Community Transformation Center

What is a Community Transformation Center (CTC)?

Due to our concern with the long-term livelihood of poverty stricken communities and their children in particular, World Harvest launched several long term strategic initiatives, one of which was building Community Transformation Centers (CTC) in poor communities.

One of World Harvest’s signature facilities is the Community Transformation Center. The CTC is a multi-purpose building that houses World Harvest’s community transformation programs. For example, the CTC in Neuheun, Aceh is the only medical clinic for 500 families. It also houses a preschool program, sewing machines for mothers, and is used for community public health and education. It has become the center of the refugee community life. Other CTC’s are used for computer training centers, where children are learning how to use computers for the first time. All of World Harvest’s educational programs for children and parents, medical and dental care, microeconomic development projects and training classes, plus community activities such as meeting and weddings can be found in a World Harvest CTC.

The Community Transformation Centers have drastically changed daily life in communities were World Harvest has established local CTC’s. Some women are now creatively producing beautiful doormats, prayer carpets, and other arts and crafts to be sold in order to generate extra income. More and more mothers have become confident in teaching their children after joining literacy classes in their CTC’s. Students improve their English and Math skills as they receive guidance and tutoring help from the staff at CTC’s. Access to medical service is no longer a problem as World Harvest’s medical teams regularly visit local CTC’s. CTC’s also serve as “function rooms;” a place where parents can learn children’s educational curriculum and enjoy the opportunity of interacting with each other. In terms of community service, the CTC’s are unparallel on civic occasions like the election days. People pack into their CTC for an opportunity to vote.

Holistic Approach

The holistic approach toward economic, social and spiritual domains are embraced in World Harvest's Community Transformational approach. The CTC, is an integrative process; it involves a three dimensional process that is rooted in the attainment of the love of God, bringing about social justice and in meeting the needs of poor people. Community transformation through World Harvest's holistic approach will serve the purpose of stimulating economic growth, social justice, and poverty reduction through community, family and a child development framework.

Children with Childhood

Children are at the heart of World Harvest's mission and core values. Though children are tomorrow's responsible citizens, they are the most vulnerable. World Harvest provides education opportunities and health care for many children without exception, but special focus is placed on the development of the child as a whole. To this effect, ensuring children's well-being within the context of their families and communities is a critical objective in the transformation process.

Cultivating Internal Facilitators for Transformation Process

The community transformation structure is designed to organize and train community facilitators with skills in leadership and development programs within their communities. This makes it possible to build effective relationships and trust needed for the community transformational process.

CTC in Muara Baru

The communities embraced in the CTC’s are organized into smaller groups with the help of internal facilitators that serve as catalysts in transformational programs. Community groups are formed around common social and economic interests. World Harvest trains internal facilitators to take initiative and facilitate the process of the community's empowerment and transformation. These facilitators are chosen by community members and trained in facilitation and technical skills for six- months before they engage and are integrated into the community's transformational process. Internal facilitators encourage community participation in social and economic matters that affect their livelihood. They develop an appropriate action to stimulate awareness and seek active participation toward empowerment.

World Harvest takes the following considerations during the selection process of internal facilitators:

• Have they the ability to verbalize their faith?
• Are they open for discussion and open to learning from one another and the community?
• Do they respect the values and culture of the community?
• They should usually live in the midst of their community and work with a sense of commitment?
• Do they encourage community initiatives and development endeavors?
• Do they have the ability to analyze situations in the context of their work?
• Can they dialogue with the community to help them raise self-awareness?
• Do they have conviction in the potential and actual creativity of poor people?

Once selected, internal facilitators are trained with basic skills in effective communication, community development, working with people, facilitation techniques, initiating changes, participatory planning, problem solving, interview techniques and data compilation.

Our goal for every CTC is transformational development through building relationships, facilitating partnership and empowering communities. We also set the life cycle of CTC from 7 to 10 years, divided into phases, starting with initiating entry point programs to develop the community's confidence in the programs. Initial phases entail the introduction of programs such as: providing medical help along with books, literature and magazine resource centers that are related to children’s education. The final phase is introducing job creation programs and then a gradual scaling down of reliance on external resources toward ensuring community ownership.

Transforming people's livelihood in poor communities is an enormous task. Obviously, funding plays a significant role in the challenge. To this effect many more CTC’s are needed to be built, the total budget needed to build a Community Transformation Center in each community for the first year is US$ 40,000. Most of the funds for the first year will be used to acquire land and permits, purchase physical materials, equipment, internal facilitator training, parents training on awareness of children's rights and protection and employment compensation etc.

If you are interested in sponsoring or contributing toward a CTC, or in partnering with us in building CTC, just click here to donate online today and please specify 'Sponsor-a-CTC' for your contribution. Or you can call us at (626) 359-8500 to donate over the phone. You can also send your check to "World Harvest" and put a note: "Sponsor-a-CTC" Program.