A COMMUNITY is the product of the citizens who reside within. What shapes and identifies a community is recognition and appreciation of its unique collective culture, which includes the way the residents do things, the demographics, established structures and infrastructures, socio-economic status and/preference, value systems, and interaction within the fold.

Basically, a community is a cohesive unit which is welded together by common strands and respect for each other, inclusive of diversity. While there may exist commonalities in communities across the country, there will always be something unique in each village or district. This can be seen from our historical development, wherein citizens, for instance on the Essequibo Coast, tend to gravitate towards agricultural economic pursuits; Georgetown citizens tend to gravitate towards commerce and service; and Linden citizens tend to gravitate towards technical vocations and a mining orientation.

The growth and development of a community is dependent on the vision, passion, and involvement of its citizens, which will inform conceptualisation and development of programmes and activities for the benefit of that community’s citizens. The success of any task is dependent on its ownership by the people, inclusive of the leadership they identity to realise it. In any community, the greater the involvement of the citizenry in birthing their ideas for their development, the easier these are assimilated, worked upon, and have interest vested in their success, maintenance, and future development.

The Village Movement was birthed out of the post-emancipation period, wherein a people, to ensure their existence, human dignity and equality, pursued what has arguably remained a potent model for community development in post-slavery societies. The strength of the village movement is still alive. It is the undercurrent/base of an economic model in our tri-sectoral economy (the cooperative movement), and informs the local government structure. It has touched every sector of development in this society, and has influenced the naming of our country as the Cooperative Republic of Guyana.

The cooperative spirit identifies a common trend of working together, inclusive of acknowledging and supporting diverse pursuits for personal and national growth and development. It underpins our motto of One People, One Nation, One Destiny, and is the value upon which independent Guyana is built.

Consequently, it becomes important — as conversations are being held about communities — to revisit what happened during the post-slavery period. Such revisiting should also have the input of renowned historians such as Dr. Melissa Ifill, whose examination of history is done through living lens, drawing on comparisons and the relevance/irrelevance of application to today’s reality.

Personnel in similar areas of competency should also be factored in to benefit the building of communities. The experiences of the immediate post-emancipation era and that of local government boundary demarcation not only stand out for the villages that were bought and desired to forge cohesive relations, but notably the spirit, vision, drive and strategy that imbued the people with determination to succeed. And while these experiences happened long ago, what ought not to be lost sight of is the innate desire to enjoy the right to self-determination, which is timeless, and is the essence of human development.

Among man’s basic desires is one of having a say in determining what happens in his/her life, primarily in the home and immediate surroundings. Imposition by the colonial masters of district commissioners and community development officers, with blueprints of what they considered to be development for communities, violated this. The negative net result was such imposition subdued, and in some cases destroyed, the collective spirit and determination in villages and communities.

Within recent times, there have been similar experiences, as seen with the disrespect for the will of the people and their right to self-determination through the imposition of Interim Management Committees, and political assaults on councils not won by the then government. Instead of development, there were protracted back-and-forth, finger pointing, refusal by the state to pay rates and taxes for government properties, garbage build-up, infrastructure deterioration, emotional trauma, and loss of the sense of community.

Having had these negative experiences, it augurs well when the country held Local Government Elections in 2016. This is a right citizens had been denied since 1997. Putting power back in the hands of the people would allow for each and every group to have opportunity to commence their programme of rebuilding, based on indigenous resources, needs and visions. This focus also will be consistent with the spirit and intent of local government, as enshrined in Article 71 (1) of the Guyana Constitution, which made pellucid that, “Local government is a vital aspect of democracy, and shall be organised so as to involve as many people as possible in the task of managing and developing the communities in which they live.”

Citizens are urged to recognise the importance of local government to their well-being by getting involved and electing leaders who can best work with them in the development of their community. Ultimately, community development is the responsibility of the people within the community. In that local government is a vehicle that can be used for the attainment of the community’s goals, maximum use ought to be made of it. Its net positive result for Guyana can realise a greater sense of nationhood through the building of communities, based on each community’s unique dreams and aspirations.