Community development involves working with people, places and various interests and roles. The processes involved in community development work embraces the idea of action research through community empowerment leading to improving quality of life, managing change and promoting vibrant communities. A useful reference to describe the role of community development work is to provide a conceptual understanding of community development (CD) and the work of CD practitioners. Two key roles include serving as facilitators to a range of community conversations about information and knowledge levels on key island issues (Process expertise) and to help community residents, government and non-government organizations address how to deal with those issues (content expertise).
The Knowledge@ Guam Initiative (K@GI) offers three distinct approaches to view the community through the community capitals framework (CCF), helping enhance communities’ capacity to address and deal with urgent issues through public issues education (PIE) and application of the program development model (PDM) in helping devise strategies and work plans to guide the planning and action work effort. The interest in comprehensive planning represented by Imagine Guam as the latest community-wide attempt to undergird the interest of community development and managing growth. Community planning is a fundamental start point for CD work and processes. The increase in action research showing how CD practitioners can apply programming approaches to make sure CD outcomes contribute to new knowledge and new innovative approaches to address the range of CD issues under discussion.