Towards an integrated conception of locality and community for the development of the municipalities in Cuba (página 2)

For us the Revolution and its conduction by Fidel are the most palpable demonstration of our understanding of community development. Through all of these years Fidel has stimulated, propitiated and guided participation and cooperation processes aimed to the Cuban people in order to defend the homeland and to build a new reality according to our internal and external possibilities. He as anybody has demonstrated an indefatigable capacity to develop a critical awareness of the reality on people"s mind, a critical awareness of challenges and opportunities. The most recent expression of it is the battle of ideas. So as a nation, we have a project of independence and dignity.

Therefore, we don't reduce the possibility of acting in order to develop community at local level; we understand that locality is a scenario where this is possible as it is in provinces, countries, regions and the entire world.

The community development is only possible by means of the firm and collective action in scenarios which are not reduced to the categorical macro-micro pair. It is the mobilization of people building development in all their vital scenarios, (the immediate ones and those that are not), being at the same time quite coherent with their realizations. It is the encounter of people who fight for a better world.

Miguel Limia David, in his keynote lecture titled: "Locality and community in the construction of the 21st Century"s Socialism in Cuba" which was given in the frame of the 8th International Communities Workshop: History and Development, taken place in April 2007 in UCLV, he referred to some ideas about the Local Development that we need in Cuba at present. About this aspect he expressed:

"In general, from the political and practical point of view it is required the implementation of a participation mode which provides the construction of the power not only "from the upper positions", but also "from the lower ones". It means that it decentralizes the distribution of the quotas of power without losing the capacity to concentrate them in order to make strategic decisions.

When the term of local development is used in this ideological and political context, it makes reference to the social development from the perspectives and requirements that emerge from the potentialities, barriers, opportunities, concrete and specific forces and threats. The configuration of these forces and threats depend on the making of decisions by the local organs of the government.

The prism for its strategic definition is the political, massive and genuinely democratic activity. The final result is the improvement of the people's quality of life not only increasing the levels of revenues and material conditions, but also enriching their spirituality and the levels of social participation and justness. Therefore, it must cover in a general sense the entirety of the complex life problems of the community in the social, political, economic, environmental, cultural and health aspects.

The community basic episteme are: people"s critical awareness about the contradictions of the social structure in which they are inserted, their real participation, their subjective implication while searching for solutions to those contradictions by means of concrete projects. The objective of those projects is to facilitate the self-transformation and cooperation not only assumed as coordination but mainly as integration of the individuals in the actions for development. Those objectives should be included in the development strategy of the localities and to cover the groups of decision-makers and the population in general.

The most authenticate Cuban experiences of community work have proof themselves to be efficient for the orientation, organization and mobilization of the people working on their necessities and on the most general social interests. However, the essential limitation of these experiences is the insufficient articulation with the strategies of local development.

These principle definitions should turn into fundaments in order to elaborate local strategies for development. That will make possible to solve the contradiction which is given in the practice among these strategies and the integrated community work. In the instrumentation of these strategies the following elements may be analyzed:

• The Integrated Community Work is a system of concerted actions from the necessities of the endogenous community forces (in the different space structures). The maximum expression is the community project of self-development. This project should be an element to analyze for the design and implementation of local development strategies.

• It is important to identify and to stimulate the appropriate exercise of leadership in order to make possible that the intention to search for alternatives would be concreted on self- transformation projects which at the same time are a particular expression of the most general interests.

• It urges to deepen in the relationship between the institutionalized groups of community work and the groups of neighbors as natural spaces of existence.

• It is crucial to develop variants for qualification and training at different levels which reaffirm the idea that only the people who have accepted the necessity of community changes are able to promote these changes and to relate them to local development initiatives.

• The social worker is actually a professional who can contribute to the gestation of community projects and the strategies of local development.

• It is indispensable to potentiate the integrated action of the basic professional force in the community projects and the locality development´s strategies.

• Each space structure of the locality should elaborate its own development strategy with a community approach. They are not parallel but confluent with the strategy of local development.

• For the design of the strategies of local development in each territory a group of experts should be created. This group of experts should take into account the different dimensions of the development associated to the particularities of each context.

• These development strategies are the concretion and materialization of defined objectives by the people and their decision-makers. The satisfactory execution of these strategies allows solving the specific contradictions of the territories.

According to those arguments, our proposal of professional intervention for local community development includes the following stages:

• 1. Initial exchange with the MAPP´s headquarter (Municipal Assembly of People´s Power)

The main objectives of this stage are:

• To know the perception of the local government headquarter on the general features of the locality, the potentialities, the problems which require prioritized solution and the particular affected scenarios.

• To elaborate the hypothetical formulation of the system of contradictions related to the problem that has been stated by the solicitant.

• To come into agreement in relation to the initial plan for the professional action.

In this stage it is very important to achieve an appropriate communication between the professional and the individual who needs professional attention, therefore, the messages will flow clearer. It is also extremely important that the professional understands the difference between demand and necessity, because not every demand constitutes a real necessity. Sometimes the individuals ignore the real causes of their problems and they make explicit demands that might hide the essential elements that provoke these problems which are the same time the basic contradictions of such situations. That is the reason why the moment to formulate the hypothesis of the demand is very important in the process. It contributes from the very same beginning to the consolidation of the solicitant"s critical conscience about the real causes of the demand.

2. Spaces to form human resources:

From the previous agreement there will be created at local level different spaces for group reflection for the intervention process, (a three hours session of work with each target group). The work is prioritized with the following groups: Council of Administration, Presidents of Popular Councils, Technical Advisory Council, Local Group for Community Integrated Work, System for Prevention, Directive for the Universalization of the Superior Education, and some other that could be interesting according to the characteristics of the locality).

These spaces will be used to give information regarding the work that the team of professionals should develop, to listen to the participants´ opinions and especially to develop the necessity of cooperation, participation and the participants' collective implication in the whole process.

This stage should also facilitate the permanent institutionalization of the process. It is not about actions of intervention in a personal note, established from interpersonal relationships among academics, researchers and decision-makers, but joining institutional wills in an integrated way which make possible the responsibility, commitment, relevancy and genuineness of the whole plan.

3. Integral participatory diagnoses and search of solutions at a base and local level:

It is developed at level of district of the Popular Power, Popular Council, companies, schools, that is to say, structural units located in the basic local space of special interest for the locality. The main objective of this stage is to achieve people"s participation in the formulation of this diagnosis. This diagnosis should also contain in an integrated way the questions related to the problems of the neighborhood, the company, and so forth. From these contributions, the local structures, such as (Council of Administration, the respective municipal headquarters subordinated to this council, and some others which are interesting for the territory), will make the analysis of their own diagnosis and will offer their proposals of solution. In this whole process of diagnosis and search for solutions it is crucial to take into account some elements such as cooperation, real participation, critical awareness and creativity.

The techniques that should be used in order to obtain empiric data are: the analysis of documents, the participant observation and the individual and group interviews. It does not mean these are the only ones that should be used since it is known that the techniques to use depend on the level of intervention and the peculiar characteristics of the object. However, in the processes of community intervention developed by our CSC (Community Studies Centre), these techniques have proved to be the most efficient ones.

A very important element to keep in mind in this stage of the process is the theoretical referents at the beginning, because they constitute a referent to confront the empiric obtained data. Actually, these referents allow the community groups and the advisors (in the base and local instance) to build the theoretical indicators. With those indicators and according to the appreciation of the advisors, the methodological proposal of intervention will be organized. Starting from these indicators the mould for the participatory diagnosis it is then elaborated.

This mould is like the scheme that synthesizes (starting from certain organization) the obtained information until that moment in order to continue with the intervention process.

The elements that constitute this mould are:

Problems: negative situations that affect directly the solicitant.

Priorities: the approach to define them is to analyze each problem related to the future effects and impacts.

Conditioning factors: the characterization and identification of key elements associated to the origin of the problems.

Possible actions: concrete activities that contribute to the solutions, these actions can be: immediate work (technical assistance, political management, community work agreements, campaigns including people"s participation, etc), ideas of projects (studies), political decisions, inter-institutional agreements and so forth.

Resources: facilities that can help to improve or to solve the given problem.

Locality and community contributions: identification of the contributions which can be made by the community organization, the companies and the local institutions.

Responsible: to define the person in charge of the coordination of the actions.

Period of execution: Date to begin and finish the activities.

As the name indicates, the main objective of this stage of work is to facilitate the corrective process. It takes place at the same time through different ways, but especially, through group spaces of reflection. If the programs of intervention are based on other methodological referents, they emerge due to the confrontation made by the professional of the data that have been empirically obtained and the initial theoretical referents. This indicates the areas that need to be object of intervention. According to our methodology Community Self-development Methodology (CSM), the elaboration of the theoretical indicators for the intervention is accompanied by the construction of diagnostic indicators of population, which means that is accompanied by the definition of those characteristics of the way of life of the institution or population that is related to the given problem. Most of the times the solicitants do not meditate about the problems they might present, fortunately, there are different techniques and procedures to make them do it.

The work in groups with a community approach offers the possibility that the participants identify by themselves the contradictions which constitute causes of their problems, and formulate alternatives which promote development at base and local level. It is expressed in the group process where the individuals who participate elaborate different projects with local scope that contain the improvement of individual and collective potentialities.

As a result of this, the autonomy, the intelligence, the leadership and real participation of people in the solution of their own contradictions and the stability of their environment are developed.

The conclusions and proposals of agreement of this process will be subjected to people´s consideration in the spaces of job performance accountability to citizens or voters. This will be done in such a way that people will be the ones who approve them and will be in charge to put them into the practice. In the case of local structures, this conclusions and agreement proposals should be analyzed by the respective organs.

The process of search for solutions at both levels occurs in parallel.

4. Elaboration of the Local Integrated Development Strategy by the Group of Experts.

Starting from the previous diagnoses, at a local level this process is organized in a target group which is previously defined by the local government. This is a very important stage in which it should be possible to arrive at an integral diagnosis of the locality. The work with this group can be made using the method of the CITMA´s Local Development Center.

A very important level in order to make the work of this group more effective is to achieve that community as a quality would be established in the operation. It means that cooperation relationships, participation, implication among the members, critical and creative conscience that will result into the projects which are finally proposed, must prevail.

Another relevant aspect to take into account in this stage is the multicondicionality of the development processes. Therefore, the presence of specialists on different sciences into the group of experts is crucial. These analyses must be done taking into account different dimensions: economic, political, ideological, environmental, genre, cultural, science and innovation, none of them should be ignored.

In the practice, the accumulated experience allows us to identify the possible contradictions that appeared between the basic and local diagnosis. It is also important that the local diagnosis expresses the contradictions as well as the possible solutions. That will give the idea of how legitimate is the local diagnosis and how it will make possible to achieve the real popular participation on future proposals.

5. Analysis and approval by the MPPA of the proposed strategy.

The conclusions and proposed agreement of such process will be fixed to the consideration of the MPPA. This maximum government authority is the one who definitively approves them and it is responsible for putting them into practice.

6. To communicate the final result to the people.

The communication of the final result to the people is the process through which the strategy is legitimated or not by the people who should be finally the essential object of the local development. This process can be also used as a way to facilitate the citizen"s implication in the consecutiveness of the goals approved by their representatives.

7. Evaluation of experiences:

What is to evaluate? It is to contrast systematically in a process what has been happening from the beginning to the objectives. The evaluation is an educational event because it should allow all the participants of the process to appropriate themselves of the results in a collective way. The evaluation can have a quantitative or qualitative character.

What to be evaluated? The transformative impact of the reality that is the object of intervention, (impact evaluation) and the achievement of the proposed objectives in each intervention stage (evaluation of effectiveness).

The evaluation of effectiveness is a type of evaluation of the intervention process. It is very important since it is in that process where the alternatives of change are constituted and the gestation of the projects that each group elaborates occurs. It is necessary to examine each element of the conception in practice: the theoretical and the methodological referents. We should check them all making possible that the participants can build their own projects and find the necessary answers by means of new knowledge and experiences.

The impact evaluation, should be made once the experience of intervention is finished. The main objective of the impact evaluation is to check the modes and levels of effectiveness of the formulated proposals and the incidence of these proposals in the real change of things. It is also very important to start from the endogenous forces of local community to check the way in which the multiplication of the experience inside the community occurs. It is a way to check the transformative effect of the strategy that has been used.

Why to evaluate? Because it is necessary: to adapt and to advance in the practice of experiences, to check the correspondence between the educational programs and the necessities of the solicitant, to check the level of assimilation of the contents by the participants, to know the opinion of the participants, to adequate the topics to the necessities of the participants and to improve the methods and techniques of evaluation.

Main features of a process of evaluation:

It has to be individual and collective. It has to be open to the criticism and self-criticism. It should be participatory, permanent, and simple. It should provide ideas for the future work. It is very important to take into account that it is not a neuter process but it is a process that responds to the principle of the self-development and human emancipation. Its objectivity is obtained from the starting theoretical referential. It should start from an appropriate notion of selection, formulation of indicators and measuring instruments (indicators of local self-development). It is also important to keep in mind that while evaluating it is necessary a record. It is also very important to take into account the relation between the results of local self-development as a practice and the development of the science.

8. Systematization of the local development practice:

What is it to systematize? It is a critical analysis of the experiences and processes related to the professional action of intervention. As a level of reflection it is superior to evaluation. Although the systematization depends on the evaluation, it is a longer term process. The systematization is not only to collect information, but a first theorization about the experiences. In the process of systematization those experiences are questioned, located and related to each other making possible a deeper analysis in terms of continuity.

What to systematize for? Because it is important to develop and to test in time the type of methodology and the theoretical referents which that have been used and to look for the effectiveness of the work.

What to systematize?

The design and execution of the intervention programs (strategies of local development), the effectiveness and implementation of the techniques, the role of coordination, the practical results obtained with the application of the methodologies, the process that have been experimented by the groups of coordinators and solicitants, other mates´ experiences, mistakes, advances and limitations.

How to systematize?

It is possible to systematize through workshops, control groups, through the revision of partial evaluations and the experiences of each activity.

Autor:

Dr. Ramón Rivero Pino