Comprehensive Community Planning Approach and Benefits

Comprehensive community planning is the process of planning in a way that addresses all the critical attributes of the community as a whole: governance, infrastructure and facilities, health, education, natural resources and human resources, cultural and social issues. The process is – and must be -- out and out controlled and motivated by the members of the community.

We want to be in a position where we regain control of our own lives rather than having to depend upon some external body making decisions for us. Community planning is the activity which we believe will enable us, will empower us, the people of our community, to take our own decisions and achieve our own goals in our own way.

When we talk about community economic development, we mean a well-planned structure that will make the entire community evolve in a positive way for its own well-being. The process should ideally be executed bringing all the community people together and identify their own basic problems and what’s needed to solve them by coming up with individual views on every aspect related to these problems. This shall enable a healthy collaborative environment through which our economic goals can be achieved in the most efficient ways improving the quality of lives of one and all. Comprehensive Community Planning, by and far will facilitate the same. It would be a holistic process in which the entire community shall be brought together to enable itself in establishing a set of rules and regulations which will drive the community towards the developed state it wants to be in. Each and every economic activity that is undertaken in the community will be well thought by a collaborative approach involving a broad spectrum of the expertise which is nothing but the community’s most valuable asset; its people. This approach is believed to be integrating all the efforts & we shall consider all problem areas to bring them under one umbrella to have a unified procedure of getting fool proof solutions for it.

1.2 Building our Community Plan

It’s been observed from the previous experiences of the communities which have already deployed such a model that the community consultation plan is critical and one of the most important projects for every developing community looking forward to realizing economic sustainability. Since Dakota Tipi faces certain fundamental setbacks that need to be addressed, the CCP process is the best option in hand that can serve this purpose. A few of the most noteworthy factors will be as follows:

Lack of an effective communication model for the purpose of escalating the crucial information on the development activities taking place across the community;

Community members need to be involved toward the community economic development initiatives leading to least participation from them;

We need a required level of understanding for grasping the issues related to economic progress and processes involved in the projects undertaken;

Need of self-motivation, insufficient cooperation from the expected audience;

Apart from the great benefit out of this Comprehensive Community Planning like focused and streamlined approach towards the community problems areas, it may generate many employment opportunities in the process. We are genuinely expecting our elders and community leaders to share their experiences from the relevant business areas in order to undertake some activities specific to the needs analysis. We look up to our youths getting involved in the administrative, voluntary and other support functions entailed in this project. This will be an experiment where community youth and elders will work in collaboration towards a common goal of pulling the community out of economic dearth. The most imminent benefits out of Community Planning, more or less intangible ones that are anticipated to be realized through this program would be as follows:

Induce the self-awareness in the community members
Motivate community members to create their own future by identifying opportunities and taking up challenges
Have effective tools in place to respond to change in effective manner
Have a plan that leads to informed decision-making
Combine fragmented efforts
Enable efficient use of resources
Identify and solve organizational problems
Improvement in communications within the Nation’s government
Enable enhancement of managerial and staff skills to support capacity-building efforts.
Help identify the community’s priorities for the use of its land base and territory
Anticipate future infrastructure and development needs
Help prevent conflicting developments
Help identify and protect vulnerable or valuable areas, traditions, or cultural values and practices.
Divert attention to the cultural aspects of the community
Help the community to work together in order to proactively address painful issues by establishing a positive vision for the future by taking the steps necessary to achieve that vision.

Examining and identifying sustainable economic opportunities is an essential part of creating a Comprehensive Community Plan. Having a plan in place will also help to attract investment. The plan shall also have some administrative and operational things in place like, governance model, rules and regulations, policies etc. all in all, this is going to be a wholesome activity for Dakota Tipi First Nation.

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