Teaching Social Concern and Awareness: The Fear of community development activities

It all started with a simple text message, one warm afternoon.

Jasmin: “Good pm! I was thinking, is it okay to re-schedule the activities next-next week? I am thinking that I should finish all the proposals first this week.”

Me (replied the next day): “...Visit Ate Annalyn and ask them when and where are the most appropriate date and venue for your workshop with the youth. Let’s also meet tomorrow around 2PM. Tnx.”

J: “...Okay, I am planning to go the Villegas community now anyway.”

For some reason, that conversation reminded me of some student field workers’ story who would keep to themselves, stay in their rooms for a long time, and come out declaring their plan to solve the community’s ailments. They are more comfortable hiding in their temporary quarters and planning strategies amongst themselves instead of immersing in the grassroots realities. Meanwhile, life in the community goes on without them: farmers till the land, workers run the machines, fisher folks set out to sea, and women struggle for equality.

“Is there fear of starting the activities?”,

I asked her.

Jasmin’s case is a bit different, though. She is not detaching herself from the community, in fact, she is about to go to the field and talk to the residents. However, she is afraid of initiating the community intervention. She takes out her pile of scratch papers and shows me the scribbles of her loose project proposals.

Fear of community development activities

“Is there fear of starting the activities?”, I asked her.

“Yes there is and it’s almost debilitating,” she is teary-eyed and almost wept as she replies.

Like the woman in the picture, Jasmin feels anxious

as the date of her first planned community activity nears.

Although I do not believe that the field workers in the story above deliberately did this to isolate themselves from the community but, more than anything else, I think it is about control. Like them, Jasmin wants every small details arranged and scheduled first before implementing any intervention or activities. She needs to foresee all the particulars in order to have more power and control. She articulates that she is afraid to commit any small mistakes. In my opinion, while she believes in participation from the community, it is not to the point that their inputs, questions, and suggestions will stray from what she originally planned. She is like a boss who micro-manages.

Why are we afraid of letting go of our control? Why are we scared of the community taking control over its own development projects or activities? Why can we not release our power and give it to the community?

Activists, verbalists, macro, and micro

I remember Paolo Freire’s (1968) dichotomy of activists and verbalists. Activists, from the keyword “action”, is not equivalent to protesters, in Freire’s vocabulary. He used this word to refer to people who intervene in communities without analyzing and understanding social development theories. They act for action’s sake without direction and comprehension. On the other hand, verbalists are people who analyze and discuss theories without immersing themselves in the realities of the community nor carrying out any development projects or activities. They do not “walk the talk” and are not in touch with reality. They read their books while locked inside a comfortable room far away from the community.

Freire (1968) advocates for balancing between action and reflection. What does this mean for community development workers? First, I think it means that community development plans are never perfect because we reflect upon its effectiveness in the end. Second, it requires that community development plans be grounded in community realities. As scholars, we read books but we also step out of the library and into the community.

Related to this, Margaret Wheatley (1992) articulates that in times of chaos, we can only understand and change reality if we move up and down from macro- to micro- and back again to macro-. We look at the details of our realities, look at the bigger picture, then look back at the small details again, and so on and so forth. We have to both immerse ourselves in the realities of the community and at the same time analyze those realities with the lenses we have been taught in school. We are like a scientist who gaze under the microscope to study small organisms but at the same time study its relationship with the bigger environment.

Why are we scared of the community taking control over its own development projects or activities?

On the left is Paolo Freire's (1968) book "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" and on the right

is Margaret Wheatley's (1992) book "Leadership and the new science:

Discovering order in a chaotic world"

“It’s okay to make mistakes. You should not be afraid of them,” I attempt to assure Jasmin.

If we deadbolt ourselves in a room, yes we avoid blunders, but we also do not accomplish anything in the community. Every project is expected to make some sort of error in the middle, says Margaret Wheatley. That’s why we have an evaluation after, to take note of how to improve on them in the next activities. Mistakes are expected, normal, and not to be feared.

What are the most common fears we experience when we implement a community development activity?

What do you think of Paolo Freire’s dichotomy of activists and verbalists?

What do you think of Margaret Wheatley’s articulation of chaos theory?

Watch Margaret Wheatley talk about making mistakes here:

Ten key principles for creating healthy community:

8. Everything is a failure in the middle