Unlocking the Power of
Communities
Brainteaser Class #3
• What are theories of community change? Why
do we need to know them?
• Please describe the communities in your areas of
action? In your answer please describe the three
parts of these communities and how they relate
to your possible community project?
• What are a few things to consider and discover
when looking at a community to study?
• Identify a community or group in which you are
interested and hope to work with this semester?
And tell me why?
Community Org as Core Practice
• Micro practice – basic needs addressed
• Mezzo practice – leadership development
• Macro – changes in communities and
organizations.
• Community organization addresses all of these
issues. It is a core practice.
Four components of practice
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Engagement
Assessment
Intervention
Evaluation
These skills are part of micro, mezzo, and macro
practice.
Learning From Community
Projects
• let stories move you
• build community and democracy in the streets
and in the classroom
• organize around strengths
• go out and get the seat of your pants dirty with
research
• connect with a model
• connect the dots of a struggle with your stories
Shepard Community Org Model
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1) Start with an issue and an alternate proposal
2) Do research about that issue
3) Mobilize supporters around this ask
4) Use direct action to push the issue forward
5) Use media and social networks to push it
6) Have a long and short term legal strategy
7) Make sure you add a jigger of fun and play
CO: Intended Outcomes
Participants will gain a greater sense of confidence to
initiate change and increased understanding of:
• Community development
• Difference between a service orientation and a
development orientation
• Ethical demands on workers to shape workplace
• The human service organization as a context for
community change practice
• Some general principles for promoting change
Healthy communities tend to
produce healthy people.
Distressed and depressed
communities tend to
produce distressed and
depressed people.
Definition of Community
Development
Community development recognizes sources of
wealth (or community capital) that exist in the
community, helps those sources to grow, and
links them with one another to form a stronger,
more capable community. Fundamental to this
notion is that members of the community itself
have the primary responsibility for decision
making and action. Community development
produces self-reliant, self-sustaining communities
that mobilize resources for the benefit of their
members.
Elements of Community
Development
• BUILD ON COMMUNITY ASSETS
• INCREASE SKILLS OF INDIVIDUALS
• CONNECT PEOPLE WITH
ONE ANOTHER
• CONNECT EXISTING RESOURCES
• CREATE OR INCREASE
COMMUNITY
RESOURCES
• EXPECT COMMUNITY TO ASSUME
OWNERSHIP OF DIRECTION, ACTION
AND RESOURCES
• PROMOTE THE EXPECTATION THAT
COMMUNITY MEMBERS WILL DO ALL
WORK POSSIBLE
• CREATE BENEFICIAL EXTERNAL
RELATIONSHIPS
Perhaps the most important
contributor to a community’s
success is a belief in its abilities
rather than in its problems.
Working in a Funding Restricted Environment
Recognizing Sources of Community Capital
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Environmental Capital
Physical Capital
Economic Capital
Human Capital
Political Capital
Information Capital
Cultural Capital
Spiritual Capital
Social Capital
Service versus Development
• Service focuses on
problems
• Service is episodic
• Service reinforces power
imbalances from giver to
receiver
• Service promotes
passivity
• Development focuses on
assets and capacities
• Development is ongoing
• Development equalizes
power relationships
• Development promotes
capability and power
• Service relies on
experts
• Service emphasizes
recipient ownership
of problems
• Service keeps
recipients isolated
and dependent
• Service meets needs
• Service requires
problems
• Service expects no
contribution to
• Development relies on
partnerships
• Development emphasizes
mutual ownership of
possibilities
• Development links people
with shared interests and
promotes leadership
• Development fuels abilities
• Development prevents
• Development requires
contribution
Acting responsibly, you cannot
simultaneously want things to be
different and not want to be
powerful.
Conditions Necessary For
Community Action
• TENSION BETWEEN DISCOMFORT
WITH THE PRESENT SITUATION AND
ATTRACTION TO A NEW SITUATION
• BELIEF IN THE POSSIBILITY THAT
ACTION WILL PRODUCE A
SUCCESSFUL OUTCOME
• RECOGNITION OF A
COURSE OF ACTION
• SUFFICIENT CREDIBILITY OF THE
ORGANIZERS OF THE EFFORT,
VALIDITY OF THE ISSUE AND
SUSTAINABILITY OF THE
ORGANIZATION
• SUFFICIENT DEGREE OF EMOTION
• SUFFICIENTLY RECEPTIVE
ENVIRONMENT
• DECISION TO ACT
Questions for Community
Capacity Building
• Is there an identified community?
• Does the project build skills of community
members?
• Does the project produce new leaders and new
teachers?
• Who owns the project?
• Does the project produce new community
resources that can exist apart from the project?
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Capacity Questions cont’d
Do the benefits or resources create other
benefits or resources?
Which community capacities or assets will the
project build upon?
Which community conditions does the
project intend to change?
How does the project build inclusivity?
How does the project build social capital?
How does the project acknowledge and meet
system needs?
Snapshot of your situation
Current
Assets
Assets to be
Developed
Current
Barriers
Possible New
Barriers
Lists of Actors
People whose
support we have
People whose
People who would
support we would likely oppose us
like to have
Building Community Identity
• Community name
• Community artifacts
• Feeling of community membership – not
visitorship
• Sense of shared values
• Recognition of shared experiences
• Convening occasions
Elements of Sustainability
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Members
Leadership
Structure
Action/Issue agenda
Strong working relationships
Evaluation of efforts and use of evaluation to guide
future efforts
• Funding
Some Additional Tips
A Checklist for Action
• From whom do we want to get a response?
• What response do we want?
• What action or series of actions has the best
chance of producing that response?
• Are the members of the organization able
and willing to take these actions?
• How do these actions lead to the further
development of our organization?
Checklist continued
• How do our actions produce immediate gains
in a way that helps us long term?
• Is everything we are doing related to the
outcomes we want to produce?
• How will we assess the effectiveness of our
chosen approach and to refine our next
steps?
• What are we doing to keep this interesting?
Additional Principles for
Promoting Change
• START SMALL, THOUGH YOU CAN STOP
BIG - SPIRAL APPROACH
• POWER/ISSUE RELATIONSHIP
• CYCLE OF EMPOWERMENT
• DECREASE THE DISTANCE
• THE ACTION IS IN THE REACTION
• THE 3 HOLY M’s – the Market, the Medium, the
Message
• WORK OF CHANGE IS REALLY THE
WORK OF SMALL GROUPS - MAJOR
CHALLENGES ARE INTERNAL, NOT
EXTERNAL
• KEY QUESTION ALWAYS ASKED
• RECOGNIZE MUTUAL BENEFITS
• KEEP IT INTERESTING
• OBSERVE THE 50/10% RULE (50% of
time should be face to face time, 10% admin)
• EVERYTHING HAPPENS THROUGH
RELATIONSHIPS
• RECOGNIZE PROGRESS
• BUILD MOMENTUM; DON’T RE-BUILD
IT
• WHAT YOU BELIEVE IN YOU WILL
ACT TO CONFIRM (impotence, inability,
other’s responsibility; or power, ability,
responsibility)
• LAUGH AND P.E.A. (Persistence, Energy,
and generate Action).
Accept the Fact of
Conditions,
Not the Inevitability of
Them
Some Rules of the Game: Some Basic
Things to Know
• Those who play the game make the rules
• Each community has its ankle weights
• The most powerful obstacles - fear, apathy,
and ignorance
• If you treat people as allies, they are likely to
become allies; if you treat people as enemies,
they are likely to become enemies
• Don’t start with the most important thing,
start with the most interesting
More Rules: Things to know about
Yourself
• Prevent yourself from contracting the disease of
being right
• Listen as aggressively as you speak
• Take the world as it is - not as it should be
• Accept the fact of conditions, not the
inevitability of them
• Be willing to be surprised
More Rules about Yourself
• To say “yes” to something is to say “no” to
something else - pick the hills that you are
going to fight on
• Avoid falling victim to listening for things
you want to hear
• Look forward to some dessert
The Fab Four:
Most important things for a
change agent to do
• Connect people – to issue; to organization;
and to each other
• Develop leadership – connect to interest;
connect to abilities; provide support
• Inspire confidence
• Create and maintain a culture of learning
The privilege and the penalty of your education and
the position you hold in the community is that, over
the coming decades, as in the past, you will be the
pace setters for political and social thought in your
community. You may accept this responsibility, but
it makes no difference. It is inescapable. If you
decide to set no pace, to forward no dreams and to
have no vision, you will still be the pacesetters. You
will simply have decided that there is no pace. Adlai
Stevenson
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Photography by Allan Sturm
(www.allansturm.com)
Brainteaser Class #2
•What is community and community
organization?
•Why are people poor? And what
strategy can we use to address this
issue?
How does human services address this
question?
•What is social capital? What role can
social capital play in building social
change?
•What is participant action research?
How does it work?