Community Engagement: See, Judge, Act

• Community situations vary, with each having its own context and realities.
• It is important for those working within a community to have a clear understanding of the entity they are trying to address.
• Awareness of community dynamics, analysis of social realities, and engagement are important.
• One way to understand and engage with a community is to "see," "judge," and "act."
• "See" involves understanding the community, which is a prerequisite for judgment and action.
• "Judge" involves analyzing the community based on acquired knowledge.
• "Act" involves pushing for community action.
• Understanding and appreciating a community requires immersion within it.
• Social development workers must immerse themselves in the community.
• “Paglubog” or “pagbabad” refers to the practice of immersing and living within the community.
• Understanding the community involves understanding its geographic context and the specific community you are concerned with.
• You must understand the community's people, culture, concerns, and relationships and develop relationships.

Physical Aspects

• Every community has a physical presence, often a geographic area.
• Knowing the community's size and the look and feel of its buildings, called topography, is important.
• For communities defined by population, their physical properties are also defined by the population.

Population Characteristics

• Understanding the population, where they live, and where they gather is important.
• The characteristics of those places can indicate about the people in the community.
• Their self-image, attitudes, and aspirations are often reflected in their chosen environments.

Settlement and Industry

• Communities embody character based on creation of living and working spaces.
• The presence of slums or substandard housing indicates the value the broader community places on its residents.

Demographics

• Understanding who makes up a community is essential.
• Demographics such as age, gender, race, ethnicity, marital status, education, number of people in household, and first language form the demographic profile of the population.

History

• The history of a community can tell its traditions and what residents are proud of or prefer not to discuss.
• Recent history can help to understand conflicts, important issues, and relationships among key individuals.

Community Leaders

• Includes formal leaders such as elected officials.
• Includes informal leaders: community activists, corporate leaders, clergy, or those trusted for integrity and care others.

Community Culture

• This involves the spoken and unspoken rules and traditions that guide community life.
• Understanding how the culture developed is important.

Existing Groups

• Most communities have an array of existing groups and organizations.
• Knowing the existence and importance of each of these groups can pave the way for alliances or for understanding opposition.

Existing Institutions

• Every community has important institutions that have credibility with residents.
• These can include colleges, religious institutions and hospitals.

Economics

• Includes major employers, the base business or industry, and who exercises economic power.
• Includes how wealth is distributed and the economic prospects of the population.

Government and Politics

• Includes the structure of community government.
• Includes where political power lies.

Social Structure

• Aspects of social structure integrate into other areas such as relationships, politics, and economics.
• Also includes questions such as how people in the community relate to one another.

Attitudes and Values

• This includes what the community cares about and what it ignores.
• It includes resident assumptions about behavior and treatment of others.

Community Description

• After exploring the community, a description can be made
• It should provide the context for community assessment.

Benefits of Understanding Community Dynamics

• Provides benchmarking data before starting any project.
• Provides key planning information for community projects.
• Aids in understanding a community's strengths and challenges.
• Offers a way to understand the community's rules and norms.
• An understanding of member attitudes leads to an idea if a project is to be supported, rejected, or negotiated.
• Dialogue depends on knowledge of a community's situation; dialogue is important working on community development projects.
• It makes networking and partnership building more favorable.
• Project implementation becomes less complicated.

Community Defined

• Communities defined by cultural heritage, shared beliefs, and interests.
• Communities are viewed from traditional and alternative perspectives.
• Traditional perspectives correlate communities with locations, work, and social system.
• Alternative viewpoints are more subjective, integrative, feminist, and address oppressions.
• Small communities have defined territories and are given life by interacting processes.
• Small communities include underlying relationship, power structures, and resource flow.

Different Kinds of Communities

• Includes the community of scholars and the business community.
• Community is a group of nations sharing common interests.

Communties and Social Justice

• Community integrates the notion of social justice; values, ethics, civil society, and social capital.
• Interconnectivity recognizes "people and place-based strategies."

Community Dynamics

• Community dynamics are determined by structure and reaction to forces.
• Community traits must be known to understand how it acts and reacts in certain ways.

Nature of a Community

• A community is a sociological construct with interactions based on shared expectation.
• A community has fuzzy boundaries.
• A community can exist within a larger community.
• A community may move.
• “Community is a super-organic system” comprised of human factors.

Structure of a Community

• Community power structure involves the distribution of power at a local level.
• The idea of power includes determining collaborative works.
• Community organizers should pay close attention to the power actors.

Dimensions of a Community

• Includes technological, economic, political, institutional, aesthetic values, and belief conceptual.
• A community is influenced by its human, natural, cultural, and structural resources.
• Technological: Interface between humankind and nature (not tools, but ideas to invent them).
• Economic: Not cash, but providing value to cash with community means of production and allocation.
• Political: Power allocation including individuals and institutions.
• Institutional: People's actions & expectations of how people will act.
• Aesthetic: The paradoxical ideas on good/bad etc. that people value. Community standards are important in identifying these values.
• Beliefs. Refers to structural ideas of the people, nature of the world, time, etc. that impact role in things.

Approaches to Applying Term Community

• Identification of approaches show community perspective depends on the project it comes from.
• Includes groups such as sociologists, cultural studies, social movement, and the influence of globalization.
• Previously, communities were location-based; recently, communities have expanded.
• Sociologists/geographers are concerned with social organizations being spatially close.
• Workers in cultural studies/anthropology apply to belonging and difference around identity.
• The social movement focuses on communities of action opposing social injustice for political means.
• Those concerned from the influence of globalization view communities based on mobility and Internet development.

Understanding community dynamics requires awareness, analysis, and engagement. The "See, Judge, Act" framework emphasizes understanding before action. Immersion, known as "paglubog" or "pagbabad," is crucial for social development workers.