When we talk about helping people help themselves, we look to a certain set of principles to guide us in this task.
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT PRINCIPLES
- Go to the people
- Live among the people
- Love them
- Learn from them
- Plan with them
- Work with them
- Start with what they know
- Build on what they have
- Teach by showing
- Learn by doing
- Not a showcase but a pattern
- Not odds and ends but a process
- Not a piecemeal but an integrated approach
- Not to conform but to transform
- When their task is accomplished, our work is done, and the people will remark, “We have done it ourselves.”
