilience will.

  17. Omwa Samuel Samson

    A good piece of analysis. It resonates well with my analysis of the orphaning phenomena in Uganda. A central argument i advance is that for a community OVC initiative to continue meeting the needs of the surging number of OVCs, the OVC response stakeholders need to be cognizant of communities positive resilient coping mechanisms and strategies. Any response approach that is designed without due regards to culturally acceptable community coping strategies and mechanisms or which is not in tandem with community ways of conceptualizing a problem response is bound to fail. The consequence would be that meeting the needs of the OVCs would still continue to be elusive to many OVC policy makers and implementers. It is only when OVC response initiatives are designed in synergy with the ingenious community coping mechanisms and strategies, only then can we be confident of stemming the orphaning challenge in an effective, efficient and sustainable manner. The residual resilient capacities manifested in the communities through the diverse coping strategies and mechanisms adopted, if not supported through de-institutionalized approaches, then unravelling the puzzle that has eluded many OVC development practitioners and policy makers will still continue to be elusive with devastative consequences for the African orphan.

  18. lin

    I agree totally! Sometimes as ‘development practitioners’ in our effort to ‘help’ and ‘support’ we approach communities as ‘programs’ and ‘projects’ seeming to forget or overlook the truth that people living their lives have agency, ways of doing things and sometimes what we problematise in order to ‘address’ become hindrances to the ways in which people live within their communities. Great read Cley! Poignant.

  19. Andisiwe Nakani

    Hi Ps. Cle

    What you write about is something very close to my heart and consequently my professional work. I did my honours research on something very similar ‘the resourcefulness of RDP housing beneficiaries…’.

    I would be interested in reading more of your work as I’ve just come across a new notion: Alienated Human Condition which alludes the core of your article.

    I know some people who would also maybe like to invite you for a couple of sessions for your contribution. This is awesome!!Thank you

  20. Themba Matsebula

    Such a fantastic paper Mr Clement. I enjoyed reading it. Through out my course of work and interaction with Community I have discovered that the tendency to think and act for communities still more pervasive in some other NGOs. That practice does not leave any impact on the people targeted but instead the beneficiaries are the implementing partners as they get their pay at the end of month.

    So yah, your paper is good and reflects the true picture of the situations in the communities like those in Swaziland.

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