Define Community:
- a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common. ("the scientific community”)

- a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals. ("the sense of community that organized religion can provide”)

Community practice and social work slide 5
- work involves applying micro, mezzo, and macro practice skills in the community, organizational, and systems contexts.

Understand community practice, and the three primary models of community organization:

Community Development:
- improve economic conditions in a community

- increase the number of jobs or businesses in a geographic area

- improve community infrastructure and the built environment

- increase the supply of high-quality, affordable housing

- create, expand, or increase access to social services

- increase community capacity
- is a process through which community residents, groups, businesses, churches, organizations, and other stakeholders come together to address community challenges and to improve the community. 

- results achieved through consensus and cooperation among group members

- emphasis is on the process and capacity achieved by bringing people together, strengthening relationships between individuals and community institutions rather than specific outcomes

Capacity Building:
- training and engagement in activities

- designed to increase individual and organizational capacity and readiness to participate in community change activities

- is also considered one of the main components of the process of community development practice

Social Action:
- generally regarded as the most task- or outcome-oriented

- task activities require an extensive amount of engagement and relationship building with community members, leaders, and other groups

- social action movements are most successful when large numbers of people and groups participate
- Puts pressure on individuals and groups to achieve community-level, policy or systemic change

- May include lobbying policy makers or government officials

- Running for political office

- Engaging in social protests

- Emphasis on “winning” the campaign or social action cause.

Social Protest:
- the desired outcome is having a law, policy, practice, or program adopted or stopped

- people who participate in protest activities for social justice causes must be able to reach consensus about their goals and the strategies and tactics they are prepared to use to achieve them.

- Example: Support Palestine

Social Movement:
- Large alliances of groups, called social movements, are also formed to support collective action

to advocate for the redistribution of goods and services;

- civil, human, and political rights with or on behalf of minoritized and underrepresented groups or people

- people who perceive themselves to have grievances that should be addressed by the government

- Example: Women’s Suffrage, Civil Rights Movement, Me Too Movement, Black Lives Matter

Social Planning:
- Community Planners apply skills and knowledge in a systematic way to problem-solve and create solutions for social issues.

- Community focused

- work with the communities to identify an issue

- conduct an assessment

- develop a program plan

- community initiative, or social policy

- facilitate the implementation of the plan 

- evaluate the outcome and impact of their collective efforts.

Understand transformative models in critical consciousness: (pay special attention to slide 26)
- Freire: education model emphasizes the creation of equal partnerships among educators, other professionals, and members of minoritized and marginalized groups.

- Hierarchy is eliminated

- Participants should engage in a process of mutual learning from one another

- Professionals possess formal knowledge while the other participants have knowledge that they have acquired through lived experiences.

- Values associated with the terms mutual learning, partnership, empowerment, and self-determination are also inherent in the term generally used to refer to volunteers or participants in the community-organizing process.

- Community members are considered experts

Understand social justice and understand your role as a community practitioner:
- Removing barriers to allow people to access their own power within systems, structures, and organizations, and by addressing unjust policies and inequities.

- Foster capacity-building experiences that strengthen and cultivate individual and community power.

- Encourage participation in community change initiatives and action strategies, and practice from a strengths-based perspective,

- Facilitate opportunities to illuminate experiences of one’s individual and a community’s collective power.
- Work to bring diverse groups of people and organizations together.

- Strive to foster community change

- Using both collaboration and conflict methods

- You will be a:
            Facilitator

            Organizer

            Planner

            Activist

            Lobbyist

            Referee

- Conduct Needs Assessments

Understand what skills you require to build community capacity and build relationships:
- Be self-aware and use cultural competency

- Use verbal and written communication

- Engage in dialogue with community members, constituent groups, key informants, and decision makers

- Facilitate community member and constituent self-determination and self-empowerment

- In partnership with community members and constituent groups, identify issues and appropriate assessments

- In partnership with community members and constituent groups, weigh the ethical implications of tactics and strategies

- In partnership with community members and constituent groups, plan campaigns and take action

- In partnership with community members and constituent groups, evaluate outcomes and processes

- Demonstrate ethical and professional behavior.
- Engage diversity and difference in practice.
- Advance human rights and social, economic, and environmental justice.
- Engage in practice-informed research and research-informed practice.
- Engage in policy practice.
- Engage with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities.
- Assess individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities.
- Intervene with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities.
- Evaluate practice with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities.

CHAPTER 2

Identify some of what you need to do in order to enter into the community:
- Observe the community and the people who are residents. 

- Speak with coworkers, supervisors, and identify who have expert knowledge and experience working within the community

- You must meet people where they are at.

- Must work at building, trust or acceptance within communities, and with community members and leaders

- Gain knowledge around community, beliefs, practices, customs, and values.
- Watch, listen, smile, and greet the people you meet.

- Ask questions.

- Find formal and informal groups of people in the community and identify influential community leaders and people.

- When you meet with people, keep notes. Identify who you met, what people tell you, how long they’ve been in the community
- Pay attention to the characteristics of the community, such as geographic size of the neighborhoods, quality of the homes, the number of people who are residents, other facilities within the neighborhood.
- Pay attention to demographic, compositions, including racial, or ethnic diversity, age, genders, gender, identity, disability

- Are there grocery stores, doctors, offices, schools, community centers, libraries?

- Utilize additional community organizations, faith-based, institutes, doctors, offices, dentist, offices, schools, libraries, or community centres as a mechanism to meet community members.
- Once you have established connections, you could consider conducting one on one interviews to obtain information about community assets, strengths, issues, and opportunities.

- WHY?: To establish relationships with people who may have information, skills, or assets that can be used for current and future organizing campaigns.

            - To recruit potential participants for organizing campaigns or organization membership.

Social Media Model:
- Brown and Dustman have developed a model for using social media to mobilize communities.

- Community mobilization through social media, identifies there are several rules necessary for optimal community engagement.

- In order for community mobilization through social media to be successful the organizer should have an identified social media facilitator, a social media messenger, an active community documentary and an intercultural communication specialist.

- Together these rules, ensure optimal, community engagement, and specific community characteristics, such as diversity, culture, and language are considered.

- The posts are supposed to be designed to promote dialogue and interaction with an among community members in a visually appealing and thoughtful manner.

Cultural Competence and Cultural Humility:
- Cultural competence is a lifelong commitment to learning and increasing your knowledge and practice to raise awareness and consciousness of cultural norms, customs, and the practises of the communities with which you work through respect, recognition, and humility.

- There is no singular textbook, resource, or certification that you can attend to teach you everything you need to know pertaining to the culture of any specific group.
- This must be a lifelong endeavour to continue to learn and develop awareness of various cultures within the communities that you serve.
- Cultural humility involves recognizing that we are not experts, but lifelong students of cultural competence committed to continuously challenging our own values, lens, and biases.

- We are committed to learning from the true experts, those within the communities we serve.

- Being self-aware is an important part of cultural competency.

- Having an awareness of your own cultural identity.

- How this identification impacts relationships with individuals of various cultural and demographic groups

- Your knowledge about other cultural and marginalized groups.

- Any biases you might have will allow you to be a better, more empathetic community practitioner

Understand how you might proceed in gaining trust of individuals within the community:
- Have knowledge of custom values in social networks.

- Have knowledge of all of the communities languages and the use of slang.

- Have an understanding of historical knowledge about the community and prior organizing efforts.

- Understand the political and economic powers within the community.

- Have knowledge about the groups of people who are likely to be included or excluded from decision-making in community based organizations, social networks, and cultural groups.

- Have an understanding of community psychology, including the ability to assess community cohesion the degree, to which the community is hopeful, that things can change and whether there is a common problem or issue that community members can be organized to address.
- You should develop self-awareness about your own position and society and issues of privilege and or marginalization with individuals and groups.

CHAPTER 3

Define recruitment in some of the tools that can be utilized:
- Recruitment involves one on one meetings, large group events, community-based events, such as street fair, potluck, formal banquets, cultural celebrations.

- Distribution of flyers, information tables at events, guest, speaking opportunities, attending community, events, or meetings, using television, print, and social media.

- The purpose of recruitment is to get people to be engaged in the process

Why do people volunteer:
- they believe in the cause

- the topic is of interest to them,

- they want to support the organization

- the worker

- they have empathy for others

- morality or religious values

- commitment to social justice

- make new friends, socialize

- develop new skills

- potentially make employment related contacts

- connect with other marginalized groups or individuals who have common experiences.
- Volunteering can also provide a sense of belonging, establishing a personal bond with members of a group or the people they intend to join.

- Positively impacts them as an individual.

- Sense of community is defined as feelings that members have of belonging, of significance to one another

- People who have a strong sense of community and commitment to neighbourhoods 

- Other groups with which they identify will be more likely to engage in community change efforts.

Understand three reasons for participation in social movements:
1) Instrumentality: the use of individual participation to facilitate social and political change.
2) Ideology: a vehicle for finding meaning in life and expressing personal beliefs and emotions about specific situations
3) Identity: feeling of belonging to or personal identification with a group.

Understand framing:
- Framing the use of values in recruiting people for social activism

- Frames are conceptual outlines used to describe challenges or issues

- Frames relate to people’s basic beliefs and attitudes.

- Often generated through interpersonal transactions as individuals struggle to place meaning on their experiences in relation to social, political, and economic institutions.
- Community organizers, use frames to recruit people around specific causes and look for ways to portray causes and a manner that has meaning for prospective participants that can evoke strong feelings

- Frames are used to recruit new members, raise funds, and inform the public about a problem or issue that may involve invoking moral shocks or using visual images or symbols

- Frames can also be used strategically to gain public support for a cause and involve a variety of different groups with different perspectives in the organizing campaign, especially when the message is used to put people inside the experiences of others.

Understand how you would foster perceptions of success:
- As a leader, you should try to instill in participants feelings of hope, or optimism, as sense that they can have a positive, transformative effect on the collective action.

- You must instill a sense of anticipation of positive outcomes.

- Celebrate all goals, achievements, and recognize individual volunteers and their contributions toward the overall goal

CHAPTER 4

Understand and define community-based organizations:
- Formal: have established structures, designated decision makers, and may be legally incorporate as not-for-profit or for-profit organizations, work under a government mandate, have paid employees, contain clear boundaries that determine who is included within the organizational structure.
- Community based: Internally, organizational culture can be viewed as originating in the mission, structure, and interpersonal relations, amongst staff, managers, board members, and clientele

            - An organizations relationship, or lack thereof, with other organizations dealing with the same issues or challenges, can determine whether an organization can keep the doors open.

            - They must strive to be effective within the services or advocacy efforts they offer and their political influence.
            - Organizations for partnerships with one another to increase their capacity to address community problems.

            - Ideally all members of the partnership share responsibility for making decisions, managing the activities, and sharing any risks that may be encountered.

            - Most organizations seek organizational partners for social change efforts.

Understand and define and be able to describe models of organization partnerships:
1) Task forces:
- Temporary structures established to address a community issue, need, or social problem that must be resolved within a short time 

- Members are generally representatives of organizations that serve a specific population

- Individuals may have technical expertise related to the issue or may have lived experience

- May initially be informal

- Task force may evolve into a collaborative effort amongst several organizations or an independent organization
- Task force can be flexible and structured, bringing together a diverse group of people with new ideas and a variety of skills, may allow for pulling of resources among different public, nonprofit, and for-profit organizations.

- Used to identify gaps and services within the community

- Engage in legislative advocacy or develop innovative programs or campaigns

- Can be used to quickly address, new or emerging community issues
- Disadvantages: 
            - It can be difficult to reach an agreement about an issue, identification, and goals among diverse groups of people.

            - Time limited: can make this approach effective for addressing complex problems that require long-term change.

            - Partners may be willing to work together, but unwilling to share their own resources, especially money and skilled staff members on initiative that involved risk or substantial investment of time. 
2) Collaboratives:
- Not-for-profit in public organizations, often established collaborative partnerships, to deliver services, plan programs, or engage in a specific type of joint activity.

- Often referred to as service delivery networks

- Often involves complex systems of exchanges and resources among multiple organizations.
- The use of the word collaboration implies that the various partners have developed a process of mutual exchange or sharing of resources

- Some community organizations may not deliver direct services to individual clients or families however they can be recruited to participate in collaborative services when the goal of the collaboration is to conduct outreach to minorities or marginalized populations.
- Organizations come together because of funding.

- Grants or contracts may specify the need for alliances or partnerships.

- The ability to pull resources and cut costs.

- Possibilities to recruit new clientele.

- Establishing collaborative partnerships can also involve correcting gaps in service availability or adapting to changing conditions.

- Collaborative members often vary and organizational affiliation, for example not for profit, public, service clubs, self-help groups.

- Collaborative members also come from organizations that vary in budget, staff size, in the amount of power and influence within the community.
- Participation in partnerships and networks help organizations adapt to fiscal, technological, or political changes within the community or the larger political environment. 

- Collaboration may also serve as a vehicle to coordinate services so that different organizations are responsible for different tasks. This eliminates duplication of services.

- For collaborative partnerships to work effectively, they must be able to establish strong relationships among organizations and agencies in institutions outside the network
- Disadvantages:

            - Competition for funds and resources between the organizations

            - Members come from diverse backgrounds, and often have different agendas

            - Organization representatives may vary in terms of education and professional status, which can result in different perspectives on issues and solutions thus making consensus challenging
3) Coalitions:
- Can be defined as a group established to take joint action to achieve a specific goal by combining resources, membership, and political influence.

- Some coalitions are established to engage in social action by lobbying government or to campaign for changes in policies or institutional structures.

- Some coalitions can be formed to participate in joint efforts to resolve community problems, or to conduct informal campaigns to encourage service utilization or health prevention
- Frequently have multiple goals

- Can also be formed to bring together similar groups with similar interests, engage organizations with similar goals by varying approaches or resources with which to address the issue, or to for relationships among diverse groups that can be persuaded to lend support to specific causes
- The primary purpose of coalitions is to increase strength through numbers.

- The more members in a coalition, the more likely members will be to Garner political influence by pulling resources, mobilization through political, or media venues

- Coalition groups generally do not establish formal, centralized structures to provide operational support and make decisions for its members.

- Membership is held by organizations rather than individuals.

- These groups come together to plan campaigns in response to pressing issues.
- Sometimes they’re steering committees or leadership councils that consist of representatives of members.

- Organizations do not give up their autonomy when they join a coalition and may drop out or refused to participate in initiatives in which they disagree in

- Coalition membership is often temporary and fluid.

- Culture, gender, identity, ethnic, and other demographic differences can also make a difficult to four agreements among the various groups involved in the coalition.

4) Interfaith Alliances:
 -Partnerships among organizations, serving specific communities that are often led by church congregations but can include other neighbourhood groups in institutions.

- Often referred to as faith-based or church-based organizations

- Local groups and networks can sometimes be affiliated with national organizations.

- One primary rationale for the formation of faith-based organizations, congregations serve as a place for contact and recruitment of large numbers of individual members.
- They are a low or no cost source of resources typically needed in organizing efforts, such as highly motivated volunteers, donations, and membership dues, meet space, community kitchens, recreational facilities, and office equipment.

- Characteristics of faith-based community organizations include a membership based that consists of congregation, use of religious traditions to frame, social problems and organized collective action to address those problems, emphasizing relationship building rather than simply concentrating on goals or issues, multiculturalism and diversity.

- Limitations of church-based community organizations includes the difficulty inherent and forging consensus among members of individual congregations, 

5) Social Movements:
- Collective efforts to achieve social change. Individuals in organizations participating in social movements through membership and broad-based, coalitions and national organizations.

- Often complex into organizational relationships among numerous organizations dedicated to the same cause

- Effective when they have a large number of members who can pay membership fees and participate in social protests or lobbying efforts

- Obtaining resources is critical for successful social movements

- Resources may include individual donors, grants, media connections, and links to influential people and decision makers.
- Most social movements have been viewed as a vehicle for minorities, marginalized and oppressed groups to improve access to resources or policy changes. For ex. civil rights movement

- In some cases, social movements advocate for the interests of affluent members of society, who feel that their social position or income has declined as a consequence of government actions or acquisitions.

- Local organizations are often formally affiliated with social movements around specific issues.

- Sometimes formal coalitions can be local, province wide or nationally.

- A simple organization does not, and cannot represent an entire social movement, but multiple organizations that form partnerships with one another can.

CHAPTER 5

Understand the difference between dialogue and deliberation:
- Dialogue: brings people together to listen and to understand

            - helps organizers and participants develop a collective or common understanding of an issue to be addressed

            - is important for building relationships, validating experiences, and identifying purpose.
- Deliberation: involves the use of group processes to apply:
            - critical thinking skills to problem

            - Resolution

            - the development of policy alternatives

Problem Solving Model:
- One of the primary frameworks used by social workers to make decisions is the problem-solving model

- This model is generally considered a component of generalist social work practice because it can be used to develop interventions across systems such as individuals, groups, families, organizations, and communities
- The approach is also called the rational model 

- It is one of the primary decision-making framework utilized by organizers, planners, and policy makers.

- This model suggests that experts have the time, knowledge, professional expertise, and resources to make objective decisions based on available information and logic.

- The second component to the problem-solving model is critical thinking. This is defined as the questioning of beliefs, statements, assumptions, lines of reasoning, actions, and experiences.

- Can also include the creative formulation of an opinion or conclusion when presented with a question, problem, or issue.
- The problem-solving model typically consists of five stages:
            - Issue identification

            - Assessment

            - Goalsetting, or planning

            - Intervention or implementation

            - Evaluation

Understand and describe the technique of storytelling:
- Using group storytelling to identify collective issues, one technique that gained national prominence through its use by Obama‘s 2008 presidential campaign is storytelling.

- This technique involves bringing a group of people together and a small group at the beginning of an organizing campaign to discuss their connection to the problem or issue at hand.

- This begins the process of getting to know one another, to exchange information and resources into initiate the development of cohesive groups or organizations.

Understanding the participant's experience with storytelling:
- Within this technique there must be storytellers, and there must be listeners. Storytelling can be a mechanism that can be empowering for members of minorities and marginalized communities.

- Storytelling validates the individuals experiences

- Research on storytelling and its use in community practice has proven to provide a positive positive vehicle for understanding the perceptions that people have about their own lives.

- It also provides an opportunity for members of these groups to challenge the way in which dominant cultures describe or tell stories about minorities or marginalized groups of people.

Understand the process of storytelling:
- Consequently, storytelling by people who have traditionally been excluded, allows them to assert their identities and makes their perceptions and experiences known, especially when they engage in social action to fight injustice.

- The process of storytelling for issue identification requires face-to-face dialogue, guided by a skilled facilitator.

- The storytelling process and community based organizations often consist of specific types of content.

- Typically, group members are given a series of exercises that focus on a collective goal or an analysis of an issue.

- People are asked to explain how they are personally affected by the specific issue.

- Common patterns may emerge with these stories however, individual experiences may differ making the groups common understanding of the issue or problem more complex.

Understand and define community forum: 
- Community forums are large meetings that are typically held at the beginning of the organizing process to examine community issues and set priorities.

- A wide segment of the community and people with diverse viewpoints are generally invited to attend for the purpose of establishing a core group of volunteers and help set the direction for the process of facilitating initiatives.

- Forums also offer a good opportunity to conduct one on one follow up interviews to deep in relationships with potential volunteers, solicit information, and ask people to contribute time, money, and other resources for the organizing effort.
- Community forms are usually a good way to mobilize support for an issue, however, they could result in the presence of the sceptics or opponents.

- Although the hope is that forms will result in compromise, consensus, neutralization of opposing viewpoints, or recognition or respect for people with different views, forms may be easily disrupted to the degree, that speakers are repeatedly interrupted, decisions, breakdown, and conflict erupts.

Understand and explain the process of normal group technique:
- used to engage diverse groups of people in the process of setting priorities 

- As with the other methods that have been discussed, normal group technique is used to obtain information on the perspectives and experiences of community members.

- It is used to identify aspects of the issue that may affect a large proportion of community residence and establish a common joint approach for addressing the issue.

- The process is generally guided by a skilled facilitator. It is typically used in large group settings, and there is limited interaction among group members.

Define the facilitators role of normal group technique:
- Facilitators often facilitate a brainstorming session.

- They pose a general question to the participants regarding their perceptions of their own needs, community issues, or how programs, policies, or services should be improved.

- Participants are asked to write down one to three ideas related to the topic and to give a verbal report about these items to other participants.

- These items are written on a blackboard, flip chart, or large piece of butcher block paper by a facilitator or assistant.
- Rather than writing down, duplicate items, facilitators indicate on the board the number of people who have listed similar concepts.

- 3 to 5 of the top issues chosen are identified as potential challenges to be addressed by the group or organization.

- Time is allotted for discussion if there is no consensus for potential campaign or plan, the facilitator, then asks participants to assign a ranking to the top choices. The item with the highest score or ranking is selected as the priority item.

Understand, define, and explain the process of focus groups. What is the facilitator’s role and what is the participants role?
- Focus groups are group interviews

- There are generally 6 to 10 participants.

- These groups are used to obtain detailed information about a product, social phenomenon, or program, gauge peoples reactions, or obtain information that could not be collected through an individual survey or interview.
- began in the world of advertising.

- Often used extensively and political campaigns as candidates and officeholders seek a means to test out campaign, slogans, agendas, or public perception.

- Focus group interviews may take place as standalone inquiries or as a component of a community forum.

- They have a unique structure format.

- The facilitator poses a small number of open ended questions approximately 6 to 8. Participants answer these questions based on their own perceptions and experiences.
- Interviewers can also use probing questions, ask for clarification, and summarize the main points made by respondents in order to solicit more information.

- Designed to collect data on a common or typical view.

- The process works because group members not only react to the facilitator, but they react to one another by agreeing or disagreeing or offering additional comments.

- The process can result in identifying common needs, perceptions, or concerns about a particular issue or a clear delineation of diverse points.
- The data collected from focus groups can be used to develop hypothesis or supplement other types of research.

- Focus groups are also used to understand or evaluate how specific interventions or programs are impacting the community

- Community, organizing, development, and social planning, they are typically used to see how people perceive or experience life in their communities or to learn the impact of a program or policy.

- Can also be used to examine the cultural context of critical community issues and to generate ideas for addressing them
- The use of focus groups require that attention be paid to ethical considerations.

- For example, respondents should be fully informed about the purpose.

- They should be assured that their confidentiality will be protected.

- They should be asked to sign a consent form, and if you are recording, permission must be granted to record the interview.

- Effort should be made to ensure that people are not placed in focus groups that could potentially include someone in a position of authority who could retaliate against them for negative comments.

- Participants should be assured they can withdraw from the group at any time.
-

What is the process of study circles?
- Study circles include a process of deliberative dialogue in which people agree to come together to discuss a public issue.

- Typically consist of 10 to 15 members in generally participants consist of a diverse group of community members.

- Take place over a number of weeks or months. In some instances of the process involves larger groups of people from a neighborhood, city, or region who break off into smaller groups for discussions.

How are intergroup dialogues facilitated?
- Intergroup dialogues are designed to minimize conflict
- promote feelings of respect and understanding,

- create strong bonds and trusting relationships among participants.

- These groups often address, religious, and racial differences or conflict.

What are three components of the intergroup dialogue process?
- Three components of the dialogue process are similar to group dialogue techniques.

            - Participants become aware of their own biases and the role of social structure and oppression in shaping prejudice and group conflict.

            - Participants share stories about their racial, ethnic, or cultural identities; experiences related to discrimination; and their own perceptions about others. This process is intended to help participants develop empathy for one another.

            - Members build relationships with one another that can be used to minimize conflict and take joint action across oppressive systems.