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Research Journal of the University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka- Rohana 11, 2019

Yegidis, Weinback and Myers, 2012; Hardwick and Worsle, 2011; Gray and Webb,
2009; Trevithick, 2005). The information, which is qualitatively presented and

interpreted, is drawn from the authors’ field practice experience with a range of

CBOs of different scales that recruit volunteers extensively in their work. Some
inferences are substantiated with the references to secondary sources. The key

implication emerged in this discussion is that if volunteering can be applied in
community work with principles of promoting community centrality, equality and

social justice, collective identity and civil society and social capital, moving away

from traditional task-centered and service delivery orientation, it can enable an
active community participation in local level social development action.

Social development as an action

Midgley (1999:25) points out that social development is “a process of planned social

change designed to promote the well-being of the population as a whole in

conjunction with a dynamic process of economic development”. It is however a
complex process which encompasses all aspects of development, for example,

economic, social, cultural, spiritual and environmental, and is predominantly policy-
driven in order for it to take place without a greater emphasis on one aspect over

another.

Social development can be an action that is not impossible to be made possible even
at the local level (Ife, 2012; Pawar, 2014; Cox, 1996 and 1997; Cox and Pawar,

2012; Pawar and Cox, 2010). Pawar (2014:14) says that achieving social

development at all levels on a global scale is a challenging, but it is a practical one.
It has been meticulously proven that the social development perspective is a practice

model too, with a readily available set of tools that can be applied in local level
community action (Cox, 1996 and 1997; Cox and Pawar, 2012; Pawar, 2014).

Almost all of these writers say that it has never been an ideal, and evidence is

available even in recent history indicating that it has been applied as an action in

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