HSC 4201 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Community Organizing, Intercultural Competence, Health Education
The Process of Community Organizing/Building
1. Recognizing the issue
2. Gaining entry into the community
3. Organizing the people
4. Assessing the community
5. Determining the priorities and setting goals
6. Arriving at a solution and selecting intervention strategies
7. Implementing a plan
8. Evaluating the outcomes of the plan of action
9. Maintaining the outcomes in the community
10. Looping back
Recognizing the Issue
• Initial organizer—the person who recognizes a problem exists in a community and decides to do
something about it
o May not be the primary organizer throughout the community organizing and building
process
o Gets things started
• Grass-roots—if those who initiate community organization are members of the community then
they are grass roots, citizen initiated, or organized from the bottom up
• Top-down organization—when individuals from outside the community initiate community
organization
o Organizers might find it advantageous to enter the community through a well-
respected organization that is already established in the community like a church
Gaining Entry into the Community
• May or may not be needed depending on the first step
• Necessary and critical if the initiator is from outside of the community
• Gate keepers—those who control both formally and informally the political climate of the
community
o Organizers must approach such figure on the own terms and play their game
o Must be culturally sensitive and work toward cultural competence
• Organizers need to know where the power lies, the community power dynamics, what type of
politics must be used to solve a problem, and whether the particular problem they wish to solve
has ever been dealt with before in the community
Organizing the People
• Obtaining the support of community members to deal with the problem is the next step
• Begin by organizing those who are already interested in seeing that problem solved—this core
group of eers is referred to as eeutie partiipats ill eoe the akoe of the
workforce and will end up doing the majority of the work
• From the core group a leader must be identified
• One of the tasks of the core group is the recruit more members of th e community to the cause
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