ABSTRACT
This chapter argues for a micro-level approach where community is the central, and most important, component to ensuring child and youth well-being. It addresses four objectives: understand the multiple dimensions of well-being, and better define/operationalize the process by which community emerges and why children/youth are essential to that process. The objectives also includes: define and understand community and how it correlates to improved child and youth well-being, and provide clear implications and applied recommendations for practice and policies designed to bring together community capacity building and well-being-enhancing programmes for children and youth. Individual well-being, including child well-being, typically refers to a broad array of conditions that includes access to material resources for meeting daily needs, freedom from threats and risks, and physical and mental health. Social well-being refers to social conditions which foster self-actualization of individuals. Ecological well-being refers to natural and other conditions that support and sustain human life.
