How to develop your community?

1- Work with people not over them! Everybody thinks themselves to be an expert in community development. When people work with each other sharing their ideas and compromising for the greater good of the community everything works well. The moment someone gets the “Pharaoh Complex” and tries to order people around or force his opinion then development stops no matter how good the Pharaoh thinks he is. Allah is the best of planners and every person that raises him/herself above others will be destroyed in the end. Always remember that modesty is a branch of faith and Allah may send you wisdom and guidance from places and people you never expected, or even from those you don't like.

2- Establish a study session among the imams & leaders in your area. This is a critical establishment for improving working relationships and it facilitates the formation of a unified vision amongst the leadership. Many city-wide organizations have grown out of such study groups

3- Have imams/leadership in training. Any community that Allah blesses with a highly effective individual MUST attach someone to that person for training. The goal of any person who becomes successful in doing something must be to pass on that ability to the next person. So the person in training must slowly be given more and more responsibility and opportunities to perform.

4- Go only as fast as you can do it right. With every organization there is always pressure to do it bigger, cheaper and faster. It is the dream of many community leaders, for example, to have the biggest Islamic school, built for next to nothing and done today. Over the long term, this attitude is destroying more community infrastructure than probably anything else. Communities get excited, throw up a building and pay through the nose maintaining it and then fight over it. It takes time to build infrastructure. Take things slowly, remember that the people infrastructure also needs to be built. As a community leader you need to control the energy of the people and protect them from over exerting themselves and guide them to long term success.

5- Fill the needs first. Too many community leaders get in charge with their agenda of things they want to do. Most of the time these ideas are not bad things to do but many times they do not reflect the immediate needs of the community. Before embarking on a project see if there is something more immediate that you are missing. For example if the imam is having to deal with a lot of marriage counseling issues then dealing with that issue should take a higher priority than trying to fix a problem that doesn't exist yet, like remodeling the library etc.

6- Community ownership and team building. One really good program is the community night. This is where the families of the community get together and are split up into mixed teams. The old are mixed with the young and the different teams compete against each other on community related projects. For example each team might be given a budget to spend on building a file community or they might work together to start a community newsletter or each team might be responsible for making a skit on Islam in America Etc. This type of activity builds a fun environment to get the youth involved in taking the community seriously and it gives the adults an opportunity to listen to ideas they wouldn't normally be interested in listening to. As more of a community spirit is developed then the foundation is stronger for real community events.

7- Strong government structure. This is a critical element that is often neglected but is very easy to fix. There are all kinds of constitutional pitfalls that communities run into. Either they make the construction so complicated that it is unworkable or they make it too simplistic to be of any use. The answer is simple, go to a community that has already developed a strong constitution through years of hardship and trial and error and adopt it for your community. Why do you have to go through all those same problems and mistakes?