Perspectives on Social Development

Definition: Considers a wide range of viewpoints, ideas, and approaches from varied backgrounds, experiences, cultures, and identities.
Expanded View: Includes American ethnicities (people of color), LGBTQ+ individuals, people with disabilities, age/gender groups, heritage, cultural background, group affiliations, sense of self, social standing, sexual orientation, biosocial/socioeconomic status.

Definition: Social work approach centering on strengths and resources of people, communities, and environments, rather than problems.
Emphasizes: Human capacity for resilience, resistance, courage, thriving, and ingenuity.
5 Concepts: Resilience, Membership, Dialogue, Collaboration, Suspension of Disbelief.

Definition: Interventions providing skills/resources for client independence, autonomy, and self-determination.
Focus: Achievement of goals by utilizing strengths, resilience, and resources, emphasizing competence over deficits.
Four Elements: Access to information, Inclusive & Participation, Accountability, Local organizational capacity.
Two Components: Internal (psychological empowerment, control, decision-making ability) and External (competencies, knowledge, skills, resources for change).

Definition: Recognizes religious and non-religious ways people seek meaning, purpose, moral guidance, and connection to what they believe is profound or sacred.
Guidance: Ethically assess and incorporate clients’ spiritual perspectives into helping strategies.

Aim: Increase social worker awareness of the relationship between ethnicity and culture in clients’ lives.
Considerations: How prejudice, power, and vulnerabilities affect individuals.
Rooted In: Empowerment and diversity frameworks promoting sensitivity and justice.

Women in Development (WID):
- Emerged early $1970$ s (Ester Boserup's work).
- Focused on integrating women into economic development, delineated sexual division of labor.
Women and Development (WAD):
- Mid- $1970$ s, grew from WID limitations.
- Examined the relationship between women and development processes, highlighting that women are already 'integrated' but often in ways that sustain inequality.
- More critical than WID but limited in analyzing patriarchy and gender subordination.
Gender and Development (GAD):
- Emerged $1980$ s, alternative to WID.
- Theoretical roots in socialist feminism, holistic perspective on social organization, economic, and political life.
- Concerned with the social construction of gender and assigned roles for both women and men.
- Analyzes women's contributions in/outside the household; rejects public/private dichotomy; questions underlying social, economic, and political structures.

Essential Reasons: Strengthens civil society/economy, empowers groups, enhances efficiency, effectiveness, and sustainability of development programs.
Definition: Engages local populations; stakeholders influence and share control over development initiatives, decisions, and resources.
Stakeholder Groups: General public, Government, Representative assemblies, Civil society organizations, Private sector, Donor and international financial institutions.

Definition: Focuses on how larger systems create and protect unearned privilege/power for some, while creating difficult and inequitable conditions for others.
Application: Applied in social work at micro, mezzo, and macro levels to mitigate power imbalances.
Framework: Understands how systems of oppression (colonialism, racism, sexism) lead to discriminatory actions and systemic inequities.
Key Components: Consistent self-reflection, active listening, identifying root causes of bigger problems, empowering marginalized individuals for autonomy and collaboration.
Allyship vs. Solidarity: Solidarity is action-based, actively and intentionally redistributes unfair advantages of systemic oppression, unlike performative allyship.
Promotes: Equality, empowers individuals, addresses systemic issues, enhances social justice.

Definition: Approach focusing on improving local communities’ self-reliance, social justice, and participatory decision-making.
Foundational Pillars: Self-reliance (communities lead, build local capacity), Social Justice (equity, inclusion, addresses systemic barriers), Participatory Decision-Making (meaningful community involvement, transparency).
Importance: Shifts power to local actors, enhances sustainability, aligns with human rights, responds to cultural/contextual realities.
Examples: Barangay Development Planning, community-led needs identification, participatory budgeting.

Vulnerability: Characteristics increasing susceptibility of individuals/communities/systems to hazards, determined by physical, social, economic, and environmental factors.
Factors:
- Physical: Poor building design/construction, unregulated land use.
- Social: Poverty, inequality, marginalization, discrimination (gender, social status, disability, age).
- Economic: Uninsured informal sector, vulnerable livelihoods, dependence on single industries.
- Environmental: Poor environmental management, overconsumption of natural resources, climate change.
Influences: Also determined by historical, political, cultural, institutional, and natural resource processes that create unsafe conditions (dangerous living locations, poor housing, ill-health, political tensions, lack of preparedness).