Community

Module
10:
Profiling and
Needs and
Resources Submitted by:

Assessment
Casquero, Charlotte
Grade 12 - HUMSS 3
 Steps in Doing
PRA/PLA
There are at least 13 key steps in doing PRA/PLA. These key steps are the
following:

1. Preparation 8. Strategy formulation

2. Community orientation 9. Goals and objective setting
3. Data gathering 10. Three-to-five year
4. Data analysis and development planning
interpretation 11. Plan presentation
5. Problem prioritization 12. Approval and adoption of
6. Cross-sector data the plan
validation 13. Monitoring and evaluation
7. Setting up of indicators for
development
• Participatory Methods for Community
Profiling and Needs and Resources
Assessment:
Participatory methods build a useful community profile because of
participatory approach:

1. Community resources and

social mapping
In this map, community members identify and include the potential natural and
physical resources of the community.

2. Social
census map
Its role is to lay down the human resources and other demographic and substantial
data needed for planning, which do not usually come out through other tools like
quantity of households, livestock, types of houses, educational attainment, facilities,
and others.
3. Pie chart or
bar Pie
graph
charts or bar graphs can be good tools to represent the quantitative data of the
community.

4. Service
mapItcommunity.
allows the participants to determine the services offered inside and outside the

5. Land tenure
improvement map
This type of map is to be created by the community participants to indicate the
different land holdings and their corresponding landowners and tenants.

6. Transect walk and

transect map
It facilitates the community to lay down the relationships of one resource to
another and other ecological interrelations.
7. Seasonal
calendar
economic diagram
A kind of calendar that plots the whole year’s activities and specifies the periods of
peak or trough.

8. Time
It allows people in the community to recall and put community events or experiences
linein a historical perspective.
9. Historical
transect
This tool can be used to list down all the resources of the community and try to
locate and the community history the abundances, scarcity, and depletion of such
resources.

10. Venn
diagram
Also known as Chapati diagram. It uses circles to represent people, groups, institutions, and
organizations in the barangay/community with respect to their relationships, relative
importance, and the community's degree of acceptance of the said groups.
11. Organizational
rating matrix
This tool assists the participants in assessing the performance of an organization in the
community to identify its strengths and weaknesses.

12. Flow
chart
This chart usually facilitates the participants and the community to describe the
processes and forces of production in the community.

STEP 4: Data Analysis and

Interpretation
This involves a process of sensing and meaning-making from the data
gathered. It allows more dynamic, deeper, and more different angles in
examining the data.
STEP 5: Problem
Prioritization
This step is of utmost importance in community/barangay development
planning.

Some methods and tools that can assist participants and researchers in
prioritizing the needs and problems of the community:

• Problem Tree/Solution Tree - It can assist the participants and researchers

in analyzing the possible root causes of the community’s identified problems.
A solution tree can be generated by reversing the problem tree and
substituting negative factors with positive factors.

• Matrix Ranking - In applying this tool, participants will set an agreed criteria
and considerations in ranking the problems of the community.
STEP 6: Cross-sector Data
Validation
This is another important step in the process of
PRA/PLA as cross-sector data validation is a concrete
expression of community participation. It can be done
through FGDs among community leaders. Dialogue with
the community may be helpful as well. In this process,
experiencing the hardships firsthand may validate and
attest at how true the data is.
 Strengths and Limitations of
Community Profiling
The strength of community profiling include the following:

• Empowerment of
It allows members to become more active through the acquisition of the necessary
community
information regardingmembers
their community.

• Holistic in
Because community profiling looks at issues as a whole, it is able to look at how
nature
a person acts and his or her environment. In other words, community profiling
is viewed in a structural perspective.

• Anti-oppressive
Community profiling is anti oppressive in nature because researchers do not dictate the
in nature
needs and improvement of the community.

• Alignment with social work codes of

It allows the involvement of community members.
practice and values
On the other hand, some limitations of community profiling include the following:

• Lack of
A thorough profiling must be done within the community. However, due to possible time
resources
constraints and lack of volunteers, community profiling can be a tedious task.

• Expertise and the

In order to conduct a proper community profiling, one must be familiar with its methods,
method
knowledgeable about the community that will be profiled, and able to have contacts within
the organization and an idea of what the community needs.

• Involvement of
The involvement of the community that will be profiled, and not just the research
community members
team, is vital to the whole research process.

• Structural
When certain issues of the community have already emerged after a profiling, the
constraints
researchers need to be prepared on how the community would likely respond to the
findings.