Community Organization: Definitions & Poverty

• The main questions are:Why Community? Why Organize? Why CO?
• Key questions to consider: What is the state of families and communities in your area? What are your dreams for your family and community?
• What does poverty mean to you?

Poverty

• Poverty is a deprivation of participation, ownership of assets, opportunities or access to services, and resources to meet basic needs.
• Poor roads can be conditioning factors of poverty
• The unavailability of basic facilities such as electricity, potable water sources, school buildings, health centers, sanitary toilets, and production and communication facilities are conditioning factors of poverty
• Lack of access to basic services, peace and order problems and the presence of calamities are conditioning factors of poverty

Community Organization Definitions

• Murray Ross: Community organization is identifying problems/needs, prioritizing them, formulating solutions, and implementing them through cooperative and collaborative efforts to improve problem-solving capacity and community integration.
• Arthur Dunham: Community organization is matching needs with resources and as a conscious process of social interaction concerned with the three types of objects.
• Pearlman and Gurin: Community organization is finding solutions to social problems by redistributing resources, functions, and decision-making power
• Agrinelda Miclat: Community organization is a method of social work that uses the conscious process of social interaction to meet objectives.
• Community organization meets broad needs and maintains an adjustment between the needs and resources of the community.
• Community organization helps people deal more effectively with their problems, needs, and aspirations, strengthening their participation, self-direction, cooperation, and integration of efforts.
• Community organization brings about changes in community group relationships, in policies and in the distribution of decision-making power.

CO Principles

• Social programs must be based upon and responsive to needs (Program design follows function).
• Each community must be treated differently because one community is different from another (Principle of Individualization).
• The community must have a say on what they need and what they want, as they’re experts in their own experiences (Principle of Self-Determination).
• The focus of Community Organizing must be common welfare rather than agency self-interest (Principle of Client-Centered Programming)
• Begin where people are and help them grow and develop according to their pace (Principle of Acceptance).
• Concentrate attention on the more comprehensive and vital needs of the whole community (Principle of Priority Determination).
• Creating awareness of the problem has educational value and serves as a motivation to action (Principle of Participation).
• All groups/individuals affected by a proposed change should participate in identifying its need along with shaping and carrying out plans (Principle of Participation).
• Community organizing strategies must help communities/organizations perceive their conditions in a broader context and connect individual matters (Principle of Systems Thinking).
• Communities/organizations should emphasize collaborative and interdependent activities to accomplish goals related to social justice and development (Principle of Strength in Collective Action).

Concepts of CO

• Community organizing is both a process and a result.
• Community organizing is power.
• Community organizing is conflict, leading to solutions.
• Community organizing is praxis, complementing theory and practice.
• Community organizing is conscientization, increasing awareness of socio-cultural reality.

Assumptions about CO

• Communities can develop the capacity to deal with their own problems.
• People should participate in making, adjusting, or controlling major changes in their communities.
• Changes in community living that are self-imposed/developed have meaning and permanence.
• A "holistic approach" can deal successfully with problems that a "fragmented approach" cannot.
• Democracy requires cooperative participation and action in the affairs of the community.
• Communities frequently require assistance to organize for addressing needs,just like people need help with individual issues.

Goals of CO by Arthur Dunham

• Task Goals: Concerned with concrete tasks undertaken to meet specific needs or solve particular problems (through intervention).
• Process Goals: Concerned with capability building, skills enhancement, and leadership skills training.
• Relationship Goals: Changing aspects of social relationships, especially patterns of decision-making.

Empowerment-Based Interventions

• Strengthen participation in democratic processes.
• Assists groups and communities in advocating for basic needs.
• Assists groups and communities in organizing for social justice.
• Improve the effectiveness and responsiveness of the human service system”.

Focus of CO

• Removal of blocks to growth
• Empowering and building the potential in people
• Developing the capacity to manage community life and self-reliance
• Developing the ability to function as an integrated unit.
• Encouraging the full use of inner/ indigenous resources for community development
• Changing/modifying existing policies/programs that are oppressive, defective, or irrelevant

Roles of a CO Worker

• Enabler: enables the community to establish goals, objectives and priorities.
• Helper: helps the community identify its problems/needs and meets their problems.
• Guide: Guides the community when facing difficulties.
• Initiator: Sparks action through education, demonstration, and other techniques.
• Broker: Acts as an intermediary between groups, the client community, etc with outside resources.
• Advocate: Champions the cause of disadvantaged sectors or communities.
• Consultant: Provides expert knowledge and information regarding planned goals.
• Intervener: Participates in making and formulating programs and projects.
• Planner: Participates in planning and governance in social welfare sector.
• Researcher: Researches current issues to have a basis for action planning.

Functions of a CO Worker

• Fact-finding – to secure and maintain an adequate factual basis for sound plannin
• Program Development– initiate, develop new programs & services or terminate social welfare programs
• Establishing Standards- improve social welfare standards & to increase effectiveness/efficiency

CO Worker Required Knowledge

• Goals and objectives of society,
• Social legislations, research, group processes/human and group behavior, power structure in a community,Management of power,
• Use of inter-group relationship, problem-solving and decision-making, situation analysis,planning processes,policy formulation,existing resources (internal & external),program development,

Skills Required of a CO Worker

• Working with people, organizing, verbal and written communication, committee work, leadership, administration, interviewing, research, planning and policy formulation, strategy design and implementation, lobbying, recording, social education and action, inter-group relationship, coordination.

Techniques of a CO Worker

• Structuring: Employ the use of suitable structures to engage in problem solving, committees, etc.
• Situational Analysis: Break up a problem situation or data collection to gain insight.
• Problem Analysis: Analyze the causes of the problem and their effects on those affected.
• Role Playing and Socio Drama: Act out problems in a situation to change audience perspectives.
• Education and Promotion: Use ways to enhance peoples understanding and support of community improvement/development.
• Demonstration: Illustrate ways of dealing with certain social problems.
• Use off Group Dynamics and Experiential Learning in Teaching: Expose trainees to a situation/game where they experience new knowledge.
• Use of an Expert/Consultant: Utilize knowledge from other to accomplish objective and waste less time.
• Formal Study: Gathering and analyzing data in connection with current issues or problems and disseminate to the public
• Use of Questions in Handling Group Discussions.

Strategies of a CO Worker

• Strategy :tactic or careful plan or a method devised to achieve a desired goal.
• Management of Power: Helping create new centers of power where leadership is indifferent.
• Training of Leaders for functions: Enabling leaders to be self-reliant and self-managed.
• Organizing People for Roles and Task: People are organized to do tasks based on their expertise.
• Use of Conflict: Awaken people from their lethargy and trigger desired action.
• Collaborative Strategy: Having assumptions of a common ground among dissenting parties.
• Campaign Strategy: Educating, pressuring to agreeing with the issue.
• Contest Strategy: Vote/support for the proposal to be consider by the community's decision
• Social Brokerage: Involvement of groups and individuals who can help diffuse crisis.
• Use of Integrative Mechanisms to Strengthen Organization: Integration of other group to strengthen effort.
• Social Protests to Support: Influencing changes of policies deemed irrelevant.
• Lobbying: Attend meeting to show support or protests the passage bills.
• Use of Field Trips: Indigenous leaders training for community development.
• Use of Volunteers: mobilize help for the cause.

Fundamental element of CO Practice

• Community People (CP) - stakeholders, who have different interest broad spectrum.
• Directly Affected - expected to benefit/lose from development initiatives.
• Indirectly Affected - interest in outcomes like the NGOs
•  Government-elected Official - line agency staff/local, regional, national govn officials
• Community development Worker (CDW) partner of the people in development.
• CO process– development of partnership with a process that influences & shares control of resource access

Community Consciousness

• Could be based on recognition of role as the prime movers of development.
• Shared critical consciousness that gives birth to a fulfilling and empowering system

Typology of Participation

• Passive Participation: Members are informed about decisions.
• Members are not actively involved.e.g. governments, organizations, or experts control all aspects;
• Participation in Information Giving external researchers or organizations, but no active involvement.
• Participation by Consultationconsulting community on specific issues.
• Participation for Material Incentivesexpect material reward (cash
• Functional participation form groups to realize predetermined objectives.
• Interactive Participationassessment leads to action plans.
• Self-mobilization independently change systems and exercise autonomy.

Baranganic Approach in CO

• Existing barangay structure as facility is developed to identify needs/problems/ aspirations
• Formulate their own plans based on the people's expressed needs etc.
• Design inclusive/supportive efforts making internal resources
• Implement, check and assess these plans within a given time frame.
• group, community and national growth can only come participation  / involvement of people
• Barangay Development Councils identify their own aspiration/problems  formulation

Typology of CO

• Karina Constantino-David proposed a typology of CO
• Apologetic:accept essential of intervention of ready programs
• Liberal: visions threaten them and the system reformist.
• Liberative: restructure consciousness raising, sectoral struggles root problem,
• Apologetic Community Organizer: believing of cooperation, not challenging, top-down, following programs.
• Liberal Community organizer: belief of correction, working with institution,listening to the needs but not challenge and resource issues. Liberative Community organizer: seeing of people's awareness, and organizing themselves, and empowering for collective actions

Explore the essence of community organization, its definitions, and the multifaceted dimensions of poverty. Understand poverty as a lack of access to services, resources, and opportunities. Examine the conditioning factors that perpetuate poverty within families and communities.