to learn about being a leader in a community

1. Women and Youth Leadership Network
Learning Workshop

2. Who is a community leader?
Qualities of good community leaders
Roles of Community Leaders

3. Are you someone who:
Wants to improve your community?
Has something to contribute?
Doesn't wait around for someone else to get
the job done?

4. Community leader take responsibility for the
well-being and improvement of their
communities.
You don't have to run for office or be given a
title to be a leader. All you need to do is
decide to take responsibility for some corner
(or bigger chunk) of your community.

5. A community leader is someone who is perceived to
represent the community’s interests and plays the
role of protecting them. This role could be paid for
or voluntarily, most communities have held this role
as a voluntary one. Community leaders have a vast
range of roles that range from mobilizing
communities for a common cause to designing
courses of action to overcome common challenges.

6. 1. Self awareness
2. Eagerness to learn and adapt
3. Empathy
4. Honesty and integrity
5. Dedication
6. Interpersonal skills
7. Motivation

7. A good community leader should be knowledge
of his or her strengthens and weaknesses. This
will enable the leader to exploit better his
abilities while seeking help from others for his
or her weak areas.

8. As a community leader, earning respect from
members is one of the key enablers of ones
roles. To do so, learning to listen from others,
appreciating their input and changing courses
of action is essential.

9. As a leader its important that you recognize
how the community perceives you as their
leader. Empathy allows one to imagine
different viewpoints from the community
members as well as understand their feelings.

10. A leader must ensure that he is trustworthy to
the community and to other leaders. Trust
facilitates productive space for discussions and
desired social change. Once trust is broken,
respect is diminished and productivity is
eliminated.

11. As a community leader, who most likely is
playing a voluntary role, its important that you
recognize your own benefits from the role.
Time spent on a community role can only be
beneficial if it’s seen to create space for
desirable social change both for the leader and
the community.

12. A community leader should be able to interact
with other members of the community with
ease. This calls for good communication and
collaboration skills. Being able to negotiate,
mediate, listen to others, and articulate
arguments and to work with members external
to the community is essential.

13. Lastly, a great leader inspires as to create the
desired social change. He does this in a variety
of ways but always remembers to include
others in his thought process and courses of
action.

14. A community leader's job is not to take on all
the problems of the world themselves and fix
everything, but rather to work together with
everyone in the community, to mobilize and
guide others, to facilitate solutions and thing
about the long-term health of
the community and its people.