Community Development

Participatory development is the most important approach towards enabling communities to help themselves and sustain efforts in development work. Communities are no longer seen as recipients of development programmes; rather, they have become critical stakeholders that have an important role to play in the management of programmes and projects in their areas.

Some NGOs see themselves as champions of the poor, lobbying government to give them a better deal. Others play a watchdog role, ensuring that governments and utilities remain honest, focused on serving the people. A third variety prefers to focus at ground level, finding ways to bring communities together to provide basic services to those in most need. Many look to combine these roles within one organization.

Partnerships can struggle to accommodate these different visions, making it hard to harness the skills, abilities and local contacts that NGOs offer to best effect. NGOs themselves can be torn between engaging other stakeholders in order to provoke change from the inside and maintaining their independence from the outside.

Youth do not live in a vacuum, independent of influences around them. Rather, social, cultural, and economic factors strongly influence young people's ability to access reproductive and sexual health information and services. To improve young people's sexual and reproductive health, therefore, programs must address youth and their environment. In order to address youth adequately and appropriately, programs should be designed and implemented with the meaningful involvement of youth. To address youth's environment, planners must acknowledge that community and families significantly influence youth.