The Gawad Kalinga model for the integral development of impoverished communities in developing countries

This dissertation evaluated the Gawad Kalinga model of integral community development currently being pursued in the Philippines, in addressing the psychological and social problems caused by extreme poverty in developing countries. Integral community development is defined as an approach that brings about the holistic transformation of impoverished communities, a process which includes human development that entails movement towards a life of virtue, based on transcendent principles, and concerned with moral and spiritual values. The framework of the dissertation adopts an ecological perspective to addressing critical situational stressors and emphasizes basic values, spirituality, and transformational leadership. The study included both a theoretical and an empirical section. For the theoretical section, the study: (a) utilized an ecological psychology perspective that identified the critical development components based on Dohrenwend's human stress model and Bronfenbrenner's bio-ecological theory of human development; (b) utilized a philosophical framework that integrated the ecological psychology perspective and selected psychological theories with Christian personal and social anthropological principles in order to develop a concept of integral community development that embraces the total person in his human and transcendent dimension, the integrity of families, and a true and cohesive community; (c) derived a set of basic or universal values that are relevant to the poor at the personal, family, and community levels; and (d) proposed an expanded definition of transformational leaders that combines the qualities of a servant leader, parental attachment figure, and an altruist with a strong spirituality. For the empirical section, qualitative research was conducted on a sample Gawad Kalinga community and Gawad Kalinga leaders through individual, family, and group interviews. The assessment focused mainly on the alleviation of situational stressors, the transformation of values at the personal, family, and community level, and the quality of transformational leadership offered by community and GK leaders. The conclusions of this study are: (a) the poor have significant strengths in their personal, family, and community values and spirituality; (b) the value strengths found in the poor before GK's intervention was partly due to the collectivistic, family, and faith orientation of the Filipino culture; (c) integral community development is primarily aimed at achieving integral personal development, but also requires the strengthening of family integrity and the building of a true and cohesive community; (d) the philosophical concepts of a total person, strong family, and true community must provide the basis for deriving the basic and social sets of values; (e) integral community development that includes values and spiritual formation also addresses the poor's social-psychological problems; (f) the poor have serious psychological and emotional wounds that need healing interventions; (g) families of the poor require significant healing and strengthening in order to become effective sources of moral formation; (h) true and cohesive community organizations are needed to provide stability, security, community values formation, spiritual and family support; (i) supporting the spirituality of the poor is important because it fulfills various roles in their healing and human development; (j) holistic development is proposed as a five-step process that begins with the leader's formation and setting a secure and orderly ecological environment; (k) transformational leaders are the greatest critical factor; (l) the GK model as applied to the sample GK community and its local and national leaders offers an important and viable working model for integral community development, despite the need to improve its sustainability and address a few program inadequacies; and (m) the GK model can be adapted to other developing countries because of the similarities in their social-psychological problems, the universality of the values proposed, and the expected comparable interplay of ecological factors within their poor communities.