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Bottom-Up Stimulus
Yossef Ben-Meir
What development projects deliver short-term relief to people and
long-term economic structural change for sustained growth and should
therefore be part of the upcoming economic stimulus package? The
answer: projects determined and managed by the local communities
they are intended to benefit.
Depending on life conditions and challenges rural and urban
communities face and the ideas they have for local development,
projects communities typically prioritize to implement include
roads, schools, clinics, community centers, daycare, and
cooperatives. They are in private sector development, pubic health,
green initiatives, training, and empowering people. They are in
agriculture, manufacturing, and human services and development.
Community-level projects directly and more quickly impact local
populations because of their proximity. Projects are located in
local communities where they stimulate jobs and purchases of
materials and equipment. As projects are designed, implemented, and
functioning (more immediately because of community control and local
reliance) stimulus takes effect. There is not a lag in waiting for a
trickle-down of benefits.
Bottom-up stimulus would have groups of tens, hundreds, and
thousands of local citizens gather together and assess their
challenges and opportunities in the process of creating an action
plan for development. “Participatory” planning activities help guide
community members through dialogue and information gathering in
order to develop solutions to their pressing needs. Their community
projects funded by government will create multi-tiered,
private-public partnerships, and advance both federalism and
national unity.
In bottom-up stimulus, decision-making of local participants and
partner groups is improved through information sharing and
collaboration. Risk is shared in these community investments; local
people and organizations also contribute in-kind, sometimes in the
form of labor and partial financing. Bottom-up stimulus diversifies
the economy and makes it more resilient in times of fluctuation.
The question now becomes: what programs can deliver bottom-up
stimulus and should be earmarked in the economic package? Here are
five recommendations that taken together can catalyze tens of
thousands of viable community projects.
1. Double the size of AmeriCorps (to 150,000 volunteers) and
thirteen-fold increase the Peace Corps (to President John Kennedy’s
goal of 100,000). To expand and reform, the agencies should recruit
volunteers with generalist backgrounds and emphasize in their
training and service the organizing of community meetings and
partnership-building, a role their volunteers are positioned to
perform. Investing in volunteerism (and the community projects
volunteers catalyze) will reduce unemployment and unleash in the
near future a powerful wave of social entrepreneurs.
2. In public universities and colleges, support programs and new
centers for community mediation, training, and development that
enable students, faculty, and others to engage local communities and
assist them in development planning and implementation.
University-community partnership for development and
“action-research” will bring win-win transformative benefits. State
funded universities and colleges are being hit hard by the economic
downturn and this is an important way they can contribute to and
benefit from the stimulus.
3. At least double the funding for the soon-to-be called Council for
Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, in addition to
President-elect Obama’s proposed reforms of the Council, including
nondiscrimination in hiring, training to access funding, and serving
1 million students in summer and after school programs. I also
suggest requiring religious institutions to have a separate
501(c)(3) nonprofit organization for the community-service related
projects they administer to help avoid potential impropriety with
public funds. The Council should encourage interfaith partnerships
to increase project sustainability.
4. Establish a new fund that injects bottom-up stimulus in local
areas suffering socio-economically and environmentally through no
fault of their own; for example, because of natural and human-made
disasters, and social dislocation caused by free trade. These
communities of people are in serious need and stand to benefit the
most from the process of establishing community-owned and managed
projects.
5. Increase funding and training for community extension agents from
government departments (e.g., Interior, Energy, Housing, Health and
Human Services, and Commerce) and agencies (e.g., Small Business
Administration and Environmental Protection Agency). Those in
federal, state, and local government who interface with community
groups can be ideally situated to bring people together to plan and
implement development initiatives.
Robert Rubin, the self-described consigliere of Citigroup and former
Treasury secretary, described as a “perfect storm” the events that
led to the global financial collapse. The perfect storm then
assisted the rise of Barack Obama, a leader quite familiar with the
mechanics of community organizing and bottom-up social change and
movements. The perfect storm - and the immediate and long-term
economic results the country needs to navigate out of it - could now
indirectly deliver its antidote: bottom-up stimulus.
Yossef Ben-Meir teaches sociology at the University of New Mexico
in Albuquerque and is president of the High Atlas Foundation (www.hightatlasfoundation.org),
a nonprofit organization that advances community development in
Morocco.
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