The Principles of Leadership in Community Development

These principles are considered the approach and the basis upon which all behaviors, dialogues and values in the community leader’s work course are based. And these principles constitute the overall core framework.

• Transforming communities through cooperation and intercultural dialogue:

We have always sought through the leadership program to involve society more in the change that it seeks within its communities. We need to empower individuals with mechanisms and tools for dialogue to become the space and platform in which all cultures meet, whether they are similar or different, and through which they can meet on common points and design interventions appropriate to their communities, their context, and the positive change they seek.

•  Empowering people to lead change:

Mahatma Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in society.”

Empowering people is the key to change, to achieve change in the systems to which we are connected or even the emergence of new systems, we must first encourage individuals to be participants and active within their communities and by building on their knowledge and experiences to be able to meet their personal needs first, and secondly, create an environment suitable for them at work and appropriate to the context of their community.

Let us ask ourselves what is different if we assume goodwill toward the reactions of others? how assuming goodwill can affect the mitigation of negative reactions to their actions?

let us remember what things in our culture, our poets, our literature…, that help us to communicate with higher esteem, desire, and goodwill with others.

• Goodwill, appreciation and good intentions:

Answering these questions can help us reach the values of desire, appreciation and good intentions, which are mainly related to our interactions within our communities and help us to reach the best level in every context and work situation, and to appreciate the actions and behaviors of others away from the critical path. We are interested in striving to show things that worked properly to get a sense of how to deal with things that didn’t work as intended.

• The power of questions is the key to positive change:

Questions help to see the possibilities and options available to us and open up endless, successive options. Through the method and formulation of questions, we can investigate ourselves, others, and our communities to achieve the positive change that we seek.

Let’s imagine if a company, all of its employees were managers, accountants or receptionists, what would the company look like?

We all have different identities that are similar to each other, and intersect with many of our parts, and these intersections help us harmonize with each other and feel proud and enhance our belonging to the place we are in, but we differ in many parts within our identities.

• Exploring identities and investing in the magic of difference:

difference starts from gender, male and female, up to race, religion, sect, nationality, economic, educational and intellectual level. Differences in all areas of life do not stop at one limit. No human being has the same fingerprint as another, this principle reinforces the importance of our openness to others,

When you have the ability to open up, get to know your own identity, explore the identities of others and cultures different from you, and try to deny your own assumptions about those that are different from you. This moment takes you to see the world in a completely different way .so try to invest in the magic of difference.

• Chaos as an opportunity for positive change and emergence of order:

When we hear the word chaos, we see it as a direct threat or danger to our life or existence. For example, when the Corona pandemic spread, the wheel of life has stopped working, entire institutions, companies, educational centers, government systems, all of them stopped working, and posed a threat to the continuity of production for employees, workers or society as a whole.

This chaos and danger were an opportunity to think of a mechanism, through which they could find a creative solution that would preserve the productivity and continuity of their existence.

For example, many organizations, institutions and companies were able to complete their work from home, this way, they were able to save many of their resources, budget, transportation and places fees where they work, and continued their work from home, also, educational centres that have stopped, invested in teachers and their access to social media platforms to gather students, maintaining the delivery of educational material to them.

With these examples we reach this principle.

This principle is the basis for thinking about the surrounding opportunities to invest them and create a new organizing mechanism, whatever the danger or chaos surrounding us.

• Working towards turning words into action:

We are challenged for our behaviors to be in line with our values and principles that we advocate In most of the things we do, a lot of times we plan and think about designing a particular intervention, response or initiative but for some reason before the implementation phase we stop, this principle calls us not to stand still and to complete and implement these plans on the ground, so that all behaviors include and translate these values and principles that we advocate within our communities.

The main goal of the leadership program is to embody principles in all behaviors and in every community we influence.

Let us reflect on the principles and see what principle we will be able to adopt as of this moment.