Table of Contents >
   Part B. Community Assessment, Agenda Setting, and Choice ... >
      Chapter 5. Choosing Strategies to Promote Community Health a... >
         Section 2. Community (Locality) Development >
             Tools & Checklists - A checklist that summarizes the major points contained in the section. >

Community (Locality) Development

  

Tools & Checklists

 Contributed by Phil Rabinowitz Edited by Bill Berkowitz

Checklist

 Here you will find a checklist summarizing the important points of the section.

 

What is locality development?

__ Locality development is community-building through improving the process by which things get done.

__ Locality development creates an infrastructure for community activism and action.

__ Locality development emphasizes positive action on the part of a whole community.

 

Why should you engage in locality development?

__ Locality development breaks down barriers within the community by encouraging and improving communication among all individuals and groups in the population.

__ Locality development brings together people who normally have no contact, and defines the community as including all of them.

__ Locality development lays a solid base for community support of activism around issues of importance.

__ Locality development helps individuals and groups acquire new skills and knowledge.

__ Locality development brings forth the natural leaders from within the community.

__ Locality development encourages the community to identify its own resources and understand its own strengths.

__ Locality development makes the community self-sufficient and able to identify and solve its own problems.

__ Locality development gives voice to everyone, and makes participatory democracy the normal method of community decision-making.

__ Locality development builds a foundation for real community and equity, leading to a healthy community and long-term, positive social change.

 

When should you engage in locality development?

__ Locality development is appropriate at almost any time in almost any community.

 

Who should be involved in locality development?

__ Locality development should be inclusive and participatory, involving people from all sectors and areas of the community.

 

How do you engage in locality development?

__ Get to know the community by learning its history, spending time experiencing it, and establishing relationships with its members.

__ Determine what will motivate the community to organize.

__ Identify opinion leaders and other trusted individuals and groups, and work with them.

__ Recruit people to the effort.

__ Establish a communication system.

__ Encourage leadership from within the community.

__ Create a structure as a focus for the development effort.

__ Define the most important issues that relate to the community's overall concerns.

__ Develop a strategic plan.

__ Continually monitor and evaluate your work.

__ Make the locality development effort self-sustaining and community-run, so that it's established as a permanent fixture.