From Private to Community Engagement

--How Taichung City Guides District Offices to Engage in Community Development

Authors:

Shih-Yue Lu (Director, Taiwan Community Alliance; Project Director, Taichung City Community Development Consultation and Promotion Office)

Min-Ting Huang (Executive Director, Association of Community-activists in Taiwan; Project Manager, Taichung City Community Development Consultation and Promotion Office)

“Dual Track Together” mechanism and “One District, One Feature” project of Taichung City

The “dual track together” mechanism is a rather special planning and design for community development in Taichung City. As early as in 2009 when the CCA launched the “New Hometown Community Development Phase II” to include community development contents in government administrative measures, the Cultural Affairs Bureau of Taichung City before the county-city merger has established the “Community Development Consultation Center” independent from the “Community Development Center” in each local government. This consultation center was established to guide district offices to propose and implement integrated community development projects. In that year, four out of a total of eight district offices joined the consultation center. In the following year, all eight district offices proposed and implemented community development projects. After Taichung became a municipality through county-city merger in 2011, the municipal government further established the “Taichung City Community Development Consultation and Promotion Office” to plan and implement training and guidance mechanisms for the public sector (civil servants relating to community development of all municipal government agencies and district offices) for them to include community development contents in government administrative measures, with focus on the cross-departmental resources integration of the municipality and the engagement in community development projects of district offices. The role and responsibility of district offices are described as follows.

While establishing the “Taichung City Community Development Consultation and Promotion Office” (Promotion Office), the Taichung City Cultural Affairs Bureau accomplished two assignments to set a foundation for future implementation of community development. First, re-structuring the Military Service Section into the Community and Cultural Services Section as the window for the Cultural Affairs Bureau in the district office along with the government re-structuring after the county-city merger, as the draftee sources reduced significantly and workload was thus lessened due to low fertility. Second, planning and promoting the “One District, One Feature” project with the Promotion Office to guide and encourage district offices to engage in community development. These two assignments have thus enabled the Promotion Office to establish a complete training and guidance mechanism for district offices by “equipping them with abilities and providing them with a reference.” In year one of the project, many civil services of the Military Services Section found it difficult to adjust to the new role and responsibility. Therefore, only 12 out of 29 district offices made proposals in 2011, and number increased to 25 in 2012. Between 2013 and 2017, there were about 27 to 28 proposals every year. More importantly, each of the 29 district offices has made at least one proposal, suggesting that the accumulative achievement rate is 100%.

However, the recipients of training and guidance changed very often due to the high turnover rate of civil servants of the Community and Cultural Services Section, and the accumulated effectiveness was insignificant. In addition, after the quantitative targets were achieved, it was time for quality improvement. Therefore, the Golden District Evaluation was launched in 2013 to incentivize civil servants with merits, commendations and book vouchers. In 2015, two individual categories, section chief and case officer, were added to the evaluation to lower the turnover rate of the Community and Cultural Services Section and effectively guide the “One District, One Feature” project to develop toward vision setting, feature marking, cross-sector planning and resource integration.

Assisting district offices to establish regional community development centers every year to construct the most localized community guidance mechanism

By setting a solid foundation through promoting training and guidance for community development and rewarding and commending civil servants of district offices over the past few years, the Cultural Affairs Bureau and Promotion Office of Taichung City began to encourage district offices to develop toward a regional community development center through training and policy education in 2015. In 2016, the “One District, One Feature” project was officially expanded to include the category II regional community development center. In addition, through the effective use of the resources provided by MOC for township and district offices to include community development contents in government administrative measures, a district-office-level community development center was established in each of the following four districts: Fengyuan District, Houli District, South District, and Xitun District. After another year of training and guidance, demonstration and exchange and the organized resource allocation and integration of the Cultural Affairs Bureau (invested the budget for category I of the One District, One Feature project to category II), 15 district-office-level community development centers (exceeded the target at 10 and advanced the schedule by 50%) were successfully established this year (2017). It is expected that a community development center will be established in all 29 district offices in two years, i.e. 2019. The diagram below shows the schedule.

The “One District, One Feature” project was promoted to include community development contents in government administrative measures progressively transferred policy resources including budget, human resources and training and guidance mechanisms from category I to category II during 2016-2019. The aim of such transfer is to transform the role of district offices from the “executor” of community development projects into a “trainer”, “mentor” and “companion.” The transformation is implemented progressively in different phases to guide qualified and competent district offices to establish a regional community development center, in order to compensate the openings and establish a top-down link, localize community development, and construct a complete and orderly community training and guidance mechanism. The diagram below shows the functions of a regional community development center in including community development contents in government administrative measures.

During the promotion, the Cultural Affairs Bureau and Promotion Office found one key that must be overcome: the attitude and idea of the district head are closely related to the actualization and effectiveness of the policy. Instead of realizing the function of “regional planning” through “department planning,” it is necessary to guide a district head to understand the importance of this policy to overall district administration and get involved in the policy. Therefore, the “District Head Consensus Workshop” was planned and held in March 2017, with Deputy Mayor Yi-Ying Lin as the host. Training was arranged for 29 district heads based on the theme: “Taichung City Community Development 3.0: Vision and Strategy of Transformation”. The diagram below shows the roles and functions of a district head in the “One District, One Feature” project and the “Regional Community Development Center.”

Promoting the “Taichung City Community Development Center” forward-looking and transformation place in pace with trends and times

Although the training and guidance work for base-level community development points will gradually change according to the trend of transforming the “Taichung City Community Development Center” into a “Regional Community Development Center”, the function of the city-level “Taichung City Community Development Center” will remain unchanged. Instead, it is necessary to plan and implement a forward-looking and transformation plan. In addition, it is necessary to promote the quality improvement of the overall community development mechanism in the city as the training and guidance points for community development reduces, with focus on the aspects that were not reached due to insufficient efforts and energy because of the huge community training and guidance mission and related administrative work. These include:

1. Integrated production-sale platform: Link and integrate the production of rural communities and the consumption of urban communities/apartment buildings by promoting urban-rural community development; and assess market operations and establish cooperation models with the “urban-rural linking” strategy and “social enterprise” model to minimize the food carbon miles and increase rural sales channel and income.
2. In-depth travel planning/marketing center: Inventory, assess and actively plan and design characteristics, cross-community and sustainable in-depth travel itineraries to mend the past problem of organizing “in-depth cultural travel” only with funding of most communities; assist on marketing through overall packaging and publicity; and attempt to demonstrate the function of regularly operating platforms.
3. Online community development and promotion center: “Community development” has evolved from “physical community development” into “online community development,” such as the cross-region, cross-sector online communities discussing topics including new immigrant, youth and golden-age populations. The Taichung City Community Development Center will expand and go deeper based on the foundation developed in recent years. In addition, the center will link to every regional community development center to play the role of a city-level community development center for cross-sector integration, professional consultation and media referrals.
4. Community development instructor training base: Facing the annually increasing demand for community development training and guidance services of regional community development center, plans for training and educating community development instructors should be planned and implemented to support the instructor demand of regional community development centers. Targets may include senior/outstanding community staff, faculty members of related fields of colleges and universities and culture and art workers relating to community development.
5. Promoting the participation of community development in other sectors or fields: Participation and linkage to community development work for apartment buildings, enterprises, schools and lifelong learning institutions (community universities and elderly learning centers)

The diagram below shows the transition and transformation objectives and missions of regional community development centers and Taichung City Community Development Center.

Developing the “Taichung City Community Development Policy White Paper” and the stage achievements

The Taichung City Cultural Affairs Bureau began promoting the “dual track together” training and guidance mechanism for communities and the public sector in 2009. After planning and implementing the “One District, One Feature” project in 2011, the Cultural Affairs Bureau has encountered various difficulties and obstacles in practice. With the support of two majors and three directors-general, “rolling wave corrections” have been implemented continuously. When Director-General Chi-Cheng Wang took up his office in 2015, the Promotion Office developed the “Taichung City Community Development Policy White Paper” to define the three development goals: “transformation”, “enhancement” and “linkage.” With the subsidy for the New Hometown Community Development Project from the MOC and the support fund from the Cultural Affairs Bureau, the two major missions: “Regional Community Development Center” and “Taichung City Community Development Center” were promoted at full steam. It is hoped that these stage missions will be accomplished in 2019 to empower the administrative mechanism for community development in Taichung City, in order to move toward the next-stage community development vision by re-developing the white paper in coordination with the MOC’s administrative community development policy.