About CODI

“CODI is a public organization with a goal to build a strong societal base
using the collective power of civil groups and community organizations.”

BACKGROUND

The Community Organizations Development Institute (CODI) was established in July 27, 2000 the as a public organization. This was done by merging the Urban Community Development Office and the Rural Development Fund together. All property and assets of the two mergers were combined.

The equivalent of 3,274.35 million baht was transferred from the Urban Community Development Office and the Rural Development Fund to create a new development fund. This fund was managed in the form of Community Development Fund and the Revolving Fund which provided micro-credit to the poor. The total amount was estimated - in the year 2000 - at 2,900 million baht in total.

OUR MOTTO

“Every region should be stable, every community should be strong, and the people should be happy”.

To support and empower urban and rural community organizations through financial assistance, career development, housing development, and environmental improvement.

VISION

CODI is a public organization with a goal to build a strong societal base using the collective power of civil groups and community organizations

FUNCTION

To support and coordinate the development of community organizations and civil groups.

STRATEGIES

1. To support the role of the community organizations by encouraging self-organization on local levels.
2. To emphasize the central role of community organizations in social development.
3. To coordinate the efforts of civil groups and their multilateral partners.
4. To develop the process of learning, body of knowledge, and information technology systems.
5. To develop financial cooperatives and a community–based economy.
6. To build and develop the micro-credit system as a tool for community development.
7. To improve the efficiency and transparency of CODI’s management style to allow other partners to fully participate and engage in its activities.

WORK STRUCTURE

- CODI Board: This board consists of 4 representatives from government organizations, 3 representatives from community organizations, and 3 professionals. The CODI Board has the strongest say on any decision, policy, and direction of CODI. (The executive director of CODI is regarded as a representative from the “community organizations” group by default)

- CODI Sub-Committee: This committee consists of 62 representatives from 26 provincial community groups. The role of this committee is to provide guidelines, set up development structure at the regional and the provincial levels, and act as advisory body to the CODI Board.

- The Regional Board: This board consists of representatives from community organizations, NGOs, professionals and the other partners in the rural area. The Regional Board plays an important role in setting up regional development strategies, managing regional development, and advises CODI Sub-Committee on regional issues.

- Sub-Committee on Development Issues: This committee is responsible advising on issues-specific problems such as micro-credit, and village economy etc. Representatives in this sub-committee come from village groups, NGOs, the government, and experts.

In addition to these 4 working groups, feedback and advises from outside experts are viewed as an essential element in the working of CODI. Over the years, CODI has invited various international experts to provide feedback on many issues. This has been done both formally and informally.

The Structure of the Community Development Process (2005-2006)

Mandate and Work Implementation

The First Mandate

- To support the development of community organizations and their networks.
- To promote financial co-op and public welfare.
- To emphasize the central role of community organizations in social development.

Strategy: Rural Community Renewal

- 6 Development issues

1. Natural Resource Management and Sustainable Agriculture
2. Villagers Welfare
3. Community Life Plan
4. Helping squatter communities secure their land titles through the “Bann Mankong” Project
5. Solving the housing problems and the obtaining lands for the poor in rural area
6. Financial organization / solving debt problems

Moving Ahead with the Rural Renewal Strategy

• Why Rural Community?

- Development plans in the past 50 years have indirectly caused the destruction of natural resources in rural areas; resulting in distrust and alienation among many community members.

- Development plans in the past usually focused on some specific issues without addressing the problems holistically.

• What is Rural Renewal?

1. To rework the process of natural resource management so that it is done by the community.
2. To renew local culture and knowledge.
3. To renew local crafts, guilds, and production.
4. To promote mutual-aid and good relations among the people in the community.

• For Whom?

To change the existing capitalist development structure so that rural communities could chart their own path of development while retaining much of their natural resources including human resources.

• How?

- By using the settlement/community area as the core.
- By using “Community Life Plan” as the process in planning long term implementation plan.
- By using ‘horizontal’ networking as the way to distill knowledge from the community.
- By starting from one activity, looking at the feedback, then proceed to other activities (while keeping in mind the new feedback and the totality of the problem).

The Second Mandate

To build public acceptance and certification of community organizations

- To build public acceptance of a wide array of community organizations and their networks.
- To build and develop data systems for the current community organizations so that they could easily connect to one another.
- To support the mechanism of self-organization among locals communities.
- To create the knowledge base on the development of community organizations through various researches and make public those findings.

Important Work Implementation

In the early days of CODI, we have done some data collection and found that there were 63,796 community organizations nation-wide. Over the years, 42,199 organizations have cooperated with CODI along with 2,798 networks. Today we have over 4.6 million participating members.

The Third Mandate

To develop community saving, credit, welfare, and economy.

- To develop the financial co-op as a resource to support and strengthen communities so that they could rely on themselves in the long run.

- To develop the micro-credit system for the people so that they could make their own decisions as to what they want developed in their own communities.

- To promote the local economy and production that could be connected to relevant markets.
The Important Implementation

- CODI has developed the following 5 kinds of community credits. To receive these credits, community members must organized into groups - such as owner co-op or financial co-op - and share the payment responsibility together. This was done so that community group members could help and support one another.

Members of rural community organizations – mostly villagers – find various ways to use these credits. Some groups used the credit to buy the cow-feeds; others used it to buy materials for producing organic fertilizer, for example.

The Community Welfare Sector has also used the credit to implement the Elderly Welfare program by using the money (80 million baht) to connect the elders in each province where they formed a networking group. They also used the revolving fund (1 million baht) to develop the Elderly Welfare system in which the elders in the communities can look after each other.

The “Villagers Welfare” is another program which has been implemented by the community. They collected 1 baht per day in setting up the welfare fund so that each member is covered from cradle to grave.

After the launching of Baan Mankong Collective Housing in 2003, many urban community groups have also been using this new type of credit to repair roofs, fixed-up plumbing systems, or even upgrade their entire houses. In 2008, the Baan Mankong Collective Housing project has been cited by the UN-Habitat as a successful ‘people’s solution’ to the problems in urban ‘slums’ communities.

The Fourth Mandate

Social Development and Multilateral Cooperation.

- To encourage public organizations, NGOs, and government agencies in supporting community organizations.
- To coordinate development work involving multilateral groups. This would allow CODI to draw more resources and expertise from other agencies.

Important Implementation

CODI has been seeking the cooperation among the community organizations, development partners and policy makers. We have been able to push for some important national policies such as the Baan Mankong Collective Housing program and the Community Life Plan program.