COMMUNITY LEADERSHIP: Experiences in Indonesia and the Philippines

1
COMMUNITY LEADERSHIP Experiences in Indonesia
and the Philippines

• Mr. Elmer H. Lighid
• International Council on Management of Population
  Programmes, Malaysia

2
Brief Context

• ICOMP is an international NGO. Leadership
  development as one of its core competencies
• Community Foundation as an approach to sustain
  community development initiatives
• Working with communities to become READY for a
  community foundation help develop/enhance
  community leadership

3
Who Are These Leaders?

• Existing leaders in their own right
• Mobilize people and resources
• Transcend different interests and forces
• BUT
• A little bit reluctant on new role uncertainty
• Concern for common good struggle from parochial
  view to big picture

4
Leadership Selection

• Informal someone suggests, others agree
• BASES
• Have influence in the community large family,
  education, economic status, community involvement
• Formal position as head of a peoples
  organization, involvement in village council
  (Philippines)
• Informal position CADRE for life (Indonesia)

5
ICOMPs Role in Leadership Selection

• VERY LIMITED ROLE
• Facilitate community discussion the need for a
  leader
• Provision of advice what leaders should do
• Sharing examples leadership practices

6
Challenges

• Messianic complex
• Slow process trial and error frustrations
• Tendency of leaders to be overly visionary but
  with little output

7
Leadership Development Support

• Technical assistance
• Mentoring continuing advice, coaching
• Capacity building on a whole range of leadership
  and management skills

8
Strategic Leadership
Doing the RIGHT THING
Vision
Vision-Reality Gap
Inspire/ Empower
LEADERSHIP
Goals
Monitoring Evaluation
Objectives
Planning
MANAGEMENT
Doing THINGS RIGHT
Implementation
9
Lessons Learned

• Employ eclectic approaches in capacity building
  discernment, sensitivity, judgment
• Adjust to community pace and situation but bring
  to a higher level of thinking and way of doing
  things
• Emphasize sustainability and phase out scheme to
  avoid dependency

10

• Community Foundation is one of the many MEANS
  to an end
• What matters most is that communities are able
  to take charge of their own development.