What is Community Focus?

Dear Colleagues

"Community Focus" puts community in the center. When there is a community focus graphic, the community is in the center, and the various other actors in the development process are located in circles around the community.

This is a very different image from donor driven development, and national programs for development that start at the "top" and try to reach down to find the beneficiaries. Even with the best of design, top down programs are unlikely to be very successful, simply because they rarely have sufficient understanding of the priority problems that need to be addressed. Worse, they assume that a priority problem is going to have the same solution in communities with vastly different characteristics.

When the community is at the center or things ... then solutions can be designed to suit the circumstances.

And there will be success.

Sincerely

Peter Burgess
The Tr-Ac-Net Organization