A R T I C L E

ACTION RESEARCH ON LEADERSHIP FOR COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT IN WEST AFRICA AND NORTH AMERICA: A JOINING OF LIBERATION THEOLOGY AND COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY
John Trout
Loyola University Chicago

Paul R. Dokecki and J. R. Newbrough

Peabody College of Vanderbilt University

Robert T. OGorman
Loyola University Chicago

Our purpose is to enhance the fields understanding of the nature of community leadership, the psychological sense of community, and the spiritual dimensions of community life. We describe an action research community development project conducted in a low-income Catholic parish in Lagos, Nigeria, in Western Africa. After describing the community development process that resulted in the establishment of 40 small0street basic communities (SBCs), we report an evaluation study in which 70 SBC leaders were surveyed regarding (1) SBC background characteristics (socioeconomic and environmental conditions and statistical information), (2) the state of community life in the SBCs (spirit0sense of community,
John Trout did action research in a Catholic parish in Lagos, Nigeria; Robert T. OGorman supervised Trouts analysis of his project data, with consultation from Paul R. Dokecki and J.R. Newbrough. Paul R. Dokecki, J.R. Newbrough, and Robert T. OGorman made equal contributions to the manuscript and are listed alphabetically. They have been doing action research in a Catholic parish in the United States. We thank the leadership and people of both parishes ~parish names were fictionalized in the article! for their many contributions to our work. We also thank BabaTunde Ahonsi, a sociologist from the University of Lagos, for help with survey design, and Australian community psychologists Adrian Fisher of Victoria University and Chris Sonn of Edith Cowan University for help on data analysis. Correspondence to: Paul R. Dokecki, Peabody #6, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37205. E-mail: johntrout@mweb.co.za, paul.r.dokecki@vanderbilt.edu, john.r.newbrough@vanderbilt.edu, or rogorma@luc.edu

JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY, Vol. 31, No. 2, 129148 (2003) 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/jcop.10043

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participation in activities, benefits of community life), and (3) challenges for the future (what SBC members and leaders can do to improve the community, problems influencing community development). We then reflect on the Lagos findings in light of leadership-for-community and spirituality frameworks developed in an action research project conducted in a Catholic parish in the United States. 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

INTRODUCTION Our purpose here is to enhance the fields understanding of the nature of community leadership, the psychological sense of community, and the spiritual dimensions of community life. We do so by relating two action research projects conducted in very different cultural settingsa low-income Catholic parish in Lagos, Nigeria, in West Africa and a middle-income North American Catholic parish in the United States. Liberation theologys theoretical and action perspectives informed both projects ~see Azevedo, 1987; Gutirrez, 197101973; Sobrino, 1984!. A Joining of Liberation Theology and Community Psychology Both liberation theology and community psychology intend to enhance peoples authentic human development and psychological sense of community through the process of community development. Work in the liberation theology tradition is not altogether new in the community psychology literature ~Dokecki, 1982; Dokecki, Newbrough, & OGorman, 2001!, and a recent issue of The Community Psychologist featured work on a related topic of emerging interest in the field, liberation psychology ~Watts, 2001!. Moreover, the Journal of Community Psychology recently published two special issues devoted to community psychology and spirituality, including contributions from various theological perspectives, including liberation theology ~Kloos & Moore, 2000, 2001!. Although some might see liberation theologys contribution to community psychology to be merely inspirational, as in the case of a researcher using a novel or a poem to suggest themes or insights, such a view would seriously misconceive what theology has to offer the field, especially in light of theological developments that followed from the Catholic Churchs Second Vatican Council of the 1960s. The destructiveness of human life and spirit in the two great wars of the first part of the 20th century moved theologians from detached speculation to the problems of present-day societies. Particularly in Europe, they began speaking of theology of present realities, or contextual theology ~Houtart, 1985!, with Latin American liberation theology being one of its major offshoots ~OGorman, 1990!. Contextual theology represents an epistemological breakthrough for theology. Classical theology has two norms or interpretive frameworksscripture and the tradition of the church handed down through the ages. The classical theologian applies these norms deductively to phenomena encountered by people in their everyday life. Contextual theology has added experience as a third norm. Experience becomes both the point of departure and the point of return for theological practice. The contextual theologian is more inductive, mining contemporary experiences ~e.g., of being a woman, of being Black, of being poor and marginalized, of having physical or emotional disabilities! to provide access to ways of knowing that are unique, particular, and filled with both theoretical and practical implications. This, in turn, forms the basis

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for considered action ~praxis! to alter present reality. In contextual theology, the scriptures and church traditions are open for reinterpretation in light of present situations in need of change so as to enhance peoples authentic human development and strengthen community. Among the many features of contextual theology and its offspring, liberation theology ~the Latin American version being perhaps the best known; Sobrino, 1984!, several are particularly relevant to action research in community psychology. First, the Latin American liberation theologians have practiced theology to facilitate transformation of the social contexttransformation does not mean constructing an intellectual model for understanding experience; it means, rather, altering social structures to help generate new experiences in society. Second, Latin American liberation theology is the common reflection of and for a community. It is not the theology of a scholar working alone in a library. With its orientation to the practical rather than to the abstract, Latin American liberation theology has relevance beyond the lives of a cultural elite. Finally, this theology restores method to its original meaning: a way of traveling, not in thought but in action. Latin American liberation theology originated in a faith journey through a life world of conflict in pursuit of liberation. Classical theologys emphasis on theory rather than action comes from the accumulation of theological tradition over centuriesa deposit of truths to transmit, explain, interpret, and make meaningful. This burden of knowledge as already given is classical theologys starting place, rather than the liberationists grounding in emerging action and lived experience. Within the Catholic Christian tradition, Latin American liberation theology has a very broad agenda as authentic theology. It attempts to explain, find meaning, and facilitate action related to: ~a! the way of Jesushistorical exegesis ~biblical theology!; ~b! the concrete ways of today seen in light of history and contexthermeneutics; ~c! the true and false ways followed in the history of Christian lifehistorical theology; ~d! the contemporary waysocial sciences; ~e! the all-inclusive and transcendent meaning of traveling this waysystematic theology; and ~f! the danger of turning the way into an ideology ~no traditions are too sacred to be questioned!critical theology ~Sobrino, 1984!. The expression of contextual theology in Latin American liberation theology has emerged out of a particular experiential context that concerns the quest for community and authentic human development. Social life has undergone significant redevelopment in Latin America in the past 40 years. The technological development of the first world has profoundly affected Latin America. Rapid changes have produced major dislocations, particularly in the transfer of capital and other resources from underdeveloped countries. Dislocating and uprooting ~the Brazilian peasants!. . . shattered the rural patterns of their lives, split up families, and threatened to erode their religious life. . . . It radically changed their conception of time, space, family ties, and social relationships. . . . Urban life brought to the fore the effort of the lone individual, on which everything seemed to depend. . . . The religious legitimation of their earlier world was fragmented or pushed into the background. Life is no longer interpreted in terms of the same presuppositions. ~Azevedo, 1987, p. 124! Modernity and its product, the autonomous individual, came full force on Latin America in just the past two generations, and the result has been a keenly felt loss of

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community. While Northern European and North American peoples have become used to and even championed individualism over several centuries, the people of Latin America experienced this cultural change as a sudden shock, leading to the fracturing of community. Their quest for community sometimes entailed a new form of churchthe Basic Ecclesial Community ~BEC!. Typically, there are 20 members in a BEC meeting weekly to reflect on the relationship between their lived experience and their religious faith. Brazil and Chile have been in the forefront of their development. In Brazil, the 1960s repression by the military government gave rise to these small groups of prayer and protest. In 1990, there were as many as 100,000 BECs in Brazil alone ~OGorman, 1990!. The BEC honors the context of peoples lives by shifting the focus from the hierarchy to the mass of people, the ones stripped of power, the base of society. The BEC becomes the place where the human person can begin again, can become someone. Face-to-face association provides a new way of being human. Here the people practice a theology at sunset. In small groups, they relate the experiences of their daywages insufficient to provide food, shelter and clothing, no medical care, inadequate education, political brutalityto the experiences portrayed in the scriptures and traditions of the church. They interpret the scriptures in light of their experience and vice versa. Present experience is the starting point; the belief is that Gods activity is as real in present experience as it was in the scriptural record of past experience. This reflection and religious consciousness raising calls forth present responseaction expressed politically, seeking a change in the oppressive political structure of the status quo Unlike classical theology, which begins in the past, in Latin America the people are contextual theologians, actors doing theology in their everyday lives, not just consumers of what has been written and handed down from on high. Theirs is an interplay of knowledge-use and knowledge-generation. Liberation theology and community psychology can be seen as coming together in a particularly interesting and exciting way in the realm of methodology. Gustavo Gutirrez ~197101973, p.11!, an intellectual founder of the liberation movement in Latin America, developed a method for liberation praxis. Praxis can be understood as reflective practice informed by generative theory in pursuit of human development and community ~Dokecki, 1996, Gergen, 1978!. The method of liberation theology entails the following steps: ~1! Act and observe the historical experience of liberation engaged in by the poor and the oppressed. ~2! Reflect critically on this action ~using a critical social science theory!. ~3! Reflect also in the light of theology ~scripture and tradition!. ~4! Design action strategies in the community. ~5! Act to transform the present into a more just community that enhances human development. The sequence, then, is action, reflection, transforming action or intervention in pursuit of community and human development. Liberationists interventions often follow Paulo Freires ~196801970! model of problem-posing education. In Freires approach, the intervention agent empowers people to give voice to their own problems and identify root causes; to define learning and action goals addressed to these causes; and to act to address the causes and bring about real change in the community. So framed, Freires liberationist method bears a striking similarity to Kurt Lewins approach to action research ~Dokecki, 1982; Marrow, 1969! and are similar to methods Newbrough ~1992! has espoused over the years for community psychology. Operating in the liberationist tradition, three of the current authors have been conducting the St. Robert action research project since the late 1980s in a Catholic

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parish in the United States. On the basis of this work, we have argued for the thoroughly spiritual nature of community psychology: Community psychologists: ~a! study relationality ~spirit!; ~b! reflect on, interpret, and theorize about the various levels of relationality of persons-in-community ~spirituality!; and ~c! engage in ~spiritual! actions and practices that have as their ought the ethical imperative of promoting community ~and the sense of community! and human development ~Dokecki et al., 2001, p. 512!. In this article, we use the St. Roberts project findings to help interpret and extend the findings of a recent action research project ~conducted by the first author, J. Trout! in the West African city of Lagos, Nigeria. After collecting extensive data on the effectiveness of his community development efforts from the local leaders of his liberation theology-inspired work in his poverty-ridden parish, Trout used the theory of psychological sense of community ~McMillan & Chavis, 1986; Sarason, 1974! as an interpretive framework. The West African story and data are presented in some detail, followed by reflection through the lens of the US story and data, especially regarding the nature of leadership-for-community and psychological sense of community. AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT ON LEADERSHIP FOR COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT IN WEST AFRICA Lagos: Background Information The city of Lagos, Nigeria, West Africa developed from a small fishing village in the 15th century to a port for the transatlantic slave trade. It then became the political0 economic capital of colonial Nigeria in the 19th century, and today has become Nigerias industrial and commercial center. The United Nations predicts that the metropolitan area, which had only 290,000 inhabitants in 1950, will exceed 20 million by 2010, making Lagos one of the worlds five largest cities. The population of its metropolitan area was about 10.9 million in 1996. This process of urbanization has been largely driven by ruralurban migration accounting for 6570% of the total growth of Lagos. Life in Lagos is characterized by urban features that include anonymity, impersonality, individualism, lack of contact, cosmopolitanism, and social disorganization manifesting in social pathologies like gang violence and prostitution, a mass culture around music and fashion, heterogeneity of interests, and specialized land use, for example, a clear separation of residential0household activities from commercial0occupational ones. Some specific notable social consequences of urbanization in Lagos are: Weakening of extended family ties and obligations due to spatial separation of family members resulting from ruralurban migration and limited space for housing rendering multigenerational households nonfeasible; Weakening of communitarian ethos bred by excessively monetized, atomized, fleeting and extremely impersonal nature of social interactions associated with specialization of roles and institutions and the vast heterogeneity of interests; Youth deviance and criminality associated with the anonymity that the city provides, related to the lack of moral pressure that comes from closeness to family members; the influence of elders, the church or mosque; and the lack community;

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Weak productive base of the city in the context of a long-running economic downturn since the mid-1980s, resulting in high levels of homelessness ~from the severe housing shortage! and unemployment especially among the youth; Increase in land-related conflicts as the demand and competition for land increases especially between new entrants into the city and the original settler population; and Increase in inter-ethnic and inter-religious marriages due to the young age at which most people move to the cities and the fact that there is now a huge mix of city-born and bred eligible persons of different ethnic and religious backgrounds residing and working in the various neighborhoods and communities that make up Lagos ~Fapohunda & Lubell, 1978!. Project Activities As a priest of St. Patricks Missionary Society, the first author was assigned to Lagos in September 1989. As he had the opportunity to visit people in their homes, he became aware that peoples attendance at church on Sunday gave them a great sense of belonginglarge crowds with lots of singing and dancing. As they returned to their homes, however, they returned to isolation, loneliness, and fear. The particular Catholic community in which Trout served, St. Johns parish, was ethnically divided ~ethnic division deeply fragments Nigerian society!. There was an atmosphere of fear and mistrust between factions, despite efforts by various people to bring about reconciliation. Trout launched a pilot program for the establishment of what he called StreetBased Communities ~SBCssometimes called Small0street basic Communities or Basic Ecclesial Communities!. He presented his vision of church-as-small communities to the whole congregation and issued an invitation to attend a series of meetings to those who wished to explore the beliefs and practices of such a model. About 50 people, mostly young professionals, eagerly volunteered. He discerned that the process of forming and maintaining communities required a team approach and that his initial role as facilitator would have to evolve from direct to indirect leadership, due, in part, to language and cultural barriers. A 3-month series of sessions followed focusing on the formation and maintenance of SBCs. The next step entailed the newly formed team of facilitators, now called the Community Trainers, presenting the model to the entire congregation during Sunday services over a period of 4 weeks. Soon the Community Trainers and Trout began house-to-house visitation, inviting people to be part of a local community. Locating members in each area was very difficult, as people could be attending the same church and living in the same building for many years and not know each other. Once again, people gave a very warm welcome and were enthusiastic about the formation of an SBC in their area. A 6-month series of training sessions followed. When the parishioners were comfortable with the purpose of the SBCs, the Community Trainers asked them if they wanted to form one in their area. With an affirmative answer, teams of three leaders were elected, generally by consensus, as natural leaders had emerged over the formation period. Each leadership team, however, had to contain at least one woman to ensure that women, who made up the majority of members, would have SBC leadership roles. From 19931998, the parish repeated this process until there were 30 communities. Later, new groups developed as a result of communities becoming too large and dividing into two or more. Eventually, there were 40 SBCs in the parish.

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Among the many benefits of the SBCs was the bringing together of different tribal0ethnic groups. Faith identity, not ethnic identity, served as the motivation for coming together, and they shared their personal experiences. This sharing created a bond of solidarity among diverse people who found themselves living in similarly difficult situations trying to cope with crippling poverty, and helped them overcome the dehumanizing tendencies of tribal discrimination. For example, if someone in a community died, where previously the persons ethnic group would have handled all the arrangements, now the local community supported the bereaved family. SBCbased actions like this played a decisive role in bringing about reconciliation between the factions that had ethnically divided the community for many years. One result of this ethnic reconciliation was that one faction handed over the legal documentation to disputed land to the parish. A committee composed of representatives of all the SBCs carried out a survey of the entire parish as to the best way to use the land. Two options emerged, one to develop a nursery0primary school, the other to develop a primary health clinic. Eventually, the parish decided to build a clinic to provide basic health services for the greater community, and once again SBC representatives took full responsibility for the planning and execution of this project. In doing this, they drafted proposals to different funding agencies and organized a fundraising drive. They consulted various existing clinics for guidance on the design and operation of the clinic. They also oversaw the purchase of supplies and the employment and supervision of local workers in the construction of the clinic. This committee drafted a constitution of the Board of Trustees, who would govern the operation of the clinic, and they negotiated an agreement with the Medical Missionaries of Mary to operate the clinic on behalf of the community. They received a substantial grant from the Irish Government, and the Irish Ambassador to Nigeria officially opened the clinic in December 1999. Evaluating the Effects of Small/Street Basic Communities A survey of community leaders was initiated to evaluate the SBCs. The SBCs were running successfully, and a study of the parish0community leadership held promise of helping identify the activities that fostered community growth and development and contributed to peoples psychological sense of community. In addition, many members were finding it more and more difficult to participate in their SBCs because of poverty-induced stress, and such a study might help identify promising directions for helping them deal with the difficulties they were experiencing in their daily struggle for survival. A local sociologist from the University of Lagos volunteered to draft a questionnaire for the community leaders. The instrument contained 20 open-ended and 16 objective questions focusing on three main areas: ~1! background characteristics ~socioeconomic and environmental conditions and statistical information!; ~2! state of community life ~spirit0sense of community, participation in activities, benefits of community life!; and ~3! challenges for the future ~what SBC members and leaders could do to improve the community, problems influencing community development!. The sociologist facilitated a workshop to ensure that the leaders were given ample opportunity for clarification of any of the questions. The several hours-long workshop gathered 80 community leaders ~57% female; 72% married; modal age 3544!, who worked in teams to identify the background characteristics, and as individuals to address state of community life and challenges for the future.

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Shortly after his sojourn in Nigeria, Trout began a period of study at the Institute of Pastoral Studies of Loyola University Chicago. He shared his data with one of the present authors, Robert OGorman, a religious educator and theologian specializing in liberation theology, who in turn, made his work known to the other authors, Paul Dokecki and J.R. Newbrough, community psychologists at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University. The three had consulted for several years on the development of community in a Catholic parish in Nashville, Tennessee. They suggested Trout use the psychological sense of community construct as the core of an analytic framework for his Lagos data. Trout entered his data onto a matrix on which he arrayed each leader 0 respondents response to each item on the survey, yielding over 2800 entries. The data were then analyzed for themes, both those related to psychological sense of community and any other themes that might emerge, which were then checked for reliability by raters with many years of pastoral experience. Only minor discrepancies among raters were found. Results Of the leaders surveyed, 77% reported being satisfied with the state of community life, and 80% rated the participation level of parishioners in the SBCs as high. They characterized the most active SBC members as middle-aged, middle-income, moderately well-educated women. Overall, they reported SBC members had medium levels of commitment, trust, and togetherness and low levels of punctuality and willingness to assume community responsibility. Socioeconomic and environmental conditions. One community leader described the conditions of his community as follows: Life is very difficult because of the noise from churches and mosques around us, but we try to be friendly with others. Problems with electricity makes life very difficult for us. There are many native spirit-churches and Islamic mosques, which conduct their services with large outdoor speakers making the area very noisy. This is especially so throughout the night in the churches with deliverance and exorcism vigils and then at dawn with the Islamic mosques calling people to prayer. This leads to a major issue of sleep deprivation. The SBC leaders reported that electricity supply is very irregular, often none is available for months, making visiting friends at night and social interaction in the area very difficult. Sleeping in rooms without electric fans during the hot season can be almost impossible. Most people live in poorly ventilated buildings that are overcrowded and not well maintained. @In my neighborhood#, life is not a bed of roses, there is not good road, water, or accommodation. Water supply is very poor. Landlords increase rent arbitrarily. . . . Most of us live in shops without windows or fans. Transportation is inadequate, with large crowds scrambling for few public transportation vehicles. Getting around is also hampered by the fact that many roads have been allowed to fall into such a state of disrepair that they are practically unusable in the rainy season. The area has no public hospital, although there are a large number of private clinics, run as unregulated and expensive profit-making ventures that are beyond the reach of most people. The poor water quality leads to different types of sickness, and many people spend what little money they have treating water-born illnesses.

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I am not encouraged by the conditions, I feel I am all alone. Sometimes I feel like leaving the area as I cannot do anything to change it. Security gates at the end of each street are necessary because of gangs of armed robbers that roam the streets at night. This sense of insecurity is heightened by the large number of brothels attracting Area Boys ~hoodlums!, who frequently riot. It is very difficult to build goodwill because of the crime rate. People live in fear and have to tolerate and endure threatening conditions. State of community life. Said one leader, We share our faith and problems, are able to understand ourselves and help one another in confronting the barriers that stop members from participating. In the SBCs, a sense of belonging develops as members become acquainted. As they get to know each other by name, they develop a sense of comfort and familiarity, and interpersonal relationships improve. People feel more connected because they can now talk to each other on the street and visit each other in their homes. The SBCs give members the opportunity to share their feelings and personal problems, with the consequent development of a sense of trust. In coming to know people at a deeper level, they develop a more understanding and tolerant attitude. In this friendlier, less hostile environment, the SBC becomes a place of acceptance of people of different cultures and ethnic identities. When the members of the SBC cooperate and work together to address their problems, mutual commitment ensues, and people become more willing to accept responsibilities. Trying to meet each others needs builds goodwill, which, in turn, strengthens the bonds between SBC members. Sharing with one another and the spirit of love in our community makes many people to turn up. Visitation also moves people to turn up because when they are sick they will be visited. When members visit the sick and give financial and medical assistance to people in need, both inside and outside the SBC, a strong sense of community ensues. This, in turn, is instrumental in bringing new people into the community. The SBC is for everybody whether rich or poor, educated or uneducated, and it is a venue for expression of ones opinion. The process of giving people the opportunity to express their opinion and build consensus in coming to decisions creates high levels of participation in SBC activities. Mobilizing the talents of the entire community increases cooperation and unity. When SBC members develop a sense of their power and autonomy, they empower themselves to take responsibility for their own development. Street-based community leaders, who require ongoing renewal and formation, monitor and evaluate this process to ensure that SBC members grow in confidence to deal with conflict in the group and remain faithful to its vision. Obstacles to community development. One leader said, Hectic life patterns of members make them come late and tired to the home. Poverty is one of the main reasons given for dissatisfaction with the sense0spirit of the community in Lagos. Members are caught up in a daily struggle for survival, having to spend long hours at their business or work. Some, usually women involved in petty trading, engage in evening business activities and return to their homes late and tired. People pay more attention to their business and work than to the SBC activities. Poverty level is very high and disturbing. People are worried and anxious because

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the poverty level is high and rapidly increasing, leading to a general insecurity where people focus on themselves. People are afraid to let others know how they feel. A lot of gossipers in the community makes it impossible to . . . trust @others#. This creates a sense of individuality, which lead many to be unwilling to share their problems and to be little concerned with the needs of others. Some members are shy to open up because of gossiping and backbiting; as a result of this people are afraid to share personal experiences. Participation is very low, people are always running from responsibilities. There is little or no care for each other because a lot of them feel unconcerned for others. Participation is also low because members are always avoiding responsibilities and not working together to meet each others needs. High handedness on the part of leaders, insensitive to complaints, lack of consultation and taking decisions unilaterally. Unity decreases when leaders do not use a consultative approach or when other factors come into play such as tribalism and discrimination among members ~richpoor, malefemale!. This results in some members adopting an inferior role of dependence upon the leaders, while others leave the community. Because of the little education, members shy away from sharing and explaining themselves. The majority of members of the SBC are low-income market-women; their literacy level is not very high. Because of this they feel that they are not educated and this prevents them from sharing and taking an active part in community decisions. Reflection on Findings Perhaps, the clearest finding of the West African SBC project was that the oppressive situation of poverty overwhelms people and creates almost insuperable obstacles to community development. Poverty affects people both externally and internally and leads to isolation, alienation, mistrust, and serious weakening of the sense of community. External consequences of poverty. Adverse socioeconomic and environmental conditions create a situation in which people engage in a daily struggle for survival. The downward spiral into deepening poverty leads to their increasing inability to earn a livable wage and to deterioration in living conditions and infrastructure. Moreover, they lack access to basic health care and experience constant threat to life and property from frequent riots, ethnic and religious conflicts, and marauding gangs of armed robbers. Practically every street has large security gates that are locked at night and local vigilantes who patrol the area during the hours of darkness. Most houses have barred windows and doors, and more affluent people frequently employ private security guards. All this gives rise to a siege mentality that is an obstacle both to attendance at community meetingsDue to problems of general insecurity most parishioners in the area are not comfortable attending community activities.and to the overall community development process. Internal consequences of poverty. The majority of SBC members are low-income women with little formal education. These women were generally reluctant to share their experiences. This may have been due to their negative self-image and the sense that they and their experiences of life are not legitimate sources of knowledge, possible consequences of colonialism. This reticence hampers their ability to participate fully

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in the community and to engage actively in the process of arriving at consensus in community decision-making. They tend to be willing followers but reluctant leaders. Developing trust is a long and difficult journey. People who have internalized the deeply ingrained symptoms of poverty often engage in gossiping and backbiting, frequently reported as reasons for peoples reluctance to share. The inability to express themselves and to seek assistance from the community is a double oppressionfrom the socioeconomic environment and from the social world in which they live. Trust develops when the SBC helps people overcome their fear of derision for sharing their life problems, perhaps the shortage of food or the inability to pay school fees for their children. Another consequence of poverty is that certain forms of religion can enslave people to their life circumstances rather than mobilize them to address the root causes of poverty. Religion can sometimes be used to focus peoples attention on the hereafter rather than on present political, economic, and social realities. The many churches and Islamic mosques in the area overflow with large congregations, many of whose members seek miraculous solutions to their problems. People come to believe that problems result from demonic possession, hence the prevalence of sleepdepriving exorcism and deliverance services that take place through the night broadcast over large loudspeakers. Small0street basic communities and the human propensity for hope. Despite the difficulties people face, the SBC movement is taking root and is expanding. The human propensity for hope flourishes when people have face-to-face relationships with their neighbors, have an opportunity to share their experiences and problems, work together in trying to solve or alleviate these problems, are empowered to belong and participate in community, and reach out to the most vulnerable members of society. The socioeconomic and environmental conditions in which these community members live constantly undermine their sense of community. An effective way of counteracting this isolation and hopelessness is to give people the opportunity for face-to-face relationships with their neighbors. SBCs are not a spontaneous reality. Left to themselves, people will not likely mobilize for community development. Poverty tends to block economic and political participation and also weakens peoples capacity to develop and sustain family and community life. SBCs give people the opportunity to express what is essential to their humanity through the nurturing of relationships in the community in which they live. Leadership is crucial. SBCs are the result of consciousness raising activities by the leadership team. These teams also play a role in maintaining the face-to-face nature of SBCs and guaranteeing continuity, growth and animation, essential characteristics if these communities are going to flourish. Membership in an SBC is different from membership in a support group. Participation in SBCs is much more than attendance at a weekly meeting. Rather, membership involves a commitment to the face-to-face experiences of daily life rooted in peoples proximity in particular neighborhood communities, enriched by regular SBC gatherings of sharing and reflection. Where and with whom people live affect the socialization of members and their families, especially children.The @SBCs# help to bring together members in one area to know themselves and share things in common. Membership in a community provides people the opportunity to move from being helpless victims to becoming agents of their own transformation and that of the socioeconomic environment in which they live. They have the opportunity to be

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involved in community development, which, in turn, greatly diminishes their sense of loneliness, isolation, and fear. If community members do not attend to their socioeconomic and environmental conditions, then they are determined by them. If they attend to these conditions, as they are attempting to do in the face-to-face SBCs, then they have the opportunity to evaluate them, to work at limiting their destructive effects, and ultimately to seek their transformation. Empowered SBC members foster authentic human development. SBCs encourage people to express what they are thinking and to trust what they are feeling. This emerging self-confidence allows them to act and take initiative. In providing a voice for the voiceless in oppressive situations, the SBCs facilitate authentic conversation, in which members constantly search for intelligible approaches to human brokenness through naming and reflecting on their everyday life experience. Authentic listening and response foster transformative learning. This is essential if the members of the SBCs are to shed their mistrust of their own thinking and the thinking of others like themselves. Transformative learning is necessary if people are to stop looking outside themselves for answers and instead begin to look at themselves and their own capacities as agents of transformation. This research, however, demonstrated that people are initially reluctant to share their experiences. We feel very much afraid to share our personal experiences. This attitude grows, in part, from Nigerias history as a British colony. The colonization of Africa was very much a child of the Enlightenment, which gave Western culture a belief in its own superiority and instilled a sense of timidity and inferiority in colonized peoples. Another factor is the experience of church as guided by classical theologys deductive approach in which the reliance on scripture and tradition leave little or no room for personal experience. In focusing on sharing and reflecting on everyday experiences at the weekly SBC gathering, the members come to recognize human experience of present realities as a major source of knowledge for developing historically-situated and personally-relevant theology. Members of the SBCs become agents of the human task of developing truth and discerning meaningful courses of action in the face of the overwhelming effects of poverty and injustice. Because the SBCs are faith-based, and also church-based, they have a moral obligation to answer the demands of the gospel to take action on behalf of justice. SBCs seek to transform people from a state of passive resignation to active awareness, with a consequent heightening of their psychological sense of community. Not only were the people of Nigeria struggling with overwhelming poverty, they were also living under various military dictatorships, which controlled the countrys vast oil industry. These military juntas dealt with any form of dissent ruthlessly through the indiscriminate use of institutionalized violence, the annulment of elections, and the imprisonment of journalists and human rights activists. This oppressive situation undermined peoples belief in themselves and fostered a crippling fear that undermined their lack of assertiveness and their capacity for action on behalf of justice. The experience of shared power is one of the most frequently reported motivations for peoples participation in the SBCs. They provide a place for people to participate in community development, and this participatory experience, enhanced by use of consensus decision-making, rescues people from alienation, isolation, and alienating individualism. They participate in a wider society through, among other vehicles, the Justice, Peace and Development Commissions that emerged in each community.

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There exists an understandable tendency to address the problem of community development through deficiency-oriented policies and programs. Such policies and their programs focus people on the extent of their problems, and members come to believe that their welfare depends on being the client of an agency. This approach, however, often perpetuates community dysfunction and promotes dependency and powerlessness. Negative aspects of a community come to be perceived not as part of the truth of community life, but as the whole truth. In communities where deficiencyoriented policies and programs are prevalent, neighborhoods often become environments of service, where individuals well being depends on their relationships with the service providers, who are often outsiders, and where they get caught up in a cycle of dependence. Something more is necessary to empower communities to address realistically and effectively the life and death challenge of poverty. By focusing on what is present in a community rather than what is absent, SBCs harness the capacities of the community members themselves to establish priorities and solve problems. In that regard, one of the greatest assets of these faith-based communities is their spirituality. Spirituality is that which gives meaning to their lives and motivates meaningful action. Unless the spirituality of the community members is acknowledged, fostered, and turned toward a process of community development, people are destined to become dependent clients constantly looking outward, instead of being agents of their own lives and that of their community.

A Community-Based Response to the HIV/AIDS Crisis On the basis of his pastoral work and action research to develop SBCs in Lagos, Trout is currently working in South Africa to address the HIV0AIDS crisis. He is in the process of cultivating a community-based movement of faith, hope, and development designed to build upon the assets of the people and their communities in HIV0AIDSstricken communities. His approach has the potential to serve as a generalizable framework for addressing the HIV0AIDS crisis in sub-Saharan Africa. Today, in African nations, and especially in South African nations, AIDS is causing the deaths of millions of people. HIV0AIDS is also undermining the foundations of civic and community life, and often instills in peopleboth those infected with the HIV virus and those who are notfeelings of despair and powerlessness. Over and above the personal suffering that accompanies HIV infection wherever it strikes, the virus in sub-Saharan Africa threatens to devastate whole communities, rolling back decades of progress towards a healthier and more prosperous future, reducing the capacity of communities to step in and help those most affected by AIDS. The passage of knowledge to the younger generation is being interrupted by deaths of elders. HIV0AIDS is destroying families, communities, and fragile economies, and is leading to a growing sense of powerlessness, despair, shame, and denial. The individuals living in these communities must be empowered through the marshaling of community assets to overcome these negative feelings. Community development offers one of the best opportunities for individuals and local communities, working together with philanthropic organizations and other aid providers, to overcome the debilitating effects of HIV0AIDS and, ultimately perhaps, HIV0AIDS itself. In South Africa, Trout is implementing a community development plan that focuses on energizing and mobilizing the talents of entire communities. He is helping

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create asset-based, capacity-focused development programs to empower people in HIV0AIDS stricken communities to address realistically and effectively this daunting life-and-death challenge. This model of community development proceeds from the proposition that true community development occurs only when individuals have committed themselves and their resources to the development effort. Trout is basing his efforts on his findings in Lagos relative to psychological sense of community. He is working toward developing communities characterized by strong feelings of membership among the participants in the movement for community development; demonstrated influence by members of the community on the basic structure and functioning of the movement; clearly shared emotional connections among members of the community to each other and to the movement; and most importantly, fulfillment of the underlying human needs created by the HIV0AIDS epidemic in the community, whether these are spiritual, physical, emotional, or economic. These characteristics are based on Trouts conclusion that authentic human development occurs when people have face-to face relationships with their neighbors, have opportunities to share their experiences and problems, work together as a team in trying to solve or alleviate these problems, are empowered to belong and to participate in community, and reach out to the most vulnerable members of society. Trouts ongoing work is intended to create a movement of authentic human development based on principles of asset-based community development. He believes that the principal assets of any person, indeed the ones that give meaning to life and motivate human action, are spirituality and religious faith.

LEADERSHIP: NORTH AMERICAN REFLECTION ON THE WEST AFRICAN EXPERIENCE Having explored in some detail Trouts action research efforts in West Africa, we now reflect on this work from the perspective of the St. Robert project conducted in Nashville for almost 15 years and reported earlier in the Journal of Community Psychology ~Dokecki et al., 2001!. We have just presented the Lagos project from the vantage point of John Trout, the action researcher reporting a complex flow of events as they happened, as a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end. Understandably missing from that account is reflection on the nature and implications of the leadership role Trout himself played in carrying out his project, which could be thought of as constituting a meta-narrative. As we stepped back from his Lagos efforts and asked what our experience of parish community development in Nashville might have to offer by way of interpretation, what immediately stood out was the role of Trout as leader. Early in the Nashville project, which took the form of our ongoing consultation in community psychology and theology to the pastor of a Catholic parish in need of community development, we learned that central to this process of community development is a set of leadership functions. At St. Robert, the pastor and the team of staff members and volunteers he established carried out these functions. This led us to formulate a series of leadership-for-community principles ~Dokecki, Newbrough, & OGorman, 1993!. Several years later in the project, our work led us to recognize the importance of spirituality, both for our own work and, especially regarding the relationship between spirituality and sense of community, for the field of community psychology more generally. We developed a model of spirituality with elements that parallel our leadership functions ~Dokecki, et al., 2001!.

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Based on our earlier North American parish project work, we found that leadershipfor-community is in many respects leadership-for-spirituality. So conceptualized, the goal of leadership is to enhance community life to overcome the fragmentation of contemporary life caused by excessive emphasis on material concerns to the exclusion of human relationships ~ spirituality entails relationality !. Leadership accomplishes this by enabling people to work toward their authentic human development by relating to each other as persons-in-community who engage in collaborative and mutual patterns of community participation and action. Leadership-for-community at its best is a process through which the leadership ~ the leader and others who share in the leadership function! empowers community members ~a! to support each other in meeting mutual needs, ~b! to find meaning in their individual and collective lives, and ~c! to live practical, yet spiritual, lives in the community. So described, this is a process of transformation and self-transcendence. At the practical level, leadership-for-community develops stabilizing structures that encourage community members to operate on a fiscally and legally sound basis and to engage in planning, implementation, and evaluation efforts that clearly communicate the expectation for collaborative and reflective effort between the leadership and the followership. Finally, we found that community development is not an achievement but an ongoing process; therefore, leadership must develop ways to revitalize itself and avoid burnout to ensure both continuity and change in the process of community development. Also of concern here is that the community be empowered to carry on with its development work even if another, perhaps less charismatic person, replaces the original leader. In what follows, therefore, we interpret Trouts West African work using our North American-derived leadership-for-community and spirituality frameworks ~see Appendix!. The major leadership issue Trout faced in developing community in his West Africa parish was social fragmentation. During Trouts tenure, the growth rate of the metropolitan area of Lagos was 5.8% annually; Lagos grew by more than 300,000 persons per year driven by ruralurban migration. The population density in the built-up metropolitan area was 20,000 persons per square kilometer. Trout experienced life in Lagos as characterized by an urbanism whose features include: ~a! anonymity, ~b! impersonality, ~c! individualism, ~d! lack of social contact, ~e! cosmopolitanism, ~f! social disorganization manifesting in social pathologies such as gang violence and prostitution, ~g! a mass culture centered around music and fashion, ~h! heterogeneity of interests, and ~i! specialized land use ~e.g., clear separation of residential0household activities from commercial0occupational ones!. As a young newly ordained priest, Trout was appointed to a Catholic parish ~St. Johns! in a rapidly developing area in the northern suburbs of Lagos that was ethnically divided. There was an atmosphere of fear and mistrust among the factions. This ethnic division, which already deeply divides Nigerian society, was further deepened in Trouts parish when there was a dispute over land and the location of the center of worship. A consequence of this division was that people disengaged from involvement in the church organizations. There was an atmosphere of fear and mistrust among the factions, despite efforts by various people to bring about reconciliation. One of the major tasks of leadership-for-community is to articulate a vision that gives shape to the communitys practices. Trout approached his congregation in 1990 by presenting a vision of church-as-communityof, by, and for the peopleat a major gathering of the people at one of his first public presentations. He followed this with

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his SBC community development intervention, eventually establishing 40 such small communities. The sharing in these settings created a bond of solidarity based not on tribal but faith identity. As a leader, Trouts goal was to promote human development. His task was to get the elements of the parish life and the lives of the people to work together in an interdependent and complementary way to evoke participation, mutuality, and psychological sense of community. Trouts congregation had been exposed to deficiencyoriented policies and programs, coming to believe that only outside experts could provide real assistance. Trout recruited and trained some 50 young professionals from the parish to initiate the SBCs with short-term training sessions for community building. He sought his leadership team from the community and, by focusing on what was present in the community rather than what was absent, he harnessed the capacities of the community to establish priorities and solve problems. He believed one of the greatest assets of his faith-based community was peoples spirituality, giving meaning to their lives and motivating their action. A crucial initial leadership choice, therefore, is whether to focus on community deficits or strengths. The leader-for-community attempts to cultivate habits or standing patterns of action that are manifest in a socially supportive infrastructure and that produce social capital in the form of interested and motivated people who work together to meet mutual needs and enhance psychological sense of community. Trout enabled his parish community to develop stabilizing structures encouraging community members to become stewards of material and fiscal resources. He employed planning processes and rituals to communicate his expectations for collaborative and reflective efforts. After a series of training sessions, Trout and the newly formed team of facilitators, Community Trainers, presented the SBC plan to the entire congregation during the Sunday services over a period of 4 weeks. Soon after, they began house-to-house visitation and extended invitations to come to group meetings. Initial meetings involved leading members through a series of experiential training sessions, usually lasting about 6 months. The resulting SBCs eventually formed the hub of all St. Johns parish life and were the source of the leaders who formed the parish council, the parishs governance structure. Trout worked with his co-leaders in these small groups to empower the members of the parish. As leader-for-community, Trout had the task of enabling parish community members to minister to each other, find meaning in their individual and collective lives, and live practical, yet spiritual, lives in the communitymatters of transformation or self-transcendence. The peoples high and rapidly increasing poverty level tended to produce a general insecurity and a focus on self and individual survival. This atomized individualism meant members were often unwilling to share their problems and were unconcerned with the needs of others. Some members were reluctant to participate actively because of the expectation of gossiping and backbiting, and they were afraid to share their personal experiences. The leaders structured the SBCs so as to encourage parishioners to communicate freely face-to-face, to share their faith and life experiences, which helped move them towards self-transformation by overcoming their fear and isolation. So, when a piece of parish land became available, parishioners pursued the common good by surveying the parish as the best way to use the land. The whole parish decided to build a health clinic, and SBC leaders took full responsibility for the planning and execution of the project.

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Trout and his cadre of leaders attempted to structure the SBCs so they would revitalize themselves to ensure both continuity and change in parish community development. Two important questions for leadership-for-community are how long can intensive community development efforts be sustained, and will they continue after a charismatic leader like Trout leaves? At St. Johns, the SBCs brought people together and produced many benefits, but what the evaluation study revealed was that the cloud of grinding poverty hung menacingly over the community development process. Povertyrelated to a history of colonialism and a form of Christianity that often failed to address peoples authentic human development needs and to encourage spiritualitywas a ubiquitous force. It worked against emotional connection among the people and produced negative self-image and lack of self-esteem, likely to cause burnout and a return to alienation and isolated individualism. The parish council constitution, focused on the SBCs as the hub of parish life and ongoing community development efforts, helped ensure that the work of the SBCs would continue after Trouts departure. In conclusion, Trout, as leader espoused an asset-based vision of the community that was counter to a view that only outside experts can lead. He believed that, by focusing on what is present in a community rather than what is absent, the leader can harness the strengths and capacities of the members themselves to solve problems they choose to address. His evaluation project demonstrated that communities need to be maintained and renewed by helping SBC members invest their spirituality in the community development process and become agents of their own lives and that of their community. An overarching view of the leadership-for-community function in Trouts West African action research effort suggests that its effects are in line with the psychological sense of community construct. Leadership-for-community works to give people a feeling of membership, the spiritual feeling of belonging, or of sharing a sense of personal relatedness. It structures a social setting that allows people to discover their personal agency or influence, that they matter and make a difference in pursuing a community groups common good. It works to help members mutually fulfill their needs. Finally, leadership promotes shared emotional or spiritual connection among members of a community the sense of common history, geography, experiences, and values. Given the readership of this journal, we have mostly written using the language of community psychology and related social sciences. We hope it has become obvious to readers that our introduction, which very generally described the tenets of contextual0 liberation theology, and the body of the article go together rather easily, with little need to stretch or distort the methods or concepts from either discipline. That indeed has been the meta-narrative of the St. Roberts project we have been presenting to community psychology and theology audiences over the last 15 years. APPENDIX Leadership and Spirituality Frameworks 1 Leadership-for-Community Principles 1. Community leadershipThe goal of parish leadership is to help enhance community life in contemporary society where community fragmentation is the norm.
1

From Dokecki et al., 2001.

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2. SpiritualityAt the core of the contemporary fragmented community is a crisis of spirituality. Therefore, the essence of leadership that enhances community is to attend to the authentic human development needs of persons-in-community, often masked by the overvaluing of material goods. 3. Complementarity and integrationParish leadership is a matter of enhancing community and human development through integrating persons into local parish life by collaborative and mutual patterns of community participation. 4. Transformation0self-transcendenceParish leadership at its best is a transforming process through which leaders enable parish community members to minister to each other, find meaning in their individual and collective lives, and live practical, yet spiritual, lives in the community. 5. Economics and lawParish leadership enables the parish community to develop stabilizing structures that encourage community members to become stewards of material and fiscal resources and to appropriate church law so the parish is fiscally and legally sound. 6. Situation structuringThe process of parish leadership requires structuring that entails planning, the use of rituals, and many other means for clearly communicating the expectation for collaborative and reflective effort between the parish leaders and the people. 7. Renewal and maintenanceSince revitalizing the parish community is not an achievement but an ongoing process, the parish leadership must revitalize itself to ensure both continuity and change in parish community development, which entails the development of processes that enhance spirituality and maintain the vital sense of community throughout the parish. Spirituality Elements Element 1 ~Professional Practice!We begin in professional practice of a particular kind, that is reflectivegenerative practice. It is a way of construing the nature of community psychology and ministerial practice. It is an ethically grounded form of relational practice through which one intends to develop community as a generative social group and, thus, to develop and empower people to be self-efficacious, socially competent, and active participants in social life, and to have a psychological sense of community. Element 2 ~The Human Person!People become human as they integrally relate to their contexts and are treated as persons not as atomized objects. Their behavior is motivated by strivings for self-transcendence as guided by their life stories and meaning systems. Element 3 ~Social Setting!The human context, understood holistically in time and space, comprises many realms ~levels and systems!, all of which entail relationships within and between them. A person experiences relationships in realms ranging from the subatomic and cellular, to the cognitive and organic, to the social and cultural, and on to the cosmic, and, understood theologically, to the theistic realm. Element 4Spirit is the energy of relationship and is found in all relations and relational realms. Spirit connects and unifies. This energy manifests in three modalities: Spirit-as-Bonding; Spirituality-as-Reflection; and the Spiritual-

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as-Action, that is, spiritual as a way of characterizing action and social practices. Element 4.1Spirit-as-Bonding is the communal experience of being together, sharing meaningful events and sentiments. ~Heart0Communion!. Element 4.2Spirituality-as-Reflection refers to the method one uses to recognize, analyze, and interpret, in the light of ultimate concerns, the experiences that arise from the most meaningful relationships in ones life; that is, spirituality is reflection on relationality ~spirit!. ~Head0Reflection0 Autopoiesis! Element 4.3Spiritual-as-Action refers to actions and practices, especially service to others, enabling people to live and act in pursuit of their ultimate concerns. ~Hands0Service0Differentiation! Element 5There are two approaches to ultimate concerns, perhaps best considered as separate worldviews: Element 5.1When reflecting on and acting in terms of ultimate relationality includes all but the theistic realm, we speak of nontheistic spirituality. Element 5.2We reserve the term theistic spirituality for instances where persons consciously address, and perhaps make central, the theistic realm. Element 6As a normative0regulative ideal, integrated persons and communities manifest balance among the three processes of Spirit-as-Bonding, Spiritualityas-Reflection, and the Spiritual-as-Action. Element 7In pursuing their spirituality, people reflect on their experience of the relationships that constitute their daily life and organize their reflections into narrativesstories intended to make meaning out of their lives. Element 8The normative0regulative ideal for meaningful human action is the development and enactment of a generative narrativespiritual story people tell themselves and others that both provides meaning and gives direction for actions to improve their lifeworld. Element 9Human development occurs in particular forms of communitythose that embody balance among the processes of Spirit-as-Bonding, Spirituality-asReflection, and the Spiritual-as-Actionthat give rise to relational0spiritual generative narratives. The major ethical first principles for community psychology as reflectivegenerative practice, therefore, are human development and community.

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