Role of Sustainable Community Development and Community Participation in Promoting Self Reliance and Welfare of Community Members in Rural Nigeria. A Critical Review

Abstract

Give a man fish; he has food for the day. Teach him how to catch fish; he has food for the rest of his life. If we feed people and respond to their primary needs, indeed we are making them dependent on us but if we teach them how to work, they are able to provide for their needs themselves. Community development facilitates life of people in a community. It is an action of not only to change people’s life, but also to promote the level of their self-dependence and self-reliance through improved welfare. Community development is in general a social learning process, which serves to empower individuals and involve them as citizens collectively, for the purpose of socio-economic development. This article is based on a review of literature on community development.  The main idea of this article is that, community development means working with people, not for them; helping people become self-reliant, not dependent on others; helping people participate in community development programmes by means of education to put useful knowledge to work for them. Therefore, community participations is a major approach to change the mind and actions of members of the community to attain economic and social improvements.