Abstract:
The purposes of this study were to 1) investigate both characteristics and roles of community developers, and 2) study guidelines for enhancing the success of sustainable development of the communities. Informants in this study were community leaders who work collaboratively with community developers in 4 areas. To identify the informants, Purposive sampling was applied. The research design in this study was a qualitative approach. Structured interview was a data collection strategy. After interviewing the informants, the researcher analyzed the data through the use of content analysis.
This study reports the following findings:
There are at least three desirable roles of community developers shared by the informants. These include 1) Provision including career advancement, community based tourism, group work, community plan development, projects and knowledge writing, suffciency economy ,personal delopment & enhance using technology and language for communicate. 2) Providing supports in terms of budgets and sharing information, coaching and facilitator 3) Coordinating or working collaboratively with community leaders and government institutions. This study, additionally, presents three desirable characteristics of community developers which are 1) possession of knowledge and ability-Community developers should have an expertise in work related to community development and keen to learn new knowledge,
2) Personality-community developers should have good interpersonal skills, dress up and explain things clearly, humble, positive thinking, human relationship & rapport 3) Work behaviors-Community developers should be the people who are willing to work toward goals, love and understand the nature of community development work, punctual, devote themselves to the work. The guidelines in increasing the success of sustainable development composed of DEPT
D (Development) - Human, Economic & Environment
E (Ethics) - Ethics & Moral Development
P (Participate) - Participate Development
T (Technology) - Technology & Language Development for Communicate