Troublesome Text; A Few Notes on Jargon
 by
Phil Bartle, PhD,
Handout.

 Do not be hindered by words; learn them

Big Words:

 The training documents here are aimed mainly at community workers
 with perhaps middle school education. The grammar and vocabulary are
 deliberately kept simple. Special words used in the work are listed
 in Key Words, with notes for mobilizers. You are invited to look at
 them often. In the Background and Purpose document, introducing the
 training material, there is one particular paragraph that condenses
 many of the specialist words and perhaps will be overwhelming to the
 newcomer. This document looks specifically at those words, and
 provides a few notes on them.

This is the troublesome text:

 "modified action-oriented management training aimed at community
 members and their leaders, and adaptations of community organizing
 methods that are appropriate to the currently rapid urbanisation of
 the world. Other topics include poverty reduction, gender strategy,
 facilitation, income generation, capacity development, monitoring,
 brain storm, community participation, social animation, learning an
 oral language, and empowerment."

 Here are notes on them.

Modified:

 This means "changed." Community development was originally developed
 for rural communities (in colonial societies). The CSMED site shows
 methods that have been changed from the original methods so as to
 reflect modern situations, urban societies, post colonial
 countries, and increased control and decision making in the client
 communities.

Action-oriented:

 This means that the CSMED training modules are intended for action,
 not for academic musing or discussion. See Action. They teach
 community workers how to act.

Management Training:

 This is a special type of training which results in more than skills
 transfer. It is explained in the Key Words. The training is intended
 to result in the organization of a new group, or the reorganisation
 of an existing group, so that they will be better arranged for
 making good efficient, effective and rational management decisions.

Aimed at Community Members and their Leaders:

 The training is for community workers, also called mobilisers,
 activists, animators and others who work at the community level. It
 trains them in how to empower communities (strengthen communities or
 stimulate their capacity development). So while the training is for
 community workers, the ultimate beneficiaries are the community 
 members and their leaders.

Adaptations of Community Organizing Methods:

 Old, traditional methods of organizing have been upgraded here. It
 borrows, for example from methods used by trade union organizers and
 borrowed from management training facilitators.

Appropriate to the Currently Rapid Urbanisation of the World:

 The world is no longer the same as it was in colonial days. It is
 more urban, there is more and more rapid social change, and more
 heterogeneity of societies and communities. The methods taught on
 the CMP site have been modified to reflect those changes.

Other topics include poverty reduction:

 We avoid using "poverty alleviation" which temporarily reduces the
 pain of poverty without attacking its root causes. The "reduction"
 is aimed at total eradication. See the principles of community
 empowerment module.

Gender strategy:

 Any plans aimed at mitigating and/or reducing the differences in
 power, prestige, income and respect between men and women. See the
 module on gender.

Facilitation:

 This means "helping." A good teacher helps her or his students to
 discover things for themselves rather than dictate what to think. A
 community facilitator helps a community to make its own decisions
 rather than tell members what to think.

Income Generation:

 The creation of genuine new wealth, not merely the transfer of
 funds. See the module on principles of income generation.

Capacity Development:

 We used to say capacity building as if we could increase capacity of
 an organization or community from the outside. Capacity development
 implies that the growth comes from within. Capacity is "ability," so
 its development means an increase in strength, power or the ability
 to do things that it wants to do. See the module on capacity
 development.

Monitoring:

 Observing how things are going. Writing reports on those
 observations. Unlike "evaluation," monitoring does not imply making
 value judgements about what is observed.

Brain Storm:

 A special, highly structured, group session for defining problems
 and obtaining group decisions from the group. See the Brainstorm
 Module.

Community Participation:

 Where members participate in decision making in plans aimed at
 improving the community. It is different from "consultation" where
 an agency talks to community members before doing its thing. It is
 also different from "contribution," where community members are
 expected to donate money, labour or things to a community project.

Learning an Oral Language:

 There is a special document on the site which is aimed at teaching a
 community worker who has been assigned to an unfamiliar community
 where she or he does not speak the local language. See An Aural
 Method. It discards the methods we used in school to learn a
 second language, and uses the pathways burned into our brains at
 ages 1-2 to learn our first language. (When we were learning our
 first language, we did not write down anything did not read and did
 not memorise grammar rules. We learned to feel what was right).

Empowerment:

 Strengthening. When we go to the gym to become stronger, we can not
 let the coach or teacher do the push ups. To get stronger, we have
 to do the push ups ourselves. That applies to getting a community or
 organization to become stronger. We can not do the push ups for
 them, because that will make them weaker. See Empowerment.

Conclusion; Learning Words:

 The intention is to make the writing of these training documents as
 simple as possible for persons with middle school education.
 Difficult words, however, including words that are used in special
 ways in the community development profession, are not omitted.
 Instead, this web site provides an extensive list of key words, and
 suggests that you, the mobilizer, use those key words notes to learn
 the difficult words. See Key Words.

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If you copy any part of this, please link it back to:
 http://www.scn.org/cmp/

Updated: 2003 May 3