Community Development Diploma

Community Economic Development’s purpose is to revitalize communities, develop and rehabilitate affordable housing, promote sustainability, attract investments, build wealth, encourage entrepreneurship, and create jobs. In this course, you will gain a comprehensive knowledge and skills in the field of community development.

In this course, you will learn about the seven theories are offered as a theoretical core for those who approach community development from at least seven contextual perspectives. These include: organizations; power relationships; shared meanings; relationship building; choice making; conflicts; and integration of the paradoxes. 

Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) is a strategy for sustainable communitydriven development. Beyond the mobilization of a particular community, ABCD is concerned with how to link micro-assets to the macro-environment. The appeal of ABCD lies in its premise that communities can drive the development process themselves by identifying and mobilizing existing, but often unrecognized assets, and thereby responding to and creating local economic opportunity.

Social capital for communities refers to establishing trust-based networks. That means not just establishing strong connections, but reinforcing the quality of those relationships among families, communities and organizations.

The term “sustainable communities” has various definitions, but in essence refers to communities planned, built, or modified to promote sustainable living. Sustainable communities tend to focus on environmental and economic sustainability, urban infrastructure, social equity, and municipal government.

Community development practice also encompasses a range of occupational settings and levels from development roles working with communities, through to managerial and strategic community planning roles. Its key purpose is to build communities based on justice, equality and mutual respect.

Community visioning is a collaborative process of giving the people who live, work, and play in a place the opportunity to have a say about what they want their community to be like in the future. Broadly, community visioning takes into account: the things people love about their community and want to retain. Strategic planning is a framework providing a systematic approach to planning for future development and allocating needed resources for anticipated changes.The crux of strategic planning is “anticipated” change. In other words, the community plans for the future by envisioning what the future will be like.

In this unit, you will learn a detailed overview of Community Based Organizations. Community-based organizations are non-profit, non-governmental, or charitable organizations that represent community needs and work to help them. CBOs may be associated with a particular area of concern or segment of the community.

Community leadership is about developing every persons capacity for leadership, starting with self-leadership and self-responsibility. Those who have positions of leadership must demonstrate principles and practices of good leadership by living the example. Community leadership benefits from being embedded into social networks, shared vision and decision making, but pre-existing skills and tacit knowledge also play a role. Community leaders can also assist niche building by working closely with intermediary actors.

Community assessment is the process of identifying the strengths, assets, needs and challenges of a specified community. A community assessment is usually performed early in the development of a coalition to better understand the community and decide how the coalition might best address its concerns.

The basic objectives to Community Mapping aim at collecting data in order to create a map of community assets and resources within a defined area. A community map highlights people, physical structures, organizations, and institutions that can be utilized to create a meaningful service project. 

Community Economies research and practice seeks to bring about more sustainable and equitable forms of development by cultivating and acting on new ways of thinking about economies and politics. … We understand economy as comprised of diverse practices and as intimately intertwined with planetary ecosystem processes.

Workforce development focuses on an individual’s ability to grow their skills and develop the tools they need for business success. In other words, workforce development trains individuals to be more productive and prosperous in the workplace, which benefits both the employer and the worker.  Human Capital is the education and skills that make people more productive and able to contribute to the economy. This is one of the fundamental factors that determine economic outcomes of communities and individuals.

Community marketing is a brand growth strategy centered around bringing customers together over a topic that is aligned with, or directly related to, a brand in an engaging and non-intrusive way that puts customers first.

Similar to social enterprises, community businesses are committed to positively benefiting society through trading in a sustainable way. All profit from a community business is reinvested in the local area. Unlike social enterprises, community businesses are focused on benefiting a specific local geographic area.

Community-based entrepreneurship is a change from the traditional economic development approach of wooing manufacturers and industries into a city.  It is small enterprises that create most of the new jobs and innovations in the economy, both in urban and rural settings.

Community arts and cultural development is a community-based arts practice and can engage any art form. Cultural Development refers to the strategic planning and implementing of strategies to leverage your community’s unique cultural assets for the economic and cultural benefit of the community as a whole.

Decent, affordable housing reduces stress, toxins, and infectious disease, which leads to improvement in both physical and mental health. Affordable housing also frees up funds within families’ tight budgets to spend on health care and food. Affordable housing also is important to the economic vitality of communities.

Neighborhood planning on a comprehensive level can help residents and business owners identify their community’s priorities, plan for the long term, and ensure the consistency of their community’s goals with those of the larger city. Neighbourhood planning is a right for communities to shape the way their local area is developed through the use of Neighbourhood Development Plans. … Neighbourhood Plans allow communities to have more influence and control over their local area to ensure they get the right type of development for their neighbourhood.

There are six major perspectives on development—psychodynamic, behavioral, cognitive, humanistic, contextual, and evolutionary. If you were wondering which approach is considered most important, that would be the wrong question for several reasons. Each perspective focuses on different aspects of development. This course will provide you a comprehensive knowledge about the different Perspectives in Community Development.

Community-based energy projects, also known as community energy (initiatives), include energy production, collective procurement, distribution or conservation of energy. Such projects are determined by their governance structure, participation, ownership, local consumption and technology. There are several models of community energy: local individuals investing in renewable energies, citizen wind parks or electricity or heating cooperatives. 

Community development finance is a broad term encompassing the varied sources of funding that support stronger and more resilient communities around the country. … The Federal Reserve helps community development organizations access the technical and financial resources required to complete these often-complex deals. 

The field of Community Development is diverse. There are lots of different types of Job Opportunitiesa that you can get in this Industry. Some of these include: Advice Worker, Community Development Worker, Community Education Officer, Family Support Worker and many more..