COMMUNITY ENGAGEMET, SOLIDARITY AND CITIZENSHIP

SY 2019-2020

LESSON 1:
The Importance of Understanding Community
Dynamics and Community Action
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“There is nothing permanent except change”

Learning Objectives:
 To understand the role and importance of the individual in a community
Fundamental Queries:
 Why is it important to study the community and its dynamics?
 How important is the study of community to our future as an individual
and as a collective?
 How can critical knowledge about the community affect us and others?
Learning Competencies:
 Explain the importance of studying community dynamics and community
action in relation to applied social sciences and the student’s future career
options.
 Develop and firm sense of shared identity and willingness to contribute to
the attainment of the common good.

Introduction
Have you ever asked what your role is in the grand scheme that we call
society? Do you ever feel small to a point that you question your value to the
social environment you are in? Have you been curious to know how your current
decisions would affect your personal future and future of your family members
or even the world around you? Look no further in exploring the depths of
understanding of this matter and peer into the very institutions that surround
us and we ourselves are part of, our own communities.
The Living Commune
The word community in its literal form is defined by two characteristics:
location and social identification. First, a community can be defined simply as a
group of individuals bound within specific geographic location. Is means that a
group of people living in a specific area can already be called a community. The
second definition surmises that a community is an example of a collective that

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identifies common traits, goals, or customs. It can be argued that communities
bind individuals into a collective whole.
A community is a living social entity and goes beyond the old categorized
of space as its primary definition. More than a space, a community is made up
Page | 2 of people: you and I. Much like a living organism, you may think of people as
living cells that make up an organic being. People within the community act in
the same way and of same importance. Like cells, we need each other to support
life. Our society itself has life, has vibrancy, and every single one is as integral
to support this structure as everybody else. Just like an organic being, a
community takes on different periods of evolution as it continues to survive. The
environment, where the community is in, molds the collective in accordance to
the demands of survival. While the composition of the community is by default
created by the personalities therein, the environment, on the other hand, shapes
it to its most optimal social composition and form. This synergy between the self,
community, and the environment seems to be organic: yet in practice, this is the
challenge that confronts all communities in general. The main obstacle is to
compromise all these actors, trivialities, and circumstances into an effective
social machinery composed of living parts.
The Basic of a Community
When we think of a community, we think of how people come together
to form a singular faction. We see it as a structure that is made up of individuals
bound by something abstract and unforeseen. It is not as simple as such, as the
community is bound because of self-help. The concept of self-help is about how
individuals seeks personal development without the help of others. However. Self
– help defines a community once each individual wants and needs intersect,
therefore justifying a need to unify. It is assumed that people are bound to seek
self-help in their own lives, and in their journey, find common avenues for
cooperation and partnership among others and therefore lay the foundations for
capacity- building.
However, not everyone sees it as such due to the varying sense of
community ownership that its members may possess. Ownership, in this
sense, is the level of commitment and accountability that an individual has for
the community. This can be summed up by the level of involvement the
community and its members hold in the most basic operational structures of the
commune. Some of these structures can be governmental or non- governmental,
and formal or informal. These social organizations bind individuals and groups
toward specific goals, concerns and issues. Problems within communities are
shared just as resources and opportunities. We must never forget we are all
stakeholders and are bound by the same fate of the commune. Ownership, some

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may argue, is a choice but in reality, ownership is a necessity for the members
of the community if they aspire to improve their current situations.
Through community participation, individuals can provide their own
contributions through acts of volunteerism in projects and other communal
Page | 3 initiatives. More so, participation is not only focused on being part of an ongoing
project but an individual should also be an active member by taking part in the
managerial and organizational development of the community, which includes
the conceptualization, planning , operationalization, and review of initiatives.
Existent communal models of direct participation include town halls, focus
group discussion, forums, and through informal channels which can include
everyday affairs. An active community is one of the most important facets of
healthy community because it characteristically directs issue discourse into
tangible and structured dilemmas that can be solved and operationalized via
pragmatic and sustainable solutions created by the combined efforts, ideas,
expertise and experience of the group.
While participation is key, inclusion is one aspect of the community
that is integral in binding the collective into a whole. As a form of social assembly,
the personalities within a community are different and unique. In respect to
culture, race, religion, and other identifiable social identities, one person is
unique as to the other. Such backgrounds, histories, mores, and customs vary
and yet should be integrated into the local communal social fabric. Moreover,
inclusion echoes the need for the community to be compromising and tolerant
of these differences. A community should always consider not only the needs of
the majority but more critically, the needs of the minority that are often neglected
or overlooked. This can be solved by using more objective instruments of inquiry
and wider view that reality exists outside the confines of the majority. Inclusion
is all about conciliation that reaches beyond norms of collective understanding
wherein the goals is to reach social equity among its members.
Highlighting inclusively are access and equity. These two are the goals
that commune must strive for to create a better society. Access and Equity imply
the ease in which various individuals and group can attain the basic necessities
and resources. They push for a just allocation of goods and opportunities that is
without discrimination and prejudice toward people. Significantly, they provide
power and social protection among its citizens through the continued
improvement of its structures under political, economic, sociocultural,
technological, legal and environmental aspects.
The Community as a Movement
A community is more than just a collective. It acts much like a living
entity that takes on life. Living within the imaginations of its members, a
community also embodies a perspective, identity, strand, and, much like a social

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movement. The main differences between both is social movements its exits
primarily of a cause the manifest either as a reaction to an event or as pre-
existing popular rhetoric among the community members, while a community
is bound not just by one issue or narrative but on plethora of compromises that
are commonly accepted and continually reinforced. To put it simply, a social
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movement is more issue-specific and may exist primarily for its own ecosystem.
To look deeper in its dynamics, let us focus on its important ideals and how it
comes to fruition.
Through issues and concerns that are shared among its members,
advocacies are formed by the community and its leaders. To improve and garner
support , communities try to garner support from other individuals or groups
which are aligned with their worldview. As compared to social movements,
communities are made up of various advocacy clusters that try to supplement
the ongoing efforts of the government. Advocacies include multitudes of topics
where people are compelled to push for value-specific agendas that are shared
through their supporters.
Formations are created with the organic networking of actors that later
on find commonalities and avenues for cooperation and partnerships.
Underpinning these effort is the spirit of collaboration where groups and
individuals from various walks of life come together to form linkages that are
important for mobilization and value creation. The creation of these networks is
also both formal and informal since there is really no limit to where collaboration
can happen or manifest. Partnership can take form between the individuals or
groups of various backgrounds that share a common identification, but at the
same time , contribute on different levels to solve problems and overcome
obstacles. Embracing this kind of diversity is critical in building networks the
last and work under various circumstances and challenges.
Standing on the foundation of advocacies and networking is the hope
for social action. At the end of the day, the community hopes to address the
issues of the status quo through the combined efforts of actors. Planning,
conceptualization, operationalization, and implementation of action will not be
possible without the political will of actors toward meeting general compromise
to effect social change. The community is a movement that cannot be dismissed
as external to the realities that we hold our own. We are , in fact , the community;
our personal worldviews and realities are directly derived from the collective with
which we identify ourselves and in sharing a common identity, we also hare the
same.
Reference:
Danilo Lorenzo S. Delos Santos, 2017 (COMMUNITY ENGAGEMET,
SOLIDARITY AND CITIZENSHIP) Manila: Rex Bookstore.

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Concepts and Perspectives of Community