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Community 2nd Sem Module 1

This document discusses the importance of understanding a community before engaging with it. It provides gains from understanding community dynamics such as benchmarking data, preliminary planning information, and understanding community strengths and challenges. Understanding a community requires immersing oneself in it to feel and think like its members. The document then defines a community and discusses its traditional and alternative views. The traditional view relates communities to geography and social systems, while the alternative view is more subjective and addresses oppression. Key elements of a community are discussed such as its nature, structure, and power dynamics. Understanding these is important for community development work.
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50% found this document useful (2 votes)
3K views4 pages

Community 2nd Sem Module 1

This document discusses the importance of understanding a community before engaging with it. It provides gains from understanding community dynamics such as benchmarking data, preliminary planning information, and understanding community strengths and challenges. Understanding a community requires immersing oneself in it to feel and think like its members. The document then defines a community and discusses its traditional and alternative views. The traditional view relates communities to geography and social systems, while the alternative view is more subjective and addresses oppression. Key elements of a community are discussed such as its nature, structure, and power dynamics. Understanding these is important for community development work.
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Mystical Rose College of Science and Technology

POGONLOMBOY, MANGATAREM, PANGASINAN

Learning Activity Sheet


Community Engagement, Solidarity, and Citizenship
Module 1
nd
2 Sem HUMSS 12

Community: Importance, Definition, Elements and Approaches

Community situations vary. Each community has its own context and realities. Those interested in working with
a community must first have a clear picture and good grasp of the entity they are trying to address. It is in appreciating
the features and elements of the community that engagement processes and actions become relevant, acceptable and
appropriate. Without a deep and wide knowledge of a target community, interventions may emerge as exclusive,
inappropriate or totally insensitive to the members of the community.
Gains in Understanding Community Dynamics
 Provides benchmarking data
 Provides preliminary project planning information
 Provides an idea of the community’s strength and challenges
 Provides an opportunity to understand the community’s dominant rules and norms
 Provides an occasion to gauge the attitude and behavior of the community
 Provides a way for a more directed and well-informed dialogue with the community
 Makes networking and partnership building more favorable
 Gets project implementation less complicated

There are many ways to understand and appreciate a community but there is no substitute to immersing and
living with that community. Social development workers, social workers, social action people and community organizers
cannot escape what we call in tagalog as “paglubog” or “Pagbabad”. It is more that exposure; it means immersion. It is a
process of living with people in order to feel, smell, and think like them. This practice is captured by the thinking of
Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu (700 BCE) who said:
“Go ro the people. Live with them, learn from them, love them. Start with what they know; build with what they
have.
The getting-to-know stage or phase is the “see” or “masid” portion in the ‘SEE-JUDGE-ACT” method originally
coined and used by Cardinal Cardijin in 1925. This process is the same as the “OBSERVE-JUDGE-ACTION METHOD’
mentioned by Pope John XXIII in his 1961 encyclical Mater et Magistra ( Christianity and Social Progress), which is part of
Church’s Social Teaching.

Activity 1. Write a reflection:


 Why is it important to understand or get to know your target community? (15pts)
(tagalog will do)

Definition of a Community
Communities are generally defined by their common cultural heritage, language, beliefs, and shared interests.
They may be classified as small such as the small place-based community of a barangay or coastal village or large such as
region, state or nation. This section focuses on small communities.
According to Murphy and Cunningham (2003), small communities have ‘defined territories and given life by
three interacting people processes:
a) An underlying web of human relationships called social fabric
b) A unique community power structure
c) C a set of resource flows that constitute a local economy
Small communities are powerful producers of relationships which include kinship, friendship, neighbors, local
institutions and communication mechanisms that connect people to people.
Communities are vied from the traditional and alternative perspectives. The traditional perspective relates
communities with geographical location, work and the social system . The alterative viewpoint, on the other hand is
more subjective, integrative, and feminist and addresses oppression and discrimination. It integrates the notion of
social justice, human diversity, values and ethics and applies the idea of community building, community renewal,
community assets and strengths, ethic and civil society, and social capital. A holistic view recognizes the
interconnectivity of ‘people and placed-based strategies’ and acknowledges that economic, environmental and social
issues are interdependent.

Activity 2: Write a Reflections


 How is the traditional view of community different from the alternative view? (tagalog will do)15 pts

Activity 3: 20 points
Masid-Suri
Objectives: To determine your concept of community
Instructions:
Masid- To observe
1. Watch a short film about community.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28j1RnrhmSY
2. Watch and observe the dynamics at play.
3. Take notes of your observations. Submit the notes. ( include it in the module)
Suri-Analyze
1. Write an essay on the community shown in the film.
Used the ff. questions as a guide.
1.1 What is the composition of the community?
1.2 What are the characteristics of the community?
1.3 What are the dynamics in the community?
2. Submit your essay and share thoughts in class.

Activity 4. Processing question (5pts each)

1. What are the community dynamics shown in the film?


2. What do you think are the factors that trigger community dynamics? Is it a combination of external and internal
forces?
3. What have you learned?

Elements of Community: Nature and Power Structure


The dynamics of a community is determined by its nature and structure an dhow it reacts with external or
internal forces. It is thus important to recognize the characteristics and features of a community to understand
why it acts and reacts in a certain way.

The Nature Of Community


Nature Description
A community has a The concept of a community is not only a “construct’ (model); it is a
sociological construct sociological construct or a set of expectations between its members. There is
not just action, but actions based on shared expectation, values, beliefs and
meanings between individuals.
A community has fuzzy When an identified community is a little village separated by a few
boundaries. kilometers from other villages in a rural area, its boundaries appear at first
to be simple. The human interaction present may be seen as consisting only
a relations among the residents living inside that location, inside that
location, inside that village.
A community can exist within There may be communities within larger communities, including districts,
a larger community regions, ethnic groups, nations and other boundaries. There may be
marriages and other interactions that link the villages of a nation together.
A community may move When technology is not based on local horticulture, the community
residents may be physically mobile. They may be nomadic herders walking
long distances with their cattle. They may me mobile fishing groups who
move from time to time to where the fish are available. They maybe hunters
who move to follow the game.

A community can be considered like an organism because it can function even if people come and go. It
transcends the individual persons that make it up. A living organism also behaves similarly as it transcends its
atoms. In addition, an atom deals with a different set of forces than the living plant or animal in which the atoms
is found. In the same way, an individual person faces a different set of forces from those faced by the
community where the individual lives.
Bartle further pointed out that “ a community is a super-organic organism or system’ made up of the
thoughts, outlook, and conduct of individual human beings full of divisions and conflicts brought about by
differences in religion, ethnicity, gender, access to resources, class educational level, income level, ownership of
properties, language, personality, opportunities and a lot more.
This reality indicates that to work in a community or to undertake community interventions is a
challenging task. One must get to know first and foremost the community system. How does the community
work? What are the structures and the different dimensions of the community? One must observe how the
community acts and reacts to forces that are external and internal to its system. Development work requires
understanding community dynamics and processes.

Activity 5
Lakbay-Utak (mental Tour) 20pts

Instructions:
1. Take a mental tour to a community, preferably a poor community, that you are familiar with.
2. Imagine that you are investigating the community. Be quiet and let your mind travel slowly and be
aware of what the exercise reveals.
3. Identify the power actors/players in the community.
a. Who are the influential members of the community?
b. What are the characteristics of these people?
c. How do they influence the members of the community?
4. What have you learned in the exercise?
The structure of a community
In the community, change agents put premium in understanding power structure. Community power structure
is about the distribution of power at the local community level. But what is power? Power in a community is the capacity
to influence the decision-making and distribution processes, to bring about change and get things done. The idea of
power includes determining the structures that have impact on local communities and also the linkages that form
collaborative works.
What are the bases of local community
Bases of Local Description
Community Power
Connections The capacity to create linkages and develop helpful relationships with powerful individuals,
family, and organizations.
Power in Number The base, back-up and support of the people in the community.
Reward The ability to provide to provide awards, promotion, money and gifts that are useful to meet
individual or organizational goals.
Personal traits/ The capacity to foster respect and loyalty based on charm, talents and skills.
Expertise
Legitimate Power The leadership title or higher organization or institutional position.
Information Ability to keep or share information
Coercion Influence through manipulation and coercion.

For community social change to happen, it is necessary to understand the power actors. As discussed above, power
actors. As discussed above, power actors have power mainly because of their influence. The forms of power presents,
however, vary from one community to the other. Community organizers and development workers pay close attention
to power actors and the key people in the community power structure because of their significant roles in social change.
Their behavior or reaction can break or make community development interventions.

The Dimensions Of A Community


A community is a complex system with different dimensions. These dimensions may be present in all
communities but they may vary in size, degree, and complexity. This characteristic of a community may be attributed to
the combination of the communities’ human resource, natural resource, culture, structure, and other factors. Bartle
identified 6 community dimension:

Dimension Description
Technological It is the community capital- its tools, skills, and ways of dealing with the physical environment. It
is the interface between humanity and nature. The dimension is not comprised of the physical
tools themselves but of the learned ideas and behavior that allow humans to invent, use and
teach others about these tools. Technology is as much a cultural dimension as beliefs and
patterns of interaction are. It is symbolic.
Economic It is the community’s various ways and means of production and allocation of scarce and useful
goods services through barter, market trade, state allocations and others. This dimension is not
about physical items like cash but about the ideas and behavior that give value to cash.
Political The various ways and means of allocating power, influence and decision-making. It is not the
same as ideology, which belongs to the values dimension. It includes but is not limited to, types
of governments and management systems. It also includes how people in small bands or
informal groups make decisions when they do not have a recognized leader.
institutional These are the ways people act, react, and interact with each other, as well as the ways they
expect each other to act and interact. It includes institutions such as marriage or friendship, roles
as a other or police officer, statues or class, and other patterns of human behavior.
Aesthetic values This refers to the structure of ideas-sometimes paradoxical, inconsistent or contradictory that
people have about what is good and bad, beautiful and ugly and right or wrong. This is what they
use to explain or justify their actions. The three axes are not acquired through our genes, but
through our socialization.
Beliefs- This is another structure of ideas also sometimes contradictory that people have the nature of
Conceptual the universe, the world around them, their role in it and the nature of time, matter and
behavior.

Activity 6
Piling Dimensiyon ng Komunidad
20pts
Instructions
1. This exercise is a take-home assignment. Choose one community dimension discussed in class.
2. Go to a poor community and observed the community dimension that you chose in action.
3. Describe the community focusing on the dimension that you chose.
4. Make a slogan out of your description.
5. Pass your slogan with the module

Processing Questions.
1. What slogan did you make?
2. What is the meaning of your slogan? How did you come up with it?
3. What were your realizations about the community while doing the activity?
4. What did you learn from the exercise?

Prepared by:
MA. VICTORIA L. VALENZUELA
CESC TEACHER

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