What is Community? Usually when we are going to think about a group of people ( community) and society the first thing which comes to our mind is the geographical places which can be a country, city, village or any other physical spaces. Why do we need to build a community? A community is built around a certain problem or issue, people gather to take an action either it is economical, educational, cultural or anything else.
Community development is a process where community members come together to take collective action and generate solutions to common problems. Community wellbeing (economic, social, environmental and cultural) often evolves from this type of collective action being taken at a grassroots level. Community development ranges from small initiatives within a small group to large initiatives that involve the broader community.
Effective community development should be:
- a long-term endeavour
Developing a community is being shaped from a small group of people and later on to a broader one.
Recently I had a very interesting round table with two inspiring people, Porter Bibb, an American media producer and publisher best known for being the first publisher of Rolling Stone magazine and Camilla Mc Farland, who works in Crisis & Media Relations.
Camila McFarland - Porter Bibb - Fereshteh Forough
With support of Film Annex and its Women's Annex Foundation (WAF) , 10 Computer Media Labs and 2 Media Centers opened in Herat - Kabul, Afghanistan to help Afghan students at schools and women at works. Sometimes commuting in physical spaces is difficult for women in specific countries due to security and other social factors, therefore we gave them the ability to join our online community and present their works ( blogs, films) here without any social issues.
We also pay them based on their performance (Buzz Score) in Bitcoin which is a digital money.
Community building is important either online or in the ground as it is the key for development. It is a process that is taken in a grass root level like what WAF is doing at schools in Afghanistan, providing the right tool for students in High School where thousands of them can come online and share the messages.
Fereshteh Forough - Film Annex Senior Editor
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