The Challenges in Community Development

I have successfully met, gotten to know and interviewed 13 artisans over the past couple weeks. As a result of my investigation, it was brought to my attention that there is a desire within the community to formalize an association. All but one said they wanted to form part of an association of artisans within their community. I was very busy coordinating with my boss at Emprende and with each of the artisans a time that would work for everyone to have a meeting to discuss what the group wanted from the association and what the groups goals are in order to start creating a mission and vision and all that.

Of the 15 or so whose houses I visited and who personally told me they would come today to the meeting at 4 in the afternoon on a Saturday, 5 showed up.

Now I knew it was to be expected that not everyone would show up, but I later found out that some were taking a nap, others decided to go to the salon instead, etc... it was frustrating seeing that all the artisans desire something better for themselves, but very few were willing to even take the initiative to TRY and create more opportunities for themselves.

Community Development takes time. It is a slow and non-linear process. It takes patience and flexibility, qualities that I am developing more and more each day. The meeting went well and we got some things done like deciding a name and the mission and vision of the group, but we will have to have another meeting soon in order to formalize the bylaws and all that of the association before we can move forward and do things as a group like identify new markets to enter such as large art fairs or foreign markets to sell to (just a dream now). I will keep working as hard as I can but how does one motivate a community to take their own futures in their own hands when they are worried about how they are going to put food on the table today?