This book builds on decades of practice-experience in education for community development. With a clear focus on professionalisation, Community development in the 21st century: Empowerment for breaking the cycle of poverty is a definitive guide for community development practitioners, professionals and students alike. In addition to context and process, the book details the skills required by a community development practitioner and explains the local government context of community development practice. Practical case studies, specifically relevant to the South African environment, illustrate important issues in community development. The book also provides an overview of the professionalisation process of community development in South Africa.

Community development both a collective effort and an achievement driven by individual facilitators with the aim of lifting a community out of poverty. The sixth edition of Community Development: Breaking the cycle of poverty continues to be a definitive guide for community development workers, students and practitioners alike. The book contextualises poverty and explains the process of community development.

It pays attention to the development environment and explains concepts such as asset-based community development and the social enterprise sector. In addition to context and process, the book details the skills required by a community development worker to function in the field. It also explains how to empower the development worker to train others in order to build capacity in the community and work towards breaking the cycle of poverty.

This edition of Community Development: Breaking the cycle of poverty is strengthened by the inclusion of extensive support material. More practical case studies, specifically relevant to the South African environment, have been added and questions on the case studies are included in the book.

The authors investigate the evolution of thought on community development from a methodology and technique to a set of (often normative) principles. Based on an extensive literature study the book argues that the more recently evolved fashionable concepts such as participatory development, people-centred development and empowerment can all be traced to a 'community development' origin. They conclude that community development was not evil but that, in the hands of powerful people, it became a tool of marginalisation and disempowerment. Key issues on community development are introduced and explained by way of annotated case studies.

Introduces the reader to the three main role players in development: the community of the poor; the state; and the non-governmental sector. The text shows how the role of each has changed and continues to change in relation to the historical evolution of development thought from a simplistic modernization view to today's sustainable development paradigm.;Chapters on the important development issues of health, education, food and hunger, development aid, local government and community policing illustrate the development roles in the context of development dynamics as informed by development theory. The reader is introduced to various development problems related to these issues and is led through the dynamic process of development in which the role players operate.