ESTABLISHING A WORKING RELATIONSHIP WITH THE COMMUNITY

Basic Values in Community Organizing

To effectively implement community, the organizer and community worker must

possess value or give importance to human rights, social justice and social responsibility.

Human Rights

Every individual is with worth and dignity this is even recognized by the UNCharter and
the 1987 Philippines Constitution. This is the essence of our humanity-to be human, and to be
humane is to live with worth and dignity. However, the many of our social problems make us
say "madaling maging Tao, pero mahirap magpakadao." At times, humans are robbed by others
of their self-worth and human dignity. In some instances, the individuals' themselves allow
others to dehumanize- the robber (called the oppressors) and the "robbed" (called the
oppressed).

Community organizing is anchored on the

belief in human's worth and dignity. As
community organizers, we recognize the
inherent rights of individuals-the right to life
(and a secured life and Survival), the right to
liberty (and self-determination) and the right to
property (which includes the right to enjoy the
fruits of our labor).

Social Justice

One Filipino president once said: "Those who

have less in life must more in law." That is, the
poor should have more access to law to at
least. But, of course, this does not mean
deprivation of the rıght of the more
economically well-off for this would result to
injustice. Rather, the law should level off the
"have not's." this value is actually the essence
of social justice that community organizers
must promote.
 In this module, we mentioned the social opportunities that must be accessed by the
people in order to meaningfully satisfy their basic needs. By providing equal opportunities to
people, human worth and dignity is upheld.

Social Responsibility

We said in the preceding part of this modules that we are part of a community: that the
condition of our community affects us also. As part of a community, we should not merely limit
ourselves to our personal concerns but should. We should also develop interest on the concerns
of others and move jointly to achieve common goals. This only emphasizes the need to be
responsive to the needs of our community. However, the challenge for community worker is
how to assist the community members acquire the needed abilities to response to their needs.
That is, how to make develop their “response-ability”

STEPS IN COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION PROCESS

This section presents the different steps needed in community organization process.

Area Selection

Though site selection must follow the general design of your program, certain criteria have
been used to determine the project areas. This site must be a depressed area with majority of
the population belonging to the sector your program wishes to organize. An area with about
150-250 households would be ideal if the Community organizer is working with a partner. The
area must not have a serious peace and order problem.

Initially, the organizer can gather Socio-economic, demographic and geographic data
selected municipalities from the municipal agencies to assist the organizer in the selection of
the project site. The organizer can also inquire from friends or contacts regarding the
characteristics of possible project areas. It is also best to consider your level of commitment, as
well as that of the other project staff, which could affect your personal adjustments to
Situations in the field.

Community Entry

Once the area has been selected, the organizer is now ready to enter the community. Begin
with a visit to the local community officials to inform them of the objectives and nature of the
objectives and the nature of the organizer's stay in the community, Select a home to live in
which will facilitate the organizer's work. Choose to stay with a family of good reputation. Adapt
a lifestyle and personality that is in keeping with the community. When talking of the program
avoid raining the people's expectation. Keep a low profile. Avoid attracting unnecessary
attention to yourself, be honest and sincere and share strengths as well as weakness to the
people.

Community Integration

The first and basic step in community organizing is integration or becoming one with the poor
community to get to know the culture, economy, they visit people, engage in small talk, share
the people's work, take part in informal group discussion, share the people's housing, food
entertainment, and meetings. Integration is a continuing effort to immobile community life. It is
accomplished by living with the people and sharing the some experiences with them; the
organizer can participate in economic activities, share in their household work, or join them in
social activities.

In the process of integration certain things should happen to the integration:

1. He or she should come to respect the people and see the liberating aspects of their culture
that gave them the strength to struggle. The so-called culture of silence is a sociologist's
abstraction. The poor are though, determined, full of good naturedness. They also have the
weakness of other gunman beings.

2. The organizer should see how the social analysis he or she may have made of the national
situation is concretized in the people's lives. He or she can see to what extent the social
analysis, too, is only an abstraction. Reality is much complex and complicated.

3. The organizer should try to see or intuit God's activity among the poor, since the poor are
the privileged site of god's work today, according to the teaching of the churches.

4. He or she should in the end be accepted as member of the community

5. Finally, the organizer's values and lifestyle should change. He or she should become more
understanding and intolerant, more dedicated, more realistic and a poor man or woman as
much as possible.

To integrate well, the organizers should live in a poor urban or rural community in an
ordinary house and eat the food the people eat. Integration guarantees that a person's
commitment to change society is attuned to what the people want by a way of change and not
to some theoretical model or ideological or religion. Integration is basic to all others steps. If
the organizers are not one with the people, they can never really learn the true dimensions of
the people's problems or how to motivate them to change.

Social Investigation
Social investigation is the process of systematically looking for issues to organize the people
around. The organizer, immersed in the community, looks for problems that the people feel
strongly about to the extent that they will act on them. He or she looks for something concrete,
for example, sater and latrine problems, that are objectively problems that are obvious forms of
community integration. The organizer's few months will be spent on getting to know the
community well to be able to draw up a program that will maximize the participation of the
community members. A community study must be regarded both as phase of a long process
and as a long process itself. As a process, it is a continuing activity set to fulfill definite
expectations as definite periods. Making a community study can take several forms, including:
gathering and reviewing secondary date sources such as records and documents, holding
personal interviews, conducting a survey, and observing people and their environment.

Initially, the organizer can prepare a guide for a community study which can be divided into
major areas of investigation Such as the physical environment, economic, socio-political and
cultural aspects of the community. The organizer can also look into organizational aspects by
getting a list of existing organizations in the community, their nature, objectives, leadership
membership and activities. The organizer's preliminary can include the community's:

1. Physical characteristics (e.g. location, area size, natural resources, climate, etc.)

2. Demographic characteristics (e.g. population size, age, and sex composition, occupational
groupings)

Once the organizers have been integrated to the community, he or she can conduct an in-depth
study to explore the community's different economic, political social structures and their various
interrelationships. This can also include an assessment of the people's levels of consciousness
based on their socio-economic classes. Once you do this you are now doing social investigation.
How to do social investigation? There are three ways in general: the first is to study the
documents and reports that talk of the people's problems. The second way is to learn from the
people themselves how they feel about the problem, how they see a problem's details,
complications and significance. The third way is to study the problem as it is affected by the
power structure of the Community, that is, to study how prevalent usury is in slum areas.

He can see for himself and learn from the people how common it is and what a weight it is put
on people. He should also see how it serves certain specific needs of the community that are
not served by government or other agencies and how the local leader is often the principal
usury. This last piece of information warns him that action against usury will be opposed by the
leader and his friends. A piece of advice though avoids excessive drinking as well as courting or
flirting with men and women in the community. Do not gamble. Remember, too, that an
important component of organizing is documentation. Hence, it will be an advantage to keep
the diary of daily activities, experience as well as impressions of and reflections of interactions
with the people in the community. This can be a use for reference in the future, which can also
be share with other organizers. After a period of about one or two months, the organizers are
now ready to write the result of the community study. Community data can be reported and the
initial phase of community organizing can be documented. This will also help the community
organizer to evaluate the feasibility of the program in the community.

Spotting and Development of the Potential Leaders

In the process of integration and community study, Conscious efforts must be identify contacts
in the community who can provide and or validate information about the community and its
people. We can also develop this group of contacts into a pool of local organizers or leaders for
the program.

Some of the criteria that may be used or employed in identifying contacts/potential

leaders include the following:

1. They must belong to the low or middle-income sectors of the community.

2. They must be credible and have a wide sphere of influence.
3. They must be critical of their environment.
4. They must be responsive to change.
5. They must have good communication skills.
6. Trey must be articulate as well as attentive to their fellow community members.
7. They must be partisan to the poor of their community.

Once the organizers have identified the contacts, he can now hold a series of informal or
small group discussion with them. These will serve as venues for raising their consciousness
and helping them realize the importance of concerted and collective action.

Core Group Formation

With your group of contacts, the organizer is now ready to form the core group. Core group
formation is the laying down of the foundation for a strong community organization. The core
group can come mainly (through no only) from the group of contact. The core group represents
the most advanced group in the community in terms of consciousness.

The organizer cam initiate a series of meetings and discussion among the members of the core
group so they can exchange knowledge and insights towards a deeper understanding of the
problems, resources and dynamics of their community. The core group can then lay out the
plans and task for establishing a community organization composed of various sectors of the
community. One of the tasks of the core group is to come up with a tentative program the
organizer should not have pre conceived ideas on what is the right issue to tackle. He should be
continually curious and always looking for deeper levels of complexity in problems. He finally,
however, should choose one issue to work on. Some organizers will go on studying problems
and never settle on an issue. At some point you have to begin and believe that as result of
action you will discover further information.
The issue settled on must:

1. Affect the large number of people; it is basic organizing to include large numbers of people.

2. The people must feel strongly about it, for example they must have complained about the
problem in some way the organizer or given some sign that the problem bothers them.

3. It should be winnable that is, the people should be able to get what they want soon. It
shouldn't on the other hand be a hopeless struggle, for example, a plan to get rid of the multi-
nationals.

4. Action on the issue should interest other people who will join in allies are needed at every
stage of the organizing work.

5. The issue should be dramatic and interesting if possible. This will create wider interest in the
organizing work.

6. The issue should lead to further issues, for example, an organizer should see that action on
water tops that lead to small water consumers group that can later oppose a traditional
government controlled leader.

Once tentative programs the core group with the assistance of the community organizers will
conduct ground work. Groundwork means to go around and motivate people on or one to one
basis to do something on the water top issue or whatever issue has been chosen, this is also
called agitation. Some aspects of motivation or agitation that can be used are self-interest,
morality, rights, honor or shame, and anger. The organizers as he go around should talk about
a general meeting to which more people can come for further discussion and action. He should
for example, propose a meeting to talk about people going to city hall to demand water taps.
He discusses the pros and cons of this action with the people he talks too. He should get people
willing to do something and prepared to come in meeting at such a time to agree on such type
of action.

Sometimes, our agitation, we use points intimately tied to the people's culture and religion. We
should not use for the agitation purposes anything in culture is really good and yet against the
people. If we don't believe in the things we use in our agitation, we can wind up manipulating
people and acting as if holy this is the height of arrogance.

The core group may initially undertake training in leadership and organizing. You can conduct
the training yourself or seek to help of other resource persons. Training activities should include
assessment and reflection sessions. When the members had gained the needed knowledge and
skills, they can then conduct their own training for other section of the community. Other
mobilization activities may be planned to sharpen the skills of the core group. As these
mobilization efforts gain greater ground and reach a wider segment of the community, the
functions of the community organization can be formalized.

Recruitment and firming up of Members

The core group task is also to recruit and firm u the potentials members of the organization.
The basis for recruitment should be based on commonness of vision, problems, class interest or
political standpoint.

Setting up the Organization

After sometime in which the capabilities of the core group members have been sufficiently
tested, and when an adequate number of people have been attracted to common goals and
objectives, the formalization and expansion of the core group can now be done through the
formation of the community or sectored organization.

The formal setting up of the organization will involve planning in the national assembly.
Mobilization or action is the actual exercise of people's power. Conflict types of mobilizations are
needed. The people's confidence and self-respect are buried beneath centuries of oppression.
Confrontation is a good way to cut through all this. A good argument, surprisingly, can create a
sense of capability and dignity. What types of action? Some of the fun of organizing lies in this
tactics. The tactics should within the experience of the people, but outside the experience of
the powerful.

Before conducting any major mobilization, a role play is helpful. Role play means to act out the
meeting that will take place between the leaders of the people and the government
representatives. The leaders play themselves while some of the people take the part of the
government and answer as they think the government people will answer. It is way of training
people to anticipate what will happen and prepare themselves. It can be (and very enlighten
too) to see the poor people's imitation of the powerful. Role play is a good method to develop a
sense of reaction on the spot. The organizer can step in with advice from time to time.

The main Advantage of role play over other methods of preparation is that by its nature, it
involves people's emotion as well as their intellects and people enter into it with full
enthusiasm. It is not hard to do so, so it's a pleasant way of reviewing issues and aspects of the
problem. Role play allows for an air of confrontation that the people should get used to. After
the action the people should sit down and review that what happened good or bad. The action
is the raw material of the evaluation. Some of the question that should cover is:

1. Did we prepare well? Did we go the right person? Were leaders are ready to speak? We're
the demands clear and feasible? Did we have enough people? Did we overestimate our
strength?

2. What did we learn? Did we learn anything about how the system works in practice? About
the value of peoples power? About our own weaknesses?`

Theoretically, reflection could be part of evaluation, but in practice, it is better to separate it

because it deals with deeper ongoing concerns and may need quieter atmosphere. Reflection is
the time to look at the positive values we are trying to build in the organization. t deals with
sacrifice, community building, the role of leaders and authority, the nature of freedom and
democracy. It is useful often to use the scripture of the different religious in these discussions.

The people's organization is the result of many similar actions of the people. Gradually, the
groups of people who have acted can come together choose their leaders, and form their own
organizations. The following are some characteristics of people's organizations that the Asian
Committee for People's Organization has tried to promote:

1. It is an organization of smaller organization not individuals.

2. It has an internal structure that checks and balances and helps people participate and
deliberated

3. It is multi issues at any given time.

4 It is in constant action is the lifeblood of an organization.

5. It is serious. It is out to win.

6. It chooses tactics that are effective.

7. It is visible and controversial.

8. It projects an image power.

9. New leaders are constantly emerging

10. Leaders and people think and operate in terms of self-interest.

11. Partisan political alliances are made very critically.

12. It takes funds from within the people.

13. Is creates an impact beyond its immediate concerns and areas

Program Operations and Management

This is step where frequently the socio economic programs are implemented and manage by
the people themselves.

Networking and Alliance Building

This step emphasizes the interdependence of people's organizations. Is also emphasizes the
need to network with GO's NGO's, and other concern PO's. Please remember that the phases in
the organizing process described in this guide are not a step by step prescription of what is to
be done. Your whole stay in the community is a continuous process of integrating with people,
conducting social investigation, building contacts and launching mobilizations. Sometimes, all of
these happen simultaneously. The formation of the community organizations is by no means,
the end goal of this whole undertaking. The organization provides the people with a venue for
collective action, and by such their capabilities to deal with their needs and problems are
strengthened. But you will continue to work with the people, building them as they start to
build their capabilities. For only when people are able to say that “we did it ourselves” will you
know that you have done your job right, and you done it well.