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Wendell Berry, the agrarian philosopher, wrote, "... a healthy community is like a body, for its members mutually support and serve one another." He argues that the health of a community depends absolutely on trust - a trust that neighbors will help one another. In a similar vein, Francis Fukuyama makes the point, in The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order, that social capital is a set of informal values or norms shared among members of a group that permits cooperation among them. If members of the group come to expect others will behave reliably and honestly, then they will come to trust one another. Trust makes any group or organization more efficient. Fukuyama further argues that without such social capital, there could be no civil society (cooperative groups and associations that fall between family and the state), and without civil society, there can be no successful democracy. A well functioning democracy is built on a foundation of trust among individuals within the local community and that trust is developed over time through successful collaborations and cooperation. That is the basic philosophy underlying the creation of the Coalition for Effective Local Democracy and is reflected in the Coalition's Vision Statement. The Executive Director of the Coalition is Dr. Michael Bell under the guidance of a Board of Directors. Contact: Please
coalition, locl government, south africa, schools, democracy |
- 01/15/2006
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Crtical Role for CELD - A view from board memeber Rory Riordan