Training of community development workers

The Workshop identified a very wide range of material which should form the content of a training course for community development workers. The following is a list of all the areas identified as being important:

1. Social group work
2. Community organisation
3. Social casework
4. Public health
5. Nutrition
6. Housing construction and building regulations
7. Sanitation
8. Politics & government
9. Law
10. Development studies
11. Technology that is appropriate to the situation
12. Communication skills
13. Social psychology
14. Basic economics - physical, economic & social resources
15. Sociology
16. Social research
17. The structure and function of the agencies employing community workers, their policies, programs, goals, objectives (short-term long-term) resources, clientele and conditions of service
18. The concept of self-help and its implications for physical and people development
19. Basic accounting
20. Meeting procedure
21. Leadership training
22. Social ethics
23. Adult literacy
24. Management

This may sound impossible to cover for a low level training course. However, the fact remains that community development workers on self-help projects do cover such a range of activities, whether they are trained for them or not. The following is a list of activities carried out by community development workers on a Kenyan project:

1. Keeping files on all plots
2. Recording lease violations and preparing briefs for action and updating records.
3. Orientation for allottees including organizing training in book-keeping
4. Keeping financial records for building groups and assisting groups with formation and management
5. Conflict resolution
6. Advising on type plan choice
7. Checking construction progress and violations
8. Advising on maintenance
9. Tendering for refuse containers
10. Coordinating health workers
11. Supervising running of nursery schools and training of daycare centre workers
12. Supervising vegetable growing project and nutrition education classes
13. Managing revolving welfare fund including fund raising, disbursements of loans, financial records and collection of repayments
14. Liaison with non-governmental and charitable organisations on provision of community facility buildings and services
15. Interviews for allocations and reallocations of plots
16. Surveys of squatting in project areas
17. Public meetings
18. Conducting surveys of business. etc and analysing data