Empowered communities have stronger interconnected networks
A community meeting at Daga village in PNG's Southern Highlands.
By Dennis Badi
In Papua New Guinea the experiences of dependency, socio-economic vulnerability and social exclusion are on the rise, making communities powerless due to the rapid diffusion of foreign cultures compounded by problems of ignorance, poverty and the lack of government services.
The process of colonization, decolonization and nationhood is a shift away from the close-knitted society that PNG used to have some 30 years ago, to that of a mixed and open-society today. The government, private sector, donor agencies, civil society and other stakeholders has a critical role to play on the issue of community empowerment.
Community empowerment is both a process and an outcome. This process, though significant, is often overlooked as a high-flying topic mainly in resource rich areas. Experts on structural theory have analyzed ‘empowerment’ as a critical, self-critical and holistic process, which directly links to power. The word ‘power’ in itself has many principles for clearness; it is a basic component of human ability that promotes autonomy in a community.
The National Research Institute (NRI) through its mandate of policy research is investigating three key challenges in PNG societies. These are powerlessness, ignorance and poverty, which have a grip on the progress of communities. Under its community and people empowerment project and in its bid to improve delivery of basic services, the NRI has incorporated PNG Vision 2050 Pillar 6 on spiritual, cultural and community development into its research framework.
NRI has proposed policy strategies that will require concerted efforts by all stakeholders. This scheme, headed by Dr. Michael Unage, seeks to improve community governance to deal with people’s powerlessness, expand on community learning to deal with ignorance, and developing a vibrant social economy to tackle poverty.
Promoting community governance is like bringing together all parties with different pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, which when put together will be the picture of that community’s future. On the other hand an empowered community will prove community learning as an interactive contrivance, where a positive minded-community is more informed in terms of knowledge and skills acquisition.
An empowered community will show signs of a lively social economy when its people are passionate about eradicating poverty as part of the MDG (Millennium Development Goals); encourage self-reliance, promote cooperative societies and allow access to credit facilities. Basically, a well-developed social economy sways away from profit making and more towards improving family livelihoods.
Kutubu Foi women first to pioneer rice cultivation in the Kutuba area.
Evidence-based research into community empowerment will be a vital tool to help stakeholders, especially government agencies, to bring about policies and pass laws to contain problems arising in communities or replicate sample groups across the country. Such research is carried out through common academic inquiry (quantitative and qualitative methods) or participative action research (a community-based practical and reflective investigation tool).
Over the years, empowerment was approached differently by development partners and in harmony with their own goals and aspiration. Then again any community intervention must be genuine and its people must benefit – in most cases a win-win situation.
The integrated approach is the best method since it builds on the strengths and avoids the weaknesses of other approaches. It is this approach that the PNG government – through the Department of Community Development – has adopted under the 2007 Integrated Community Development Policy.
Communities like Domil in Western Highlands or Daga, where I have worked, are abounding with the principles of integrated approach. The process could be community mobilization, participation or ownership.
These communities have long-established the benefits of community empowerment and it is indispensable for them. If we were to face the issue of powerlessness, ignorance and poverty in our own community, then we can create our own development instead of relying on others to bring us development. For a start, many successful communities don’t believe in accepting handouts, even leaning towards false ideologies that do not resemble their value systems.
Communities that are empowered have a stronger and interconnected network starting from the basic unit of society, the family to a community and on to the bigger clan. These natural bonds build stronger communities even when there are local threats of sorcery or tribal fights.
Daga women and children enjoy the convenience of a water tap in their midst.
A democratic society where all the people are involved in decision making can be a useful buffer against all odds. Involving people in developing services also brings out innovation and pride, including being influential in the Joint District Planning and Budget Priority Committee (JDPBC) meetings.
For Daga, which includes the two adjoining villages of Fiwaga and Damayu, it is the most organized and unique community that I have worked with in the Kutubu oil project area. Some of its clans are recipients of oil-derived money. However their leaders thought otherwise that free money will not help their cause.
In 2004, Kofe Ibu, a community leader set foot at Moro to request the services of non-governmental-organizations to help organize their community. Interestingly, their community was already organized in terms of leadership. The rest is history.
Mr Ibu one time expressed to me the downsides if they did not go through that process: “If all our resources and environment, cultures and languages, are gone and destroyed, there is no hope in talking about development and it will be no longer be the people’s development but development controlled by outsiders at the expense of our people”.
Daga is now showcasing to the world the fruits of its labor. Thanks to its leaders like Kofe Ibu, Naomi Samuel, Hahudi Farabo, Fred Ebayo, Mike Diabe and many others, who raised their hands to receive technical advice instead of free handouts from companies and politicians.
Some of its initiatives include the highest gravity-fed European Union (EU)-funded water supply and reticulation system in the country, the only active theatre group in Kutubu (now championed by ExxonMobil and Oil Search), the Kutubu Foe Women Association (now involved in livelihood projects after pioneering rice farming in Kutubu), the Kutubu Foe Cultural Centre (host of Kutubu’s arts and crafts), a vibrant ward development council (comprising two ward development committees of Damayu and Fiwaga), at least two cooperative societies and being the first community to organize the inaugural Kutubu festival in an oil-project area.
Daga people have always wanted to be different from their Kutubu brothers. Since the commercialization of oil in 1994 monies from oil exports has not improved their quality of life, a record the Kutubu people are not proud off. Most Kutubu communities are bewitchingly snared by the “paradox of plenty” or what Juan Pablo Perez Alfonzo, the founder of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, once called the effects of “the devil’s excrement.”
For NRI it is communities like Daga, Domil and many others in the country that will drive its research policy framework on community empowerment, and as model communities they’ll continue to set the bench mark.
- Dennis Badi is a research communications specialist with the PNG National Research Institute (NRI) in Port Moresby, PNG.