Unit Code: URP516

Unit Name: Community Development

Description: This course is understood as activities to facilitate, strengthen, and improve less-advantaged communities, empower their residents to define and participate in the development process, and interact in larger social, political, and economic systems on behalf of the community. This course is an opportunity for students to explore, develop, and apply an interdisciplinary set of theories useful for understanding and acting within the professional and academic field of community and regional development. This course starts from the basic understanding of culture in Fiji and South Pacific’s, continue with the basic material of community development that assumes community development is best characterized as complex. Complexity signifies that the number of possibilities from which to choose by far exceeds whatever can become an implantable praxis. Hence, this abundance makes any applied decision precarious. It is against this canvass that the various elements of this course are projected. The many theoretical as well as –and thus- political approaches we will discuss in this course are meant to let the participants understand why the business of community development is a constant, never-ending, and often contradictory process of shifting social figurations. The general aims of this unit are (1) Capacity to work productively as an individual or in a team, with other planners, or with multidisciplinary and diverse groups, including laypeople, while representing and maintaining professional opinions and standards (CPIA1-06), (2) Capacity to mediate and negotiate to resolve planning conflicts (CPIA1-07) and (3) Capacity to communicate in written, oral, and graphical form in respect to issues, proposals and actions via a range of media to various audiences in a manner appropriate to the situation. (CPIA- 10)

Learning Target Outcomes: On successful completion of this course, you should be able to: a. Assess the application of Fijian culture in the community (GPIA-8) b. Analyse the community dynamics in planning (GPIA-1) c. Evaluate asset-based community development (GPIA-3) d. Diagnose preparation and planning with the community (GPIA-10)

Prerequisite: COM502

Prerequisite Sentence: N/A

Credit Point: 15

Offered In: Semester 2