What Community Development is NOT

• Top down 
• A quick fix
• A way to intimidate others
• Asking for a handout
• Charity
• Imposing solutions to problems

Community development is not teaching people to develop proposals or a list of grievances to be righted.It is not telling people what they need to make their lives better, nor giving them answers to their issues.

It is not primarily about taking power away from an established order, though that sometimes happens.

Community development is not passive.  It is not about preparing a list of needs, petitioning government and waiting for a response.

Community development is not developing dependency. 

We all want independence.  We want to stand on our own, and depend only on God.

We work in community development so that the people we work with can become more independent; we don’t want them to be dependent on us.  We want them to depend on God.