Community development is closely linked to culture. And if culture represents arts, literature and heritage shared by the community, it is also transferred from generation to generation through the members of the community.

In its wider concept, culture represents all the values, beliefs and opinions of individuals. In order to change the culture of any given community, we must first deal with the factors influencing that community’s culture, mainly the changing factors such as education, media, knowledge and the education of children. On the other hand, fixed factors such as the environment, history and religion, cannot be changed, directly influence the community and should be positively used in influencing the community’s culture.

The clearer the goals the establishment wants to achieve in order to develop the community, the more successful it becomes in establishing a behavioural social culture that embrace change and promote development.

In the light of the aforesaid, the community development sector at the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Community Development, is arranging a number of strategic partnerships with the different Ministries, organizations and corporations in the UAE. This exercise aims at promoting the national identity, deepening its elements and enshrining it among Emirati youth. This approach is in line with the Ministry’s goals aiming at strengthening the national identity and forming an Emirati citizen endowed with an exclusive culture that emphasizes permanent values and deep rooted genuine humanitarian principles.

Community development aims at supporting and disseminating the characteristics of the ideal Emirati citizen, loyal to his country and the wider Arab homeland. A citizen who is highly educated, hard working and equipped with positive moral values, such as honesty, precise commitment to appointments, ready to help others, endowed with various leadership skills, mastering the Arabic language, open and interacting with the world.

The goals of community development

1 – Promoting the national identity and educating Emirati citizen in genuine national values.

2 – Investing in young talents, polishing them, incentivizing them to work and join training courses and making them aware of the importance of academic specialization in order to better serve their country.

3 – Upgrading cultural and social awareness, nurturing talented and creative youth and encouraging voluntary work.

4 – Developing and upgrading the performance of cultural centres, intellectually, culturally and socially, and promoting the productivity of their human resources.

5 – Organizing social and cultural surveys and programs, aiming at achieving a comprehensive cultural and communal development.

6 – Establishing partnerships between the federal and local governments and media institutions, in order to implement the community projects devised by the Ministry’s community development sector.

7 – Training human resources, dedicated to culture, youth and community development.

8 – Establishing an information system concerned with youth, culture and community development, providing community index data.