Hi, This is Rashed. I feel really sorry for not having my activities going on this blog. I want your comments to stay alive this project.

Summary of Project Action

Dear friends and colleagues,


I have started my action plan of the project ‘Community development and building community capacity against corruption’ on 14 April, 2010. So far I have shared how I am going with my action through this blog. Today I am going to sum up the experience I have gathered with my action.


On 14 April, 2010 I talked for the first time about this project with some of my Bangladeshi friends at Guyatt Park, Brisbane on a social gathering. All of them agreed on the point of community participation against corruption. I found one friend who is really interested to participate actively with this project. I invited my friends and colleagues who are in Bangladesh through the message option of the blog. But blog is a new tool for me so to others. Therefore, I got more responses from them showing the interest on what blog is (?) rather than the project. Then I emailed them and tried to satisfy their interest. Again, I invited them to my blog for their response on the project via email.


The email sent to the community

This time I got some positive responses from my community in the ‘forum’ I created in my blog. However, I got few responses through email also by showing their interest. However, some of my community members emailed me that they want to work on this issue but they have some technical problems with blog or internet.


The response from the community member


So far with all the above efforts I am very encouraged to say that I have got some members from the community who showed their real interest to work on this project. It is also very appreciating for me to know that all of us want to do something for the benefit of the community or country. But most of us do not know what to do or how to do. For this what we need is to encourage them and bring them together. However, still we are in the network building stage and what we have agreed upon is that we all will try to motivate our friends or colleagues who are in our surroundings to spread the network in order to eventually create significant impact on alleviating corruption from the country.


I would like to thank you all for your encouragement and responses to make the project effective and look forward for your further feedback.


Best Regards,


Mohammad Rashed Wasif

Importance of community participation in collective action

Community participation is a technique to move towards social change. Maintaining the status quo is a great challenge against second order change. However, community participation to fight against corruption is tough. Common people need to work together collaboratively in order to create social change in this regard. Trust is the core of community participation. It can build up community networks.


However, people cannot keep on taking part due to failure of tangible actions. Only network can produce and preserve collective action. It can recognize mutuality. Gilchrist (2004) argued for the upholding of formal and informal networking to community development. The powerful collective action can be established through these types of networking. Flexible networks can create durable societies as well. For this reason, we are now working on building up networks among community members for active participation. We have already invited some of the members of the community through e-mail and given them our blog address for creating a space for better engagement.

Problems in top down approach of service delivery organizations

System analysis is usually intricate in nature. Stakeholder analysis is an integral part of system analysis. The analysis of the system of public service delivery organization of Bangladesh shows the disappointment of top down approach. Political actors, bureaucrats and civil society are linked with this systematic arrangement. Political actors are corrupted by themselves. They cannot make sure answerability of the bureaucrats towards them and ultimately to the citizen. Again, civil society does not congregate the necessity of the community.


Poor or marginalized groups suffer more in the top down system. This system fails to combat corruption at every stage of the service delivery. Therefore, only bottom up approach of community participation can enhance better services to the community. This approach can intertwine more networks into the community. These networks can build up awareness among the community members to fight against corruption. Therefore, bottom up approach is the key to reduce corruption in the system.

Invitation for community partiicipation

Dear colleagues and friends,

As part of my Masters program at Uni of Queensland, I have developed a project plan. The plan is about community participation against corruption. I have already got one of my friends who has shown his interest to work collectively for social change against corruption. Now we are inviting other friends to visit my blog (rashedcdp.blogspot.com) which is created for the reflection of this project and welcome you all to move forward to share your feelings or comments about this issue. I believe that your kind participation can encourage us and we can make a difference if we all work together to have social change.

I am expecting all of your kind participation. Thank you very much.

Kind Regards,

Mohammad Rashed Wasif

Initiating the Action Plan

Dear all,

As I have already mentioned in my project plan I took the opportunity of a gathering of Bangladeshi students at the occasion of Bengali new year celebration at ‘Guyatt Park’ on 14 April, 2010 to initiate my project action. I shared my private concern about corruption issue and the importance of active community participation to fight against it with my friends of the commmunity whether they have the similar concern like me or their own concerns or views about the corruption issue.Infact, all of them are distressed about the issue. But one of them showed his deep interest to work collectively for building social change against the corruption issue. So I think I have got my 'dyad'. Now its time to move it forward.

Kind Regards,

Wasif

Dear friends and community members,

I have published my project plan in this blog. Any comments or suggestions will be highly appreciated. The social change through collective action is a dynamic process. Therefore, your active participation can guide this project to a right direction.

Kind Regards,

Wasif