Rural Visions of Community Development in Paraguay: A Case Study of School Leaders' Perspectives

Research shows that effective community development starts with local people. Mainstream academia, however, lacks literature documenting their perspectives as valuable sources of insight for an inclusive implementation. Rural Latin America provides a repository of ideas that can bridge the knowledge gap. This study focuses on exploring and articulating rural visions of community development in Paraguay, through 31 school leaders (principals, teachers, and students) seen as critical representatives of local interests due to their historical, cultural, and social roles. Vital for data collection were the iterative adjustments based on local feedback, yielding findings that reflect a community development approach uniquely contextualized around agents, assets, challenges, decisions, and actions. A number of innovative methodological tools emerged as an immediate contribution to future research: the ABCD (Actively Building Community) Framework, the Maximum Vox Populi (MVP) Strategy, and DeMoS (Drone-enhanced Modeling of Scenarios). As mid- to long-term contributions, the voices explored here provide scholars, practitioners, policymakers, and all stakeholders with profound lessons on designing sustainable community development founded on local wisdom instead of external imaginations.