Navigating Change for Impact: Our Approach

Our Approach To Local Economic Development

Our Common Future recognises communities as diverse and capable webs of opportunities and assets, rather than complex masses of needs and problems typically underpinning more traditional approaches to economic development activity.

We acknowledge the reality that in many instances, the core asset of these communities – people – operate from a place of generational trauma, scarcity, and deprivation. This may hinder their ability to recognise their own potential to act, build, and achieve.

We believe that to fully unlock the potential of these assets within communities and ensure sustainable economic activity post-intervention, it is imperative to work to release instances of generational trauma and limiting beliefs at an individual level. By doing so, we catalyse human capital in the communities.

In addition, we adopt a model of Asset-Based Community Development to harness the potential of the community towards building a sustainable future.

Our intention is, for all interventions within a programmatic, local economic development strategy, to result in sustainable, human-centred economic wellbeing. At the core, our objective is to ensure that people are left better off.

Catalyse Human Capital

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Asset-Based Community Development

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Sustainable Human-Centered Local Economic Development

Figure 1: Our Common Future’s Approach to Local Economic Development™

Catalysing Human Capital

Social Cognitive Theory (SGT), introduced by Canadian psychologist Albert Bandura in the 1960s, offers a comprehensive understanding of human learning behaviour. It proposes a dynamic, reciprocal model where personal factors, environmental influences, and behaviour continually interact, shaping individual outcomes.

Personal

Environment

Behaviour

Figure 2: Social Cognitive Theory – Influencers of Human Behaviour

SGT also sheds light on why poverty often perpetuates itself and why individuals struggle to overcome their circumstances, despite available opportunities. Humans are inherently social beings, designed to be part of social groups. Consequently, it is challenging for us to deviate from the norms of the people around us. Growing up in environments of either prosperity or poverty significantly influences our likelihood of unintentionally either prospering or perpetuating cycles of hardship.

This challenge is magnified in communities with biased or vague historical narratives, especially in historically economically disadvantaged areas. Such narratives impact self-perception, self-efficacy, reinforce generational trauma, and propagate limiting beliefs.

In South Africa, the erosion of indigenous knowledge and distorted historical narratives further complicates this issue. The transition from rural to urban lifestyles, coupled with the influence of digital media, has led to a profound loss of understanding of history among younger generations. Capturing the insights and traditions of elderly indigenous knowledge holders has become a priority in the preservation of valuable heritage.

At Our Common Future, we subscribe to the belief that “you can’t really know where you are going until you know where you have been”.

Our approach to Catalysing Human Capital thus focuses on the following key elements:

Documenting Personal, Family and Community History through a series of directed interventions that promote oral and written storytelling.
Capturing of Indigenous Knowledge through focused group conversations and direct interviews with Community Elders.
Unlocking of Collective Intelligence and Reinforcing a heightened Sense of Community and Sense of Self through facilitated group discussions and individual introspection.

By going through the process of appreciative inquiry – community members are encouraged to share positive stories from their individual and collective past. This helps in creating or recreating a sense of pride and belonging amongst the community members. “The effects are often remarkable, as community members rediscover and retell the richness, diversity, and opportunities within their own community”.

Figure 2: Social Cognitive Theory – Influencers of Human Behaviour

Our goal is to bolster self-efficacy, break cycles of poverty and stagnation, and shift perspectives towards an asset-based approach to community development.

Asset-Based Community Development

Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) is a methodology for sustainable community-driven development, based on leveraging intrinsic strengths and potential within communities to build them from the bottom up (or inside out) – the approach “espouses the belief that communities can take the lead” in identifying their own solutions.

ABCD is a movement away from traditional “needs-driven” approaches to community and rural development. The challenge with these traditional approaches is the focus on deficiency, and the increasing community reliance on external parties to “save” the situation. In these traditional models, communities are likely to become dependent on developmental support and are ill-equipped to deal with any situation where that support ceases. It is additionally affirmed that “because the needs-based strategy can guarantee only survival and can never lead to serious change or community development, this orientation must be regarded as one of the major causes of the sense of hopelessness that pervades discussions about the future” particularly in low income areas. In creating a dependency culture, individuals’ ability to take control of their own lives is restrained, and whole communities become beholden on developmental aid.

Needs Based Service Delivery Approach

Focus on Deficiencies
Needs Analysis
Charity Orientation
Grants to Individuals
“One size fits all” services
Offer solutions
Create dependency

Asset Based Community Development Approach

Focus on Assets
Opportunity Identification
Investment Orientation
Mix of grants, loans and equity
Bespoke, catalytic, services
Engage to discover solutions
Foster independence and sustainability

Figure 4: Summary of Needs-Based vs Asset-Based Approaches

In South Africa, needs-driven approaches have led to a non-profit ecosystem comprising of over 150 000 registered organisations focused on addressing perceived deficiency through development initiatives. However, in most instances effectiveness of these organisations is yet to be proven – while the dependency-syndrome (community reliance on development interventions) is ever-increasing. This is exacerbated by South Africa’s “developmental state” narrative and the top-down, needs-based and service-delivery oriented approach – that is unfortunately seen to systematically fall short of expectation especially where needed the most.

We intend to flip the dynamic. Our approach identifies the role of the development practitioner and the intervention as that of catalyst, rather than the solution-giver. By focusing on the strengths, opportunities and assets that are pre-existing in a community – development practitioners are able to effectively partner with the community in order to catalyse development outcomes.

Development strategies and plans are prepared with exit in mind, and the sustainability of the outcomes remain in the hands of the community players. This approach reinforces an internal locus of control and community self-efficacy, it is inclusive and empowering.

It is our belief that when communities are at the centre of designing and driving their own development, then they are truly empowered, and the outcomes are sustainable.

Our Common Future’s approach to ABCD focusses on:

Mobilising existing assets to respond to and create local socio-economic opportunity.
Catalyse partnerships to augment community assets – particularly skills and knowledge.
Linking the micro-assets in the community to the macro-economy to extend economic access and enable sustainable socio-economic wellbeing.

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