The Power Of Fumani

what iv learned on campaign management was how to define a campaign of which is activities created for a specific purpose, People have problems / issues which need to be dealt with namely Personal issues, Community Issues and National/ Global issues So to deal with these issues we have to create an awareness meaning bringing a problem into public recognition.

A community is said to be a town, Village or any meeting of people who share certain things in common. When a community has sported an issue that needs to be dealt with a campaign is planned to tackle that issue. How do we plan that campaign? First and foremost there are stages in a campaign that are followed for a campaign to be successful which are termed the campaign life cycle.

The first stage is called the Situational Analysis, where by is referred to be the collection of methods  used to understand how community members are living.

1. Why do you think some communities have been dependent on outside help?

> First and foremost communities are not self reliant because of what is termed "dependency syndrome" which is an attitude and belief that a group is unable to solve its own problems without outside help. This is a weakness that is made worse by the provision of charity. For instance if an outside agency or an NGO comes to a community and construct a human settlement facility  (e.g. water supply) it is expected that community members will see it as belonging to the outside agency. And when the outside agency goes away or run out of funds, the community will have no motivation to repair and maintain the facility or sustain the services. In order for the facility to be maintained and sustained community members must develop a sense of responsibility for the facility. The community sometimes describes that sense of responsibility as “ownership”

  2. How have you been dependent on outside help in your life?

  > After my metric I had no funds to take my studies further. I got an opportunity from avuxeni computer academy which is an academy based in town about 20 km from the township that I was staying in, I was offered a basic computer lessons which took 6 months then I obtained a certificate.

  3. How does empowerment help communities be more independent?

  Empowerment is a core principle of community development. It helps people:

¬  See that they have common concerns

¬  Encourage them to work together on these issues

¬  Promote values of equality, inclusion and participation

¬  Increase people’s capacity to be involved in decisions affecting their lives. For instance, economic empowerment can help eradicate poverty in communities because if people are skilled to start businesses they can become independent and raise money to sustain themselves (take their kids to school) and become less dependent on government grants.

    4. How did you empower yourself to become less dependent?