THE HEALTH RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM III
PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH (CO-PAR)
The Health Resource Development Program (HRDP) was developed and
sponsored by the Philippine Center for Population and Development (PCPD)
to make health services available and accessible to depressed and underserved
communities in the Philippines. The PCPD is a non-stock, non-profit private
institution which serves as a resource center assisting institutions and
agencies through programs and projects geared toward the social human
development of rural and urban communities. PCPD was formerly the
Population Center Foundation.
The PCPD sponsored health training institutions or hospitals to carry out
the program as part of the outreach activities of these schools or hospitals.
The training institutions developed an effective system of delivery of the
primary health care in depressed communities and trained the community
residents in the management of their own health concerns. The PCPD
provides funds for health programs while the schools or hospitals have a
counterpart to contribute in the form of service or in kind.
The HRDP has three cycles. The first cycle (HRDP I) trained the faculty,
medical/nursing students to provide health care services to the far-flung
barrios because of lack of manpower for health services at the same time that
similar activities fulfilled the curricular requirements of students for public
health. The PCPD provides seed money for the income-generating projects.
On the other hand, the community organizer uses his/her own strategy or
method in developing the community. His is considered to be a short-term
service.
The second cycle (HRDP II) uses the same strategy but the program could
not be sustained by the schools or hospitals and the income generating
projects eventually became a hindrance to the goal of achieving the health
program because the people tended to be more interested in the income
generated by the projects.
Both HRDP I and II have brought about some changes in the community
life of the people. There was an established basic health infrastructures; basic
health services were increased, there were trained health workers and
organized health groups to take care of the healthy needs of the community.
The PCPD refined the program and resulted to what is now called HRDP
III.
COMMUNITY ORGANIZING AND
Community Organizing-Participatory Action Research has been the strategy
used by the HRDP III in implementing the Primary Health Care delivery in
depressed and underserved communities to become self-reliant.
The HRDP III describes Community Organizing as a continuous and sustained
process of educating the people to let the m understand and develop their critical
awareness of the existing conditions; it is working with the people collectively
and efficiently discover their immediate and long-term problems and mobilizing
the people to develop their immediate needs toward the solution of their long-
term projects.
Objectives of Community Organizing:
1. To make people aware of social realities toward the development of local
initiative, optimal use of human, technical, and material resources, and
strengthening of people’s capacities.
2. To form structures that hold the people’s basic interests as oppressed and
deprived sectors of the community and as people bound by the interest to
serve the people.
3. To initiate the responsible actions intended to address holistically the
various community health and social problems.
As applied to Primary Health Care, Community Organizing is defined as the
process and structures through which members of the community are tapped to
become organized for participation in health care and community development
activities. They organized themselves to get better health care and improve their
health as a part of a larger effort, to increase their power and achieve greater
social and economic equality within a larger social system.
As a process, Community Organizing is the sequence of steps whereby the
members of the community work together to critically assess and evaluate
community conditions to improve thee conditions.
As a structure, it refers to the particular group of community members that
work together for common health and health-related problems.
It can be culled from this definition that it is the people who organized
themselves into a working team who can effectively solve their own health
problems.
EMPHASES OF COMMUNITY ORGANIZING IN PRIMARY HEALTH
CARE
1. The community works to solve their own problems.
2. The direction is internal rather than external.
3. The development of the capacity to establish a project is more
important than the project.
4. There is consciousness-raising to perceive health and medical care
within the total structure of society.
PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH
As a process, Participatory Action Research (PAR) is an investigation on
problems and issues concerning life and environment of the underprivileged by
way of research collaboration with the underprivileged whose representatives
participate in the actual research as researchers themselves, doing research of
their own problem.
As a structure, the beneficiaries of the research are the main actors in the
research process. It enables the community to experience a collaborative
consciousness of their own situations. PAR involves research, education and
actions to empower people determine the cause of their problems, analyzed
these problems and act by themselves in responding to their own problems.
The essential element of PAR is participation.
PAR is a community-directed process of gathering and analyzing
information for the process of taking actions and making changes.
In PAR, there is an outside researcher, a professional one who through
immersion and integration on the community becomes a committed participant
and learner in the community.
The Objectives of PAR:
1. To encourage consciousness of the suffering and develop competence
for changing their own situation
2. To help in the organization building by harnessing both human and
natural resources in responding to community needs.
3. To enhance the knowledge of the researcher in the community on the
social reality before them.
PARTICIPANTS IN PAR
a. Outside Researcher. The outside researcher is a professional
researcher, who is committed and a learner; active learner rather
than detached. He goes into an immersion and integration in the
community. He shares his research knowledge to encourage
genuine participation but would never assume a paternalistic
authoritarian attitude but leaves the application of that
knowledge to the people of the community.
b. Local Researcher. The local researchers are trained in the process
of research and are made aware of the needs of their people and
committed to do something about them. The local researchers
elicit active participation from community members for
collective data gathering, data analysis and action. They are the
link between the community and the outside resources.
HRDP CO-PAR PROCESS
1. Pre-entry Phase.
- initial phase of the organizing process where the community
or organizer looks for community to serve. It is the simplest
phase in the community organizing process in terms of
expected outputs, activities and strategies. The activities done
in this phase are:
o Community consultations/dialogues
o Setting of issues/considerations related to site
selection
o Development of criteria for site selection
o Site selection
o Preliminary social investigation (PSI)
o Networking with local government units (LGUs),
NGOs and other departments within the HRDP-NGO
2. Entry Phase / Social Preparation Phase o Intervention scheme and community development
- most crucial phase of the COPAR. It allows the community projects
tube on active participant of the success of the phase depends o Setting up linkages/network/referral system
on how the project implementers have integrated with the
community people. This phase includes activities such as: 5. Sustenance and Strengthening Phase
- when the community can already stand on their own thus the
o Integration with the community people can sustain the program even without the help from
o Identification of leaders project implementers. Activities included are:
o Continuing Social Investigation
o Provision of health services o Formulation and ratification of constitutions and by-
laws
3. Community Study / Diagnosis Phase (Research Phase) o Continuing education and upgrading of community
- comprehensive documentation of data gathere which focus on leaders, CHWs and CHO members
systematically looking for issues around to organize the o Formalizing and institutionalization of linkages,
people. Activities done in this phase includes: networks and referral systems
o Identification and development of secondary leaders
o Selection of the research team
o Planning for the actual data gathering
o Data gathering
o Training of data validation
o Presentation of the community study/diagnosis and
recommendations
o Prioritization of community needs/problems for
action

4. Community Organization and Capability-Building Phase

- signals the start of the community self-management because
it entails the formation of the formal structure and the
inclusion of the formal procedure of planning,
implementing, promoting and evaluating of community-
wide activities. Activities are:

o Election of officers
o Delineation of the roles, functions and tasks of
officers and members of the CHO
o Working out legal documents
o Training of CHO officers
Different Approaches:
Welfare Approach
– spontaneous response to ameliorate the manifestation of
poverty
– poverty is caused by bad luck, natural disaster, etc.,
– poverty is God-given
Modernization Approach / Project Development Approach
– introduces whatever is lacking in a given society
– poverty is caused by lack of education and resources
Transformatory Approach / Participatory Approach
– poverty is not God-given
– process of empowering and transferring the poor and the
oppressed sectors of the society so they can pursue a
more just, humane society
Records – client’s information and data
Report – periodic summary of services
Purposes of Records and Reports
• measure the service / program directed to the client
• provide basis for future planning
• interpret the work to the public and other agencies and the
community itself
• aid in studying the conditions of the community
Steps of Community Organizing
1. Integration
– being or becoming with the people
2. Social Investigation
– systematic process of collecting and collating data to
draw a clear picture of the community
3. Tentative Program Planning
– choosing one issue to work on in order to begin
organizing the people
4. Groundwork
– going around and motivating the people on one-on-one
basis to do something on the issue that has been chosen
5. The Meeting
– people collectively ratifying what they have already
decided individually
– gives the people the collective power and confidence
6. Role Play
– act out the meeting that takes plce between the leader of
the people and the government representatives
7. Mobilization
– actual experience of the people in confronting the
powerful and the actual exercise of people power
8. Evaluation
– the people review their steps or activities so as to
determine whether they were successful or not in their objectives
9. Reflection
– dealing with deeper on-going concerns to look at
positive values
– gives the people time to reflect on the stark reality of
life compared to the ideal
10. Organization
– result of many successive and similar action of the
people
– final organizational structure is set up with newly
elected officers and supporting members