DEVELOPMENT must start in communities because nations are built by people in communities, Department of Community Development Secretary Joseph Klapat said.
He said this at the Vanagi community in Port Moresby on Tuesday while presenting to the community leaders a draft policy of a research report on sustainable communities, livelihood and alternative pathways to development.
The policy was written based on the research of the Vanagi community.
The community will then give a feedback in which the final copy of the policy will be finalised.
Mr Klapat outlined the four key areas covered in the policy – community development, community learning, community life/economics and sustainable communities.
The research done for the policy was conducted by Prof Paul James and Julie Foster-Smith of the Globalism Institute of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT).
Prof James said the issues covered in the policy were intense as it talked about the way people lived in the community.
He said Vanagi and other communities were good communities that were being eaten away slowly by issues such as pollution, unemployment and HIV/AIDS.
Even the country’s politics contributed one way or the other to the decline of the communities, Prof James said.
He said communities had to build up their knowledge on what was happening.
A lot of people have been involved in putting the policy together including the Minister Dame Carol Kidu, the Department of Community Development and the team from the RMIT.