Developing_Meaningful_and_Successful_Community_Projects

Developing Meaningful and Successful Community Projects. Prapeeporn Aksornsie, This paper describes the learning process by which local communities can be mentored to develop meaningful and successful community projects and is based on 15 years of hands on practical experience in the Central Region of Thailand. Introduction: The process by which local communities can learn to create and manage meaningful and successful community projects is shown below in Figure1: this model has been developed based on 15 years of experience working with local village communities in Central Thailand. ------------------------------------------------- Figure 1: ------------------------------------------------- Community Tourism Learning Process Implicit Knowledge Natural Resources (Places), Religion (Ceremonies, Ritual, Belief), Solidarity Wisdom, Way of Life, Family Training, Social Capital (Kindness, Faithfulness, Comfort, Smile). Perception Exchange Thoughts Observe Reflect Analysis Based on Experience Generalise Systematise Consider Alternative Options Planning: Test by Trial & Error Experiment Integrate Apply in Practice Transfer Reproduce Monitor Explicit Knowledge Training Oriented Learning Activities, Field Trips, Group and Network Learning,Technology Recycle Recycle First Step: Discovering Richness of Implicit Knowledge. The first important step is to realize and catalogue the richness of knowledge and resources that already exist within the community, many of which will be tacit and need to be rendered explicit. A good way to accomplish this is to hold a meeting or series of informal meetings including all the interested parties within the community: this approach also ensures that interested parties are included as part of the activity from the beginning. During a guided discussion exploring attributes of the community, the true richness of its implicit knowledge can be surfaced and mapped. This is an activity which continues beyond the initial meetings with regular occasional and informal meetings used to bring people together for various reasons including refreshing the community knowledge pool. The tacit knowledge within a community has many facets and when these are surfaced and organized the first step towards empowering the community has been taken. This first step is a step of self discovery for the community which should leave community members with a good feeling about what they already possess as community capital. The tacit knowledge may comprise among other things social capital, aspects of religion, personal or group solidarity, local wisdom, wisdom from way of life or family training and will be augmented by the local natural resources. The output of this first stage is an annotated inventory of the collective implicit knowledge including identification of knowledge carriers and of natural resources. Second Step: Discussion of Potential Projects. The next step in to coach the community as it builds a catalogue of potential projects from which the most likely to succeed can be chosen. The main criteria for including a potential project are practicality, sustainability, financial viability, adequate resources and strong sponsorship within the community. Having realized in the first step the potential residing within the community, the members’ perception is now raised and they naturally begin to become empowered to be more adventurous in devising projects. Thoughts on possible projects are exchanged in a safe and friendly environment, and those present are encouraged to give their first observations. This leads to an analysis based on community experience. Having outlined several potential project ideas, each is discussed in detail both in general terms and also according to a systematic analysis to determine strengths and weaknesses and to determine critical details and critical success factors which must be met. Wherever possible, alternative options are listed in order to provide a way to move the projects forward in the event that a certain critical success parameter is not met. One project is chosen as a test case for implementation. The creation and implementation of this test project is now begun: this is often a trial and error process. Let us take as an example a village community situated on a river with a good local market and well loved temples nearby on both banks of the river. The proposal is to create new income for the village by facilitating tourism both to the village and by river boat to the nearby temples. The planning phase looks at the criteria for success, namely practicality, sustainability, financial viability, adequate resources and strong sponsorship within the community. The practicality is good: the village has excellent markets, a small pier and under-employed boatmen with river boats. A piece of land is available to create a car park for visitors who arrive by car or by van. The sustainability of the project is good because the village and the temples have a good name and the surrounding area has a large urban population from which tourists can be drawn. The project appears financially viable: scant new resources are required for start-up and a local businessman is prepared to step in with seed funding if this is required. Most of the preparative work is organization or simple labor which can be carried out by the local community. Once the project has been commenced, significant new income for the community is to be expected. The resources in terms of market, transport, temples and available people to carry out the necessary work are available. The community is excited to begin work on the project: there is strong sponsorship and a small leadership team acceptable to the community has already identified itself. Third Step: The Pilot Phase. The community decides to start the project and send word out through the network of local communities that they have new opportunities for local tourism. As the first tourists arrive they gather experience of what goes well and what can be improved so that this can be integrated into their activities. Most feedback is positive: the village is attractive, car parking is easy, the market is appreciated, the river tours work well and the temples are of great interest to the visitors. While this feedback strengthens the resolve of the community, the feedback on things to improve provides the most valuable information. Many tourists say it is difficult to find the village when they arrive by car, so new and larger signs are placed on the nearby highway. Some visitors travel a longer distance and are interested in an overnight stay: there are some hotels and resorts nearby and information on these needs to be gathered, and the possibility for home-stay in the village needs to be discussed. Some visitors suggest using the internet to better advertise the tourist activities and provide information. The lessons learned are applied in practice and an effort is made to continuously collect customer feedback in order to tailor the tourist experience to the needs of customers. A young member of the community with IT skills who recently married and stopped work to look after her young child is brought on board to create an internet website to inform potential tourists of all the available community tourism and accommodation options, including the booking of individual, family and larger tour groups. She can do this work from home and is paid a lump sum amount to create and stock the website and a commission of 5% on bookings received plus expenses to cover her dual role as internet booking coordinator and the person who updates the website. As bookings and tours increase, so does the demand for local tour guides: this provides further new employment for local people. The main task of the business coach during this phase is to encourage the project team and to provide them direction and access to resources as needed. The objective is to further the self empowerment of the community. Fourth Step: The Operational Phase for Community Projects. In our example, the pilot project can now move to a full operational phase and other projects with often different project teams can be created in a similar way to that chosen as our example. The community can now provide much of the support from what it has learned from the pilot project and is better aware of the skills or resources that need to be acquired in order to provide a solid base for community projects. At this stage, training oriented learning activities need to be set up to provide either the skill sets required or formal qualifications for some community members. Such training may include IT skills or business management skills. Some of these training activities may involve group or network learning. New skills and technologies may need to be learnt. As the community projects grow in number some form of community coordination will be required, including a social enterprise plan which quantifies how the income from the projects will be shared within the community and how this will be publicised. Field trips to other provinces or even countries may be required not only for comparison, benchmarking and learning but also for the community to enjoy bonding experiences. The Role of the Mentor. The role of the mentor throughout this process is to provide direction and support in the measure that is required by the local community. In the beginning both direction and support will be required across the broad spectrum of activities but as progress is made this will become less and selective. The skill of the mentor is in firstly introducing the learning approach, secondly helping imbed the approach and thirdly ensuring that measures are put in place to check that the progress made under guidance of the mentor is maintained when the community functions as a self empowered team. The mentor remains accessible to the community into the future to be contacted as and when the community feels this is necessary: this requires excellent mentor personal relationship skills.