Community Work: Fostering Social Development Through Collective Action

Posted on Dec 11, 2024 in Social sciences

Work Unit 1: Community and its Definition

Community Work as an Organizational Process to Promote Social Development Projects

There is considerable confusion when attempting to address a delimitation and definition of Community Work (CW). Twelvetrees states that there is not yet an agreement on what community work is. For some, it cannot be distinguished from political action; others see no difference between paid and unpaid community work. Another question is whether community work is a profession in itself or another way of working that any professional can adopt. Finally, there is also a discussion on whether community work is a part of social work.

Community work is intended to address the transformation of situations by organizing collective action and association. Dumas and Séguier describe it as a process of awareness, an organizational process, and a mobilization process. A number of tasks must be carried out to promote community work organizational processes:

Discover the needs and potential of the social space in question.
Make contact with people, develop the will to work to satisfy needs, and assemble.
Form and establish collective structures, allocate tasks.
Help to identify and develop goals, clarify them, and set priorities.
Maintain an active organization.
Be careful with relationships, help communication.
Step aside and end.

The content of this work is to spread among people the essential elements of scientific culture that are present in the procedures of professional social intervention:

The study of the social collective.
The analysis of the social situation.
The establishment of a plan or project intervention.
The practical implementation of that project or application.

Twelvetrees proposes two objectives:

Ensure to make specific changes in the environment.
Help people who work with you to gain confidence and skills to tackle problems.

A Practice for Engaging Organizational Populations in Improving Their Living Conditions

Community work is often confused with tasks related to social planning and developing projects that aim at solving the participation of target populations through their organization. Ross suggests that people should identify and act on their own problems. Dumas and Séguier believe that social intervention is presented with two strategies that should be distinct:

Strategies based on changing the institutional arrangement.
Strategies based on the collective support of the board.

The ultimate goal of participation should be the extent to which people have access to power and how that power is shared in a social group. Relevant participation thus refers to the empowerment and development of people. Participation becomes a dual dynamic process:

Awareness of the situation and its causes and circumstances.
Active involvement in consequential changes, from that awareness.

Organizational Process in the Field of Social Intervention

Organizational processes involve both target populations of the social intervention and other social actors that make up the social situation or problem, and who we believe can contribute to change.
Each organizational process pursues its own social intervention.
Organizational processes apply to a board of marginalization and social integration.
These practices are very open, a field of action for various professions.

Community Work and Social Work

Within social work, community work is regarded as one of its three traditional methods of intervention: cases, groups, and community.
Secondly, we note the existence of a common repertoire of the various methods, given by the fact of operating within the same field. This common repertoire should not be confused with the rest of community work, forgetting the board and differentiating its core content, which is to create and sustain organizations that are the engine of collective actions.
Thirdly, we are dealing with ways to address situations of a different nature. Each method of intervention and the potential of the condition that we do on social phenomena, and they eventually set up situations and problems of various kinds of intervention.

A Practice that Develops in a Continuum of Levels of Intervention

Understand practical work as a social organization to understand which may develop at very different levels: of course, the local level but also at regional and even national and international levels.
The current development of information technologies and communication can build networking communities via the Internet, which are not subject to geographical proximity.
Similarly, community work can develop at the level of specific groups as part of intervention strategies against exclusion. Community work, understood in this way, can address the needs of those most excluded.
Community work is placed on a continuum of levels of intervention to connect the micro-level development with the meso-social level and the macro level.

See Chart on page 7.

Item 2: Society and Community in Community Work

Community and Society

Society, in its most accepted definition, is the totality of social relations. It is not understandable without considering the existence of a distribution/inequality of status and power between the collective and individual members.
The diversity of positions and relationships from which they are established is where the best explanation can be found for the social issues that come to social intervention.
Our historical, cultural, and scientific concept of society should not be substituted for the community because:

1. The concept of community generates images that tend to hide the complexity of today’s reality. It conveys an image of social harmony and homogeneity that is very simplistic and excludes internal conflict. As an adjective, “community” evokes very warm and positive realities.

2. The mythical character of social reality that evokes the concept of community helps to ensure reality, and therefore is often used as a concept designed to hide facts.

3. The concept of community and inconsistently used community work tends to create the awareness that organizational strategies should be unitary and consensual. This fails since it assumes that interests and dreams are shared.

Avoiding Misunderstandings in the Use of Concepts

The identity of the concept of community with geography is fairly weak. The interests and relationships in an area are varied, and nowadays, the quality and quantity of people’s relationships are relatively independent of the territory. To promote and work with large groups, it is necessary to share certain problems, sensitivities, and interests, rather than territory.
Whenever possible, the concept of community must be replaced by alternative concepts, which may be more accurate.
Reserve the use of the concept of community to express a desire for society and social relations. The community work concept should be read as a social intervention to the community, i.e., a type of intervention that seeks a better society.
Be aware that organizational strategies may not always be of a Unitarian type. Often, the integration of society just happens to multiply their groups and organizations to get new voice actors, thicken social life, and generate more collective subjects.
Understand that the articulation of groups and actions can be sought and given in various areas beyond the town.
Take into consideration the multiplicity of perspectives and actors that exist in the social space in which we intervene.
Currently, the concept of community development is being replaced by social development. This results in implementing projects and initiatives that conquer space for community meetings, creation, decision-making, and grassroots initiatives.

Item 3: Objectives and Benefits of Community Work

Social Development Objective

The main objectives of social intervention in reality consist of implementing and maintaining processes that engage a wide range of social and personal aspects. Dumas and Séguier identify two categories in collective action:

The productive pole requires implementing an organizational structure and providing leadership focused on efficiency and immediate results.
The educational pole encourages organization and leadership to move towards the learning of collective responsibility and the assumption of social challenges.
Important results occur during the process and are due to the process. Their initiation and development are indicators of the social change we seek.

Benefits of Community Work

Cultural/Symbolic Benefits: Organizational experiences are a social space and a tool for the construction of definitions, interpretations, visions, and common readings. The teamwork of the members of the organization and mutual knowledge allow certain images and resistors to be released as an effect of meeting and negotiations.
Relational Benefits: Organizational experiences are a social space and a tool to break isolation individually and collectively, to recreate dialogue relations, and to increase the social network of individuals and groups. They are a space and a tool for individual satisfaction. They are a social space and an instrument to multiply the possibilities of participation in everyday life. The organization also provides stability to collective life.
Educational Benefits: Organizational experiences are a social space and a tool for learning. The programs and activities of an organization produce situations and raise issues that create fertile ground for learning to speak, assuming the exercise of responsibilities, and exchanging information. The organization’s successes in problem-solving increase people’s capacity to treat others. They are a space and an instrument that can deal with the modesty and timidity of the popular classes.

Item 4: Profile and Roles of Community Work

Qualities, Provisions, and Styles of Community Work

Organizational Experiences and Styles of Community Work

1.1. The organizer must first believe in the goodness of the organization, not only for others but also for himself. What is proposed to target populations is deemed essential also for professionals.

1.2. Secondly, organizational experiences are an essential source of training for an organizer, and it is difficult to imagine a good organizer who has not acquired skills and abilities in previous experiences.

1.3. Thirdly, organizational tasks are enhanced when the practitioner is a member of a team and works within an organization to develop a common understanding of social intervention and the most important challenges faced in each situation.

Changing Ourselves to Change the World

2.1. The first thing is to believe in what we say. Theory is the cement of a project that aims to be consistent and conscious. The utopias that legitimize community work are important. To be a good community worker, one must be realistic and yet aspire to change the world.

2.2. The second point is that what we say should result in content and should be reflected in our form of action. Acts cannot deny what is preached.

2.3. The third thought is that if we want to change something, we must get involved personally, that is, to appreciate that the phenomena of poverty, exclusion, marginalization, migration, and gender oppression are not strangers to ourselves. We need to put ourselves in the place of another.

2.4. The fourth reflection is that the objectives of community work affect the political process. The community worker is not a neutral person and should therefore make a choice between two options: adhere to the change in social structure or be in favor of an enduring social order.