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Guidance

Community Development Approach Recommended Core Competencies, Readings, and External Resources

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Recommended Core Competencies for Community Engagement Approach
Recommended Readings and External Resources

Recommended Core Competencies for Community Facilitators of the Community Development Approach

Core competencies recommended to support effective use of this Community Development Approach are provided below:

  • Facilitation Skills: Experienced in facilitating participatory learning and action (PLA) processes to enable communities to express their understanding or concerns about problems they consider to be important. Able to analyse and reflect on issues, generate motivation to act, and identify possible solutions without leading or injecting your own ideas into community discussions. Knowledgeable of PLA tools and capable of selecting the appropriate tools to support communities in their continuous reflection, learning and action process.
  • Gender Mainstreaming: Understanding of gender mainstreaming to promote gender equality, as well as intersectionality and implications for vulnerable groups in terms of planning and implementing projects.
  • Training of Trainers: Understanding of adult learning theory application for effective training: having the skill to make an intervention (training or community discussion) interactive using different methods/activities and the use of participatory tools.
  • Understanding of COM-B and stages of change model and appropriate strategies of engagement at each stage.
  • Animal Welfare: good understanding of animal welfare in terms of the five domains and their behavioural equivalents.
  • Compassionate handling: to handle compassionately makes the experience more positive and welfare-friendly, it improves the experience for animals and humans. Understanding of how to handle animals humanely and to lead by example.
  • Compassion: capacity to observe and share understanding for another’s distress or pain and have a desire to alleviate or mitigate it.
  • Excellent communication skills:
    - active/reflective listening skills
    - two-way communication, open ended questions
    - conversations for change: capacity to lead/facilitate discussions to solicit conversations for change and motivate and influence people to change using their own reflections, use values-based communications and be a good negotiator all within an ethical framework
  • Group formation and strengthening:
    - experienced with group formation and strengthening processes within the local context e.g. how to set up, legalization and registration of community-based organizations, promoting women’s membership and leadership
  • Community organizing/mobilization: effective event planning and organization skills (detail oriented).

The following C4A tools and resources may be useful to supporting capacity building related to these core competencies:

Recommended Readings and External Resources

Recommended readings and external resources that support this approach and the development of recommended core competencies are provided below:

C4A Readings

Community Development

Facilitation Skills and Participatory Methods

Gender Mainstreaming and Intersectionality

Behaviour Change

Other

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