Community Development

Community Development

The United Nations defines community development as “a process where community members come together to take collective action and generate solutions to common problems.” It is based on the principles of self-help, mutual support, the building up of neighborhood capacities for problem-solving and self-presentation, and the promotion of collective action to bring a community’s preferences to the attention of political decision-makers (Thomas, 1993)

Gilchrist and Taylor suggest there are three vital aspects of community development:

1.Informal Education – learning that takes place predominantly through direct involvement in community activities

2.Collective Action – finding the power of combined voices and determination; the strength of many people acting for their mutual benefit or to champion the interests of those who cannot stand up for themselves

3.Organization Development – helping groups and bodies to evolve a form that enables the members to achieve their goals, to act legally and to be accountable to the membership and wider community.

Five-Point Community Initiatives

This cyclical model is used to judge whether our initiatives to engage, plan, implement, develop, or sustain have the right virtues to effect sustainable growth and development in the community impact. 

1. Engagement is all about connecting people to the community. Methods includes key informant interviews, focus group discussions, or survey that can contribute to our engagement with community. For instance, knowing current pulse of the community, this helps leaders to identify the pressing problems that need to be resolved.

2. Planning the realization of ideas from the blueprint. On this stage, the community holds its conference or meetings with its members together with external consultants. The community leaders have rundown on all possible options and gather inputs for possible innovations and breakthrough that are vital in advancing solutions (Delos Santos, 2018)

3. Implementation the process of making something active or effective. Community leaders are in-charge of advancing the program or project. However, public support is needed to gain traction. Principle of transparency is essential in the implementation. Disbursement of funds must be supported by the documents. Information about the program or project must be open for scrutiny.

4. Development is a process in which something grows or changes and become more advanced. Programs implemented must adapt to constantly changing variables.

5. Sustainability focuses on the meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs (Grant, 2020). The term sustainability used to indicate programs, initiatives and action aimed at the preservation of resources. The four pillars of sustainability are: human, social, economic, and environmental.

Core Values of Community Development

To better understand the importance of community work. The following are the core values surrounding community development:

1.Collaboration is the relationship between interest groups, government, and citizens. It is important to understand the strengths and weaknesses of communities and other collaborators. Teamwork is essential for a community development project to succeed.

2.Participative democracy is imperative in community development, this can lead to better understanding of the problems, benefits, services, and resources needed for the project. It can also lead to innovation and partnership. Contributions of community members have significant meaning and values toward change.

3.Collective Action is an act contributing to public good or welfare of the members of the community. It is the capacity of people to work together in their common interest. This includes small-scale and large-scale activities to meet local need, as well as action to promote for change.

4.Empowerment is based on power and influence to imposed solutions. It encourages the community members to learn how power relationships operate and to develop on their ability to find answers.

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Community Action / Community Engagement

Community Action refers to the collective efforts of people directed towards addressing social problems, in order to achieve social well-being. This includes a broad range of activities; it is sometimes described as “social action” or community engagement”

Community is defined as a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage. It refers to a group of people that can be equated to stakeholders, interest groups or citizen groups. On the other hand, engagement derived from the principle of respect to all members of the community, which are the right to be informed, consulted, involved and empowered.

It can be deduced that community engagement is the process of working collaboratively with and through groups of people affiliated by geographic proximity, special interest, or similar situations to address issues affecting the well-being of those people. It is a powerful vehicle for bringing about environmental and behavioral changes that will improve the health of the community and its members. It often involves partnerships and coalitions that help mobilize resources and influence systems, change relationships among partners, and serve as catalysts for changing policies, programs, and practices (CDC, 1997).

Concept of Production

Definition

According to Bates and Parkinson (n.d), production is the organized activity of transforming resources into finished products in the form of goods and services; the objective of production is to satisfy the demand for such transformed resources.
Production in ordinary sense, it means creation of a commodity for the satisfaction of human wants. For instance, a carpenter may shape the wood into a more useful things like a chair or cabinet. Hence, he created additional utility or satisfaction.

Types of Production
Primary Production – refers to extractive industries such as mining and oil extraction. In advanced countries, the primary sector is providing less employment because it uses capital intensive, which means machinery is replacing manpower.
Secondary Production refers to the conversion of raw materials into finished products. For instance, manufacturing motor cars, shirts, and medicine.
Tertiary Production – these are the services that enable the finished goods to be in the hands of the consumers. Examples, distributive traders, banking, and government services.

Factors of Production
Land is the original gift of nature. It refers to a country's natural resources. It includes, what lies under the land like coal and gold, what is over the land like air, and what is around the land seas and oceans. 
Labor is the exertion of physical and mental efforts by an individual. It is owned by individuals who sell it to firms in exchange for wages or salaries. It requires training and education to be more productive. The division of labor is based on the different levels of skills, education, and strength. 
Capital is a finished product that is used to produce other goods. 
Entrepreneur is the organizer and coordinator of land labor and capital. Many of the economists agreed that entrepreneurs are part of factor labor. However, in modern economies, large businesses are seldom owned by one person, like in a corporation.

Theory of Production
The factors of production are known as the inputs of production. Output is the result that has been created by the inputs of labor and capital combined. 
There are two types of output; goods and services. The quality and quantity of labor and capital and all other inputs have a direct impact on the quality and quantity of output. The technology is essential to the firm, it is the process by which inputs are turned into outputs. 
The factors of production are classified into: fixed factors and variable factors. The fixed factor remains constant regardless of the volume of production, while the variable factor changes in accordance with the volume of production. 

Production Function
According to Fajardo (1990) it is the technical relationship between the application of inputs (factors of production and resulting maximum obtainable output). It is a mathematical function that relates the maximum amount of output that can be obtained from a given number of inputs, generally capital and labor (Lumencandela, n.d)

Short-Run and Long-Run
The difference is not based on time but on the production inputs. In the short-run, the use of at least one factor of production cannot be changed, or there are fixed inputs. It is a period of time that is too short to allow an enterprise to change its plant capacity, yet long enough to allow a change in its variable resources. In the Long-run, it is a period of time that is long enough to permit a firm or enterprise to alter all its resources or inputs (both fixed and variable factors) For example, a laundry business can be adjusted in a month or two. However, Toyota Motor Corporation capital adjustment could take several years.

The Law of Diminishing Marginal Returns
The law states that when successive units of a variable input (like farmers) work a fixed input (like one hectare of land), beyond a certain point the additional product (output)  produced by each additional unit of a variable input decreases (Fajardo,1990).

Production with Two Variable Inputs
When more than one input level is free to be altered, a firm faces the question of what is the best input combination to use. 
According to Bajarcharja (2018), An isocost line is a graphical representation of various combinations of two factors (labor and capital) which the firm can afford or purchase with a given amount of money or total outlay. It is an important tool for determining what combination of factor-inputs the firm will choose for production process. 
Example, producer has P200 and he wants to spend his entire outlay on two factors – labor and capital. Further suppose that the price of Labor is P 4 per unit and the price of capital is P 5 per unit. If the firm spends its whole outlay of P 200 on labor only, he can buy 50 units of labor. And, if the firm spends its entire outlay on capital only, then he can buy 40 units of capital. 
An isocost line may shift due to the following reasons: 
(1) Change in total outlay to be made by the firm 
(2) Change in price of a factor-input
Ponnusamy (2016) An isoquant is a firm’s counterpart of the consumer’s indifference curve. An isoquant is a curve that shows all the combinations of inputs that yield the same level of output. ‘Iso’ means equal and ‘quant’ means quantity. Therefore, an isoquant represents a constant quantity of output. The isoquant curve is also known as an “Equal Product Curve” or “Production Indifference Curve” or Iso-Product Curve

Marginal Rate of Technical Substitution
Marginal Rate of Technical substitution (MRTS), is the amount of capita that a producer is willing to give in exchange for labor and still lie on the same isoquant (Gabay B.,Remotin R., & Uy E., (2007, p 127). We can say that MRTS is the slope of isoquant. That is:

MRTS is also equal to the ratio of the marginal product of labor to the marginal product of capital, or

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