Community Development and Culture

The second session marks the start of proper lessons. We delved into the concepts of:

1. Community Development

2. Culture

We also welcomed new students into our class! We're no longer 'The Lucky Ten' (you'd know if you were here before it got changed), but yes The Lucky Ones. I guess it wouldn't be great to be fixated and defined by a specific number - oh and what a coincidence! The two concepts we focused on during this lesson was precisely exploring their various definitions and interpretations.

It was indeed insightful and enlightening to hear from every single person because it really proved the point that every one's experiences and backgrounds shape the way they think and feel about different things.

On a more technical side of things, here are some learning points from the session:

- The purpose of community development is the pursuit of solidarity and agency by adhering to the principles of self-help, felt needs and participation (Jnanabrata Bhattacharyya (2004) Theorizing Community Development, Journal of the Community Development Society)

- A broad movement for social change in practice takes many forms shaped by different ideologies

- An approach to world view: Describe, Interpret, Evaluate

Thank you to our teachers, and everyone for being so open to hearing from one another, sharing your own opinions and diversifying the class. I believe we're all looking forward to our next class - where we have a special guest coming to visit. Stay tuned for that!

"When we look at something, it is largely what we think is there. What we think we see – we interpret their forms in the light of our own experience and memory, and that of our shared cultural memory."

– MacFarlane (2003) Mountains of the Mind