Introduction

What does it mean to relate to one another as human beings and not as one’s credentials, achievements, and designation? What does it mean to consciously de-hierarchize oneself and foreground one’s core human self in interactions and not the acquired self that has layers and layers of conditionings on it? These questions lie at the heart of the Community Life Competence process. But what the Constellation and its members are interested in are not just philosophical answers to these questions but rather actual ways of living and working as human beings, without falling into the traps of modern modes of working that dehumanize us into labels, designations and credentials.

This process is particularly relevant now for those who are involved in different kinds of community work, because in the past few decades, most community work has become NGO-ized. It is not necessarily a bad thing for a work to become NGO-ized, because it gives the work a defined structure. However, the imperatives of transforming community work into an organizational paradigm have meant that hierarchies are set up, designations are assumed, and strict reporting processes are instituted. Moreover, since a lot of the work is dependent on funding agencies, it is very easy to have a good deal of our energies spent in attending to procurement, use, and accountability of grants. Through all of these, our work becomes programmatic, our tasks become projects, and we become directors, managers, co-ordinators, outreach workers, etc. And it is through these masks that we start interacting with the world around us.

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