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

Project Showcasing

This posting shares the thoughts related to my project for providing some ideas about what I am interested to do in my project of 'Community Involvement against Corruption' especially for the community who do not have the access to the class discussion board.

Sharing the thoughts of my project

In my project, I am interested to work on controlling corruption especially from public service delivery organizations of developing countries. Corruption makes lives difficult especially for common people of the country. However, community awareness and their involvement about the reduction of this problem are at the minimum level in many corrupted countries. Observing the situations of the government service delivery agencies, I think that accountability can play vital role to control corruption. Therefore, accountability of the service providers towards the clients of the community needs to be emphasized. Collective action of the community can have great impact in this context. Here I am sharing my thoughts in this regard. I will be highly inspired to receive comments or suggestion in this matter.


Community engagement against corruption

In most developing countries corruption is deeply rooted in top down approach. Therefore consensus of common people is essential for combating corruption. In my project plan, as a government employee I was wondering how I can engage the community against corruption.

However, Pawar (2010) identifies useful view of community development (CD) within global context. From this article I come to know that I can use any combination from different CD approaches. In the context of Bangladesh I think that combination of state initiated and community led development approach can be effective for reducing corruption. In this approach state can play major role in large scale CD activity. It can make CD activities participatory and people centred. Again, communities can address their felt needs and issues in order to get effective outcomes. Moreover, community dialogue can be an effective tool to resolve this issue. Community actions can stop an action that the community thinks undesirable and even it can initiate actions for resolving issues.

Community involvement against corruption

Combating corruption in a developing country is a challenging task as it is deeply rooted in different forms. In my project, I am thinking about the combined development approach (community initiated and state led development) for project action. I believe that awareness of common people is the key against this issue. Public officials have shown less accountability towards their stakeholders in developing countries. So community involvement is necessary in participatory approach. Advocacy and collaborative planning could be useful tool in this regard. Both of them could allow citizen voices to be heard in development activities. Again, community mobilization is important as it gets people involved directly on a specific problem. For a successful action plan, effective monitoring and evaluation are must. However, common people are less interested to be involved in this phase. Therefore, community involvement in the monitoring and evaluation phase should be emphasized for effective project plan.

Hopefully by doing so, more cohesive strategy for social change can take place. Any opinion or suggestion will be appreciated.

Networking and community development

Networking is a tool for connecting community. It enhances mutual benefit both for the organization itself and its stakeholders. Particularly it is useful for managing complex situations. I am utilizing this tool in my project plan. According to Westoby and Owen, network involves people eager to act communally in order to create desired social change. It increases spaces for community interaction. It helps building relationship among community members. It underpins the trust and ties between the organization and its clients.

I am trying to engage community people within my organization (first order change) and outside the organization (second order change) through networking. Most importantly, networks work effectively if information exchanges properly. 'Right to information act' can be useful mechanism for exchanging information effectively. Effective networking can be achieved if connections are made strategically for collective action. However, it is a challenge to get collective responses against shared problems through networking.

First posting

Hi everyone,

I have successfully created blogs. I am interested in "corruption" as my topic of project plan. Please comments.

Kind Regards,

Wasif