Three Conditions for a climate to be growth-promoting

The first element could be called genuineness, realness, or congruence. The more the therapist is himself or herself in the relationship, putting up no professional front or personal façade, the greater is the likelihood that the client will change and grow in a constructive manner. This means that the therapist is openly being the feelings and attitudes that are flowing within at the moment. The term “transparent” catches the flavor of this condition: the therapist makes himself or herself transparent to the client; the client can see right through what the therapist is in the relationship; the client experiences no holding back on the part of the therapist. As for the therapist, what he or she is experiencing is available to awareness, can be lived in the relationship, and can be communicated, if appropriate. Thus, there is a close matching, or congruence, between what is being experienced at the gut level, what is present in awareness, and what is expressed to the client.

The second attitude of importance in creating a climate for change is acceptance, or caring, or prizing – what I have called “unconditional positive regard.” When the therapist is experiencing a positive, acceptant attitude toward whatever the client is at that moment, therapeutic movement or change is more likely to occur. The therapist is willing for the client to be whatever immediate feeling is going on – confusion, resentment, fear, anger, courage, love, or pride. Such caring on the part of the therapist is non-possessive. The therapist prizes the client in a total rather than a conditional way.

The third facilitative aspect of the relationship is empathic understanding. This means that the therapist senses accurately the feelings and personal meanings that the client is experiencing and communicates this understanding to the client. When functioning best, the therapist is so much inside the private world of the other that he or she can clarify not only the meanings of which the client is aware but even those just below the level of awareness. This kind of sensitive, active listening is exceedingly rare in our lives. We think we listen, but very rarely do we listen with real understanding, true empathy. Yet listening, of this very special kind, is one of the most potent forces for change that I know.

How does this climate which I have just described bring about change? Briefly, as persons are accepted and prized, they tend to develop a more caring attitude toward themselves. As persons are empathically heard, it becomes possible for them to listen more accurately to the flow of inner experiencings. But as a person understands and prizes self, the self becomes more congruent with the experiencings. The person thus becomes more real, more genuine. These tendencies, the reciprocal of the therapist’s attitudes, enable the person to be a more effective growth-enhancer for himself or herself. There is a greater freedom to be the true, whole person.

Carl R. Rogers: A Way of Being. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1980), p 115- 117.

On Creating Growth-promoting Climate

What is Bridging Social Capital?

Social Capital harbours at least three dimensions: bonding, bridging, and linking.

Bonding

It refers to intra-group, internal or inclusive “bonding” among homogeneous relationships within a family, group or community. It promotes reciprocity and help mobilising solidarity. It usually provides a sense of belonging which fulfils the immediate needs for belonging, love, emotional support and solidarity.

Bridging

It refers to inter-group or external “bridging” connecting diverse social groups or heterogeneous relationships between different families, groups and communities. Bridging social capital enhance mobilization of external resources and information diffusion.

Linking

It refers to a vertical relation that helps individuals gain access to resources from formal institutions for social and economic development. In linking social capital, individuals or groups forge “alliance with sympathetic individuals in position of power… in order to leverage resources, ideas and information from formal institutions beyond the community.” This thus opens up access to jobs, opportunities, advice, and other resources.

Abstracted from Chong and Ng (2010), Bridging Social Captial – Theories and Practice. In Ng, S.H., Leung Y.L, and Prakash Brahm (Eds.), Social Capital in Hong Kong: Connectivities and Social Enterprise. Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press.

Task vs Process in Community Development

Two basic dimensions of community development exists in the literature: task and process. While they are not incompatible, they differ considerably in emphasis. Task conceptions focus more on a tangible goal (e.g., a new hospital, a school, or a water treatment plant), while process conceptions emphasize the more abstract goals of strengthening community ties and local autonomy. Again, borrowing from Christenson, Fendley and Robinson, we can define the task orientation to community development as:

“ (1) A group of people

(2)   in a community

(3)   reaching a decision

(4)   to initiate a social action process (i.e., planned intervention)

(5)   to change

(6)   their economic, social, cultural, or environmental situation.”

More succinctly, Roland Warren refers to the process aspect of community development “as a deliberate and sustained attempt to strengthen the horizontal pattern of a community.”

Lyon Larry and Driskell Robyn (2012) The Community in Urban Society, 2^nd edition. Illinois: Waveland Press.

Community Development

Community development typically includes voluntary cooperation and self-help efforts by neighborhood residents and professionals to improve the physical, social, and economic conditions of the community.

Community development efforts will often focus on the enhancement of community through the development of leadership, self-help initiatives, and local institutions. It is assumed that these efforts are not necessary for affluent communities, since community development is “asset building that improves the quality of life among residents of low- to moderate-income communities.” The various assets include the physical buildings and land, individual skills and knowledge, all formal and informal relationships, financial capital, and political capital. Thus, this approach aims at improving and building up each asset within the community.

Community development activities are diverse and can include anything from community organizing and planning, advocacy and empowerment, the creation of neighborhood associations or community development corporations, and neighborhood revitalization to social services integration, and the economic, physical, or social development of an area. More recent community development attempts integrate tourism as a strategy for development identifies ten types of community development activities including:

1. Housing development;
2. Building commercial property;
3. Business/ economic improvement;
4. Planning, advocacy and organizing;
5. Education and youth development;
6. Security and public safety;
7. Workforce development;
8. Emergency assistance;
9. Religious services;
10. Public health.

Lyon Larry and Driskell Robyn (2012) The Community in Urban Society, 2^nd edition. Illinois: Waveland Press.

Community Engagement and Civil Renewal

Civic participation is at the very heart of democracy and is its lifeblood. Local community has been regarded as one of the cornerstones of democracy where residents can exercise their rights and responsibilities and participate actively in the public realm, particularly through maintaining dialogue between residents and locally elected representatives. It promotes effective local democracy, with strong and accountable political leadership.

According to the Department for Communities and Local Government of the UK government, civil renewal is:

about people and government, working together to make life better. It involves more people taking responsibility for tackling local problems, rather than expecting others to. The idea is that government can’t solve everything by itself, and nor can the community: It’s better when we work together.

There are three key ingredients to civil renewal:

1. Active citizens: people with motivation, skills and confidence to speak up for their communities and organizations;
2. Strengthened communities: community groups with the capacity and resources to bring people together, and
3. Partnership with public bodies: pubic bodies willing and able to work as partners with local people.

Community engagement includes the mobilization of interests and support in social movements, policy consultation, volunteering, corporate social responsibility, the cultivation of local representative leadership, and the mitigation of local conflicts. Communities are places where the third sector, including non-governmental organizations, faith groups, charities, social enterprises, cooperatives and community organizations, has been most active. These community organizations are important channels for public engagement and involvement in community affairs.

Abstracted from Leung, C.B. (2010), Social Capital and Community: A Review of International and Hong Kong Development. In Ng, S.H., Leung Y.L, and Prakash Brahm (Eds.), Social Capital in Hong Kong: Connectivities and Social Enterprise. Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press.

The Importance of Civility

It is difficult to handle controversy and perhaps harder still to do so with true civility. From the time children begin to understand their relationship to others - as siblings, as kids on a school playground – they are socialized to avoid conflict. For some, “No fighting” and “Be nice” are messages that shaped our behaviors. For others, getting what they want by fighting reinforces the use of power and the disregard of others. How many individuals interpret and approach conflict may be traced back to these early messages. People may have learned that they can either be strictly right or wrong; that one person’s point of view is more valid than another’s; and perhaps that disagreement is synonymous with fighting. It is no surprise, then, that many would want to avoid speaking up when they disagree. This is the message that has been learned and one that has consistently been reinforced through many life experiences.

Civility however, is more complex than just “not fighting” and “being nice.” Civility certainly does not require that a person stay quiet when he or she disagrees, pretending that all is well when it is not. Instead, it means learning how both to voice disagreement and to respond to disagreement from others in a way that respects other points of view. In “The Virtues of Leadership,” Thomas J. Sergiovanni (2005) describes civily as a virtue “that embraces diversity, encourages tolerance, and legitimizes controversy. Civility builds frameworks within which people can cooperate despite their divergent views and interests.”

As much as civility may be thought of as a great character trait, it is also an attitude, a behavior, and , in the Social Change Model¹, it is a value. It requires the belief that there is not just one “right” point of view, but that everyone will see an issue slightly differently, depending on his or her background and previous experiences. Civility does not require the group to agree with every opinion that is raised, but each opinion should be listened to with respect and taken under consideration while considering the issue or making the decision…

In effect, Controversy with Civility challenges group participants to discuss diverse opionions and perspectives, while maintaining respect for those sharing other views. Without regard for respect or consideration of other’s ideas, group members can quickly lose themselves in the “heat” of an argument, preferring to “win” or give up and “lose” rather than truly understand the issue and solve the problem. By creating an environment in which various opinions are valued, a group can promote constructive discourse in order to negotiate a favorable outcome.

---abstract from Susan R. Komives, Wendy Wagner, and Associates (2009) Leadership for a better world: understanding the social change model of leadership development. 

Art of Association – Tocqueville’s perspectives

…Tocqueville marveled at the way Americans – in contrast, he thought, to continental Europeans – participated in countless associations and thereby breathed life into their democracy. Instead of appealing to a state authority to solve their problems, Americans founded an association, taking their lives into their own hands and working for the common good. For these reasons, freedom of association, even more than freedom of the press, was, for Tocqueville, one of the most important political rights. It is the practical advantage an active citizenry brings to a polity – in addition to the freedom of commerce and the press and the right to property and free elections – that contemporary political theorists attribute to ‘civil society’.

But Tocqueville was interested in more than the associations’ purely practical significance. Tocqueville continued the tradition in classical political theory that investigates the impact a form of government has on its citizens and their virtue and measures the quality of the government accordingly. His primary concern was not just the political constitution of a polity, but rather the ‘constitution of the souls’ the polity produces. In other words, he was concerned with the social and moral basis of politics and, hence, of democratic governance.

Tocqueville considered human feelings and the process of their formation more significant for politics than rationally thought-out rights and interests. He was convinced that ‘state were not defined by their laws, but rather from their origins by the feelings, thought processes, ideas, and hearts and minds of their inhabitants’. As an ‘aristocratic liberal’, Tocqueville shared scepticism about the coming democratic age with his contemporaries John Stuart Mill and Jacob Burckhardt. He considered himself, in the words of Wilhelm Hennis, an ‘historian of the soul’, an analyst of the order and disorder of human souls in the age of democracy. The decisive question for Tocqueville was how to avoid, particularly in a democracy, the impoverishment of citizens’ souls that would lead to despotism. The Terror of the French Revolution was never far from his thoughts.

Tocqueville saw an answer to this danger in voluntary associations. According to Tocqueville, only in sociable interaction could people develop their ideas and enlarge their hearts. This interaction, which was subordinated to strict rules in corporate societies, had to be brought to life voluntarily in a democracy – something only associations could bring about. Tocqueville believed that the most significant associations in this regard are those that remain purely sociable and exist to improve their member’s mores and manners and to enrich their emotional lives. Such associations are much more significant than those that promoted explicitly political or commercial purposes. Only those associations that are – at least at first glance – non-political and above special interests can free their members from selfishness and create new bonds in modern, egalitarian societies. These are precisely the bonds that play such an important role in Tocqueville’s political thought. ‘Among the laws that rule human societies’. Writes Tocqueville, ’there is one that seems more precise and clearer than all others. In order that men remain civilized or become so, the art of associating must be developed and perfected among them in the same ratio as equality or conditions increases’. Conversely, he thought, if the bonds between individuals loosen, democracy’s political foundation will erode. The less citizens practice the art of association, the greater the toll on their civility and the greater likelihood that equality will degenerate into despotism….

Excerpt from Steffan-Ludwig Hoffmann (2006), Civil Society.

Connecting through weakness

“People feel really as if they shouldn’t have these troubles. They shouldn’t have that knee that doesn’t work right, or they shouldn’t hurt in their heart. And yet, first of all, the first thing you notice is you connect through that. What do old people do? They connect through their kidneys. They connect through their this or their that, their troubles. Number one.

Number two, other people tell each other when, as they grow into intimacy – and I don’t mean lovers, I mean just as they grow closer – they tell each other their hurts. So there must be some connection between loving connection or closeness and the need to be vulnerable, or being vulnerable. So we relate, we connect through our weakness, not through our strength. That’s an idea, anyway, that comes out of the psychologist, C.G.Jung. We connect through our weakness and not through our strength. Because when you connect through your strength, you argue. You each try to master the other or control. Connect through your weakness, you’re both helpless. So that’s one thing. So therefore, these symptoms that come along or these breakdowns or weaknesses have a secondary gain in them. They have a value. They make your more vulnerable and therefore more open to connection.

Unfortunately, in a very heroic culture such as we have where you’re supposed to do it on your own and not buckle, the moment of weakness has to be covered over, and so we get more isolated. So psychologically, what’s important is really feeling the places of weakness. ”

James Hillman, in an interview on “The Soulless Society”

Global Citizenship

I appreciate very much the effort made by "idealist" to create a global platform for sharing on 11 March 2014. Clearly each one of us human being shall be connected in one way or another. Each one of us shall be supported to develop one’s potentialities. We shall be empowered through continuous training and services on mental health, communications and interpersonal relationship. Global citizenship shall be meaningful and powerful as a real and true identity of human being when individuals be supported and protected by collaborative responsibility and efforts on human rights, productivity as well as sustainable development.

Desmond, Chan Yu Tat

Collaboration Initiatives International