The concept of solving community problems is synonymous to, and is hinged on the ultimate aim of nation building. In other words, the ultimate goal of resolving community difficulties is reshaping the community to meet man’s needs of convenience and purposeful existence and co-existence, thereby creating an enabling environment for a viably strong nation; economically buoyant, politically stable educationally sound and ethno-culturally tolerant. The task therefore, involves inventing new institutions for the management of tensions between groups; constructing bridges between tradition and Modernity, erecting new patterns of relationships, and having foundations for a new national heritage.
Solving community problems is a positive individual and, or collective effort aim at turning fragile communities into secure and integrated ones, and such cannot be considered accomplished without adequately addressing the problems related to water and food supplies, shelter and health care deliveries, transport and communication linkages, education and job securities, ethnic and cultural diversities, unemployment and social ills, greediness and corruption, managerial planning and policy implementation, adverse natural phenomena as earthquakes, floods, and storms, personal and Environmental hygiene and general individual and community safety, among others. Unless these issues are properly and sufficiently settled within a community, there’s bound to be casualties.
Until good and adequate water supply is attained there’s discomfort in the community, and doubtlessly, a hungry man is vulnerable to succumbing to excessive anger and fierceness. The community is ever in danger as long as religious, ethnic and cultural tolerance is lacking, and for as long as good transport and communication are impaired, the community is in peril. In as much as the problems of unemployment, shelter, greediness and corruption lingers along, the community’s trend is but a record of terrible scenes of social mischief. To the extent that safety measures for quick response to unforeseen natural hazards are lacking, the community is an unsafe habitat. Unless personal and environmental hygiene are uphold, the community will soon be given up to the dilemma of environmental deterioration, and in as much as the problem at industrial wastes disposal and pollution remains unsettled, the community is plunging in a pool of spontaneously destructive elements irrespective of the level of technological attainment. In essence, the heights a community attains in its developmental pursuits is dependent on how well it’s able to sufficiently put its social, political, cultural, economic, and physical needs in their right shapes by making them matters of paramount importance.
It’s worth mentioning at this point that properly addressing these issues within the community is a function of, and rests heavily on, how informed the community is about having them in foremost consideration. In essence, effective problem solving in the community is hinged upon a practical education of both the stakeholders and the masses. An educated community is well informed and of course, this is pivotal in turning the fragile fortune of a community into a formidable one. One cannot, therefore, proffer meaningful solution to a problem unless such is properly informed of its nature. To precisely state the fact, the crux of any reasonable contribution to solving any community problem lies in education.
Education is central in community development. It’s an essential prerequisite for a community’s economic, political and socio-cultural transformation, and constitutes the ultimate basis for human resource development. Contributing to community education is therefore, mobilizing, developing and empowering the most valuable asset needed for full participation in all programmes of socio-economic transformation. Education makes community members more responsive to reason, broadens their view and enables them understand the need for rules of tolerance. It restrains sheepish adherence to extremist doctrines and as well aids the capacity to make reasonably informed judgments and choices.
It takes only a practically educated person to rightly discern the community’s goals and to implement policies consistent with the attainment of such goals through fair pursuits. An informed public servant takes a multi-dimensional view of a problem and employs a holistic approach in solving it, in that utmost precaution is taken not to plunge the community into other pandemoniums in an attempt to get rid of one. This is done through critical analysis of the community’s ends and the means to the ends.
An educated community on the other hand is well able to appreciate its leadership vision and as well mindful of its support to the machineries and institutions put in place to achieve such common goals. It also takes an enlightened community to rightly recognize and appreciate the fact that the resources at its disposal are depreciable, and exhaustible, and as such will employ care and conservative measures in utilizing them.
It’s imperative to recognize the point driven home; that the key contribution to solving community problems, is by fostering a practical education of the people. Practical education implies teaching the community to appreciate and imbibe the culture of unity in diversity. In other words, its inculcating in the community a mind of tolerance; through cultural and normative fusion (with the ultimate ambition of cultural homogenization), promoting economic interdependence between subgroups, social integration (To narrow the gap between the elites and the masses), building conflict resolution institutions (To resolve conflicts with minimal social disruption) and most importantly, building a psychological sense of common heritage, or feeling of shared community experiences.
This piece, however, should not be misconstrued to mean that education is the beginning, process and end of resolving community difficulties. It’s only underscoring that the success of any practical attempt to solve a problem is more or less dependent on the level of education in the community regarding the pros and cons of such techniques, and that education is the bedrock of any meaningful and reasonably sustainable and informed decision in the community.
From the foregoing, the fact has been re-iterated that any reasonable attempt to attaining positive response to community problems Must be preceded and accompanied by teaching members to eschew greed, avarice, acrimony, religious and ethno-cultural intolerance, social discrimination and such other ills that tend to place the individual above community interest.
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