Social mobilisation is a process that raises awareness and motivates people and communities to organise in a cohesive group for an active participation towards a change or a development. It is mostly used by social movements in grassroots groups, governments, and political organisations to achieve a particular goal, and in most cases, the process of social mobilisation acts as an integrative process where stakeholders are stimulated to become active participants in social change, using diverse strategies to meet shared goals. Social and community mobilisation as an aspect of participation in development practices a much accepted and appreciated concept by activists, academics, development practitioners and progressive thinkers, has radicalised the operationalisation of development practice by empowering the poor to engineer their own development.
People are usually only asked questions for information gathering while decision making is done by external professionals. In the process a ladder exists trans-formative participation which enables the poor to make their own decisions. Community mobilisation, challenges power dynamics as it allows the local community to be autonomous and engineer their own development.
Mobilisation allows a local community to self-organise, evaluate its own needs, undertake collective action using pragmatic strategies, manage resources and enhance its own standards of living. Local communities develop contacts with external institutions for resource and technical advice. Within this framework, local communities are no longer passive participants and passive recipients of development practices. They have full ownership over their own development. They can transform and set their own rules of the game. With community mobilisation, there is no longer a mismatch between the interest of various stakeholders, the local community determines its own network of stakeholders.
Dimecev Foundation understands that mobilisation is the key to entry points for all types of transitional social development interventions in the fields of infrastructure layouts in the regions where communities must be taken into account for their participatory involvement along-with all stake holders, and thus entry points are necessitated. These entry points can only be achieved through mass awareness, advocacy, sensitisation, and effective mobilisation of all the stake holders.
The power of participatory planning, and over-watch is shifted from the hands of donors and consultants (rich stakeholders) into the hands of community members. When a community does not mobilise, the development practitioners, donors, and consultants dictate the development interventions which are often culturally and socially inappropriate. They take decisions based on their own notions and definitions of development which often leads to undesired results and no increase in community well-being. Community mobilisation creates a powerful space for poor communities by legitimising their own voice and interests. The grass-roots approach is central to effective governance which did not exist in tokenism. Grass-roots approach facilitates change in stakeholder roles to allow the local communities to consolidate their own governance and operationalise their own development.
Dimecev Foundation holds unique experience in transforming power relations and brings institutional changes in the way stakeholders (such as government, consultants, donors, development practitioners, and NGOs) interact with each other and the roles they play within the framework of transitional social development practice.