This book presents important principles of community development and empowers students to understand the ways in which community development practitioners can work in different contexts. While this book has a practical application, and attempts to incorporate both theory and practice, it does not provide simple prescriptions of how to 'do' community work. A number of principles of practice are outlined, but the way in which they are translated into community development practice will vary from community to community and from worker to worker. Community work is, at heart, a creative exercise, and it is impossible to prescribe creativity. Rather, one can establish theoretical understandings, a sense of vision and an examination of the nature of practice, in the hope that this will stimulate a positive, informed, creative, critical and reflective approach to community work.

Table of Contents

1: The crisis in human services, the rise of individualism and the need for community; 2: Foundations of community development: an ecological perspective; 3: Foundations of community development: a social justice and human rights perspective; 4: Ecology and social justice/human rights: a vision for community development; 5: Change from below; 6: Participation; 7: The process of community development; 8: The global and the local; 9: Integrated community development; 10: The application of principles to practice; 11: Roles and skills; 12: Practice issues: Struggles and journeys in community work.