Republic of the Philippines

Department of Education
REGION IV-A CALABARZON
SCHOOLS DIVISION OF BATANGAS
DISTRICT OF LOBO
JAYBANGA INTEGRATED NATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL
JAYBANGA, LOBO, BATANGAS

Quarter 2– Week 3-4

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT, SOLIDARITY AND CITIZENSHIP
(CESC) 12

CORE VALUES AND PRINCIPLES OF COMMUNITY-ACTION INITIATIVES

Learning Competency: Assess selected community-action initiatives based on their core values and principles.

Community-Action Initiatives is an effort to involve residents, local groups and other organizations pursue
common goals as guided by the core values and principles of community engagement, solidarity, and citizenship.
Putting the people together makes a community prosper because we allow them in the creation, designing, and
implementing varied programs and activities for the benefit of all. The concept of human rights, social justice,
empowerment and advocacy, participatory development, and gender development are vital to strengthen our
knowledge on how community works.

In the past lessons, we have learned the importance of community-action as a way to solve issues in our
communities and those affecting the marginalized group of people. The different initiatives undertaken in every
corner of our community have transcended beyond the unraveling of the problems of human rights, social equity,
gender equality, and participatory development.

As a member of the youth sector, you are presumed to be the “hope of nation”. As such you must actively take
part in all the affairs of your community. By doing so, you are not just contributing to the success of your
community but for the entire community as well. The need to engage yourself into different projects whether it is a
long-term or short-term is indispensable which could radiate positivity among all the youth in your community.

Furthermore, you should also be the first one to initiate projects. Thinking of what project that can be done in your
community? Are you planning for a long-term or a short-term project? Short-term projects take a few hours, days,
or weeks to complete. Long-term projects take months or even years to finish. Sometimes that action needs to be
confrontational, to improve the lot of one group relative to another, and sometimes it needs to be conciliatory,
taking down the walls and bringing people together as equals.

METHODOLOGIES AND APPROACHES IN COMMUNITY ACTION

Learning Competency: Explain the methodologies, and approaches in community action.

Methodologies and approaches in community action will help you understand the purpose of each phase
and its implication to the society such as partnership and how it promotes development to the community as a
whole.

Phases of Community Action:

 Establishing links and partnership building with local groups. Establishing links is a process of identifying
and locating different actors and players within a community who share a common interest, purpose and
goals. Individual engaged in the different types of partnership depends on their goals and interests. For
example if you participate in community activities, that is a community-based partnership, another type of
partnership is the government-based, wherein the individual engaged in the activities of the government as a
stakeholder, and lastly, the faith-based. Coordination, cooperation,collaboration and partnership are just some
of the methods and approaches in building partnership.
 Community profiling. Social research method which involves building up a picture of the nature, needs and
resources of a locality or community, with the active participation of its members, he aim being to create and
implement an action plan to address the issues unearthed. It matters that you know who are living in the
community for you to assess what type of community you have.

 Needs and resource assessment. It is used to assess the resources or skills that exist among the people or
communities with which a project plans to work. For eaxample, before you formulate an action plan, you have
to assess the needs of the community.

 Participatory action planning and leadership development. It is a process by which a community undertakes
to reach a given socio-economic goal by consciously diagnosing its problems and charting a course of action
to resolve those problems. Experts are needed, but only as facilitators. As a sequence in undertaking
participatory planning, the group involve themselves in gathering information, consultation, deciding together,
acting together, and support independent community initiatives.

 Resource mobilization. It is the process of getting resources from the resource provider, using different
mechanism, to implement an organization’s predetermined goals. Example, you are going to look Note:
Practice Personal Hygiene protocols at all times. Possible stakeholders/organizations that could help you
provide the necessary needs in your action plan.

 Plan implementation. It is designed to document, in detail, the critical steps necessary to put your solutions into
practice. It is a step-by-step list of task with assigned owners and due dates, and helps the project team stay
on track. For example, you have to make a timeline for the activity.

 Monitoring and evaluation. Used to assess the performance of projects, institutions and programme set up by
governments, international organizations and NGO’s. Its goal is to improve current and future management of
outputs, outcomes and impact. For example, evaluate and monitor how far have you gone with your plan.

METHODS OF COMMUNITY ACTION IN UNDERSTANDING COMMUNITY

Learning Competency: Apply systematic methods of community action in understanding community.

Community action is an alternative research method that uses the community as the unit of analysis. This
approach forges research alliances with relevant stakeholders in the community to explore and develop solutions
to local problems. Community action includes a broader range of activities and is sometimes describe as “social
action” or ‘community engagement’ that increases the understanding, engagement and empowerment of
communities in the design and delivery of local services including:

Building community and social capacity-helping the community to share skills and ideas. Community
resilience-helping the community to support itself. Prevention- a focus on early access to services or support,
engagement in design, cross-sector collaboration and partnerships. Maintaining and creating wealth- for example
helping people into employment or developing community enterprise.

Action research makes a reasonable resolution or accurate evaluation more probable in two ways. First, by
involving the people directly affected by the issue or intervention, it brings to bear the best information available
about what’s actually happening. Second, it encourages community buy-in and support for whatever plans or
interventions are developed. If people are involved in the implementation of solutions to community issues, they’ll
feel they own the process, and work to make it successful. (e.g. community engagement in decision making-
through public engagement events where the community helps to decide local priorities, codesign or co-
commission services).

In the previous lesson we discussed the different methodologies and approaches in community action in
understanding community. A researcher conducting community action should apply systematic methods to
understand community such as partnership, community profiling which is a process of creating a series of
information that is applied to something or someone through techniques of date elaborations, needs assessment,
participatory action planning, resource mobilization, implementation plan, and monitoring and evaluation. It is also
figured out by tapping the participatory and interactive process between the community and the support groups or
institutions. Another method to be used in conducting community action is the need assessment that identifies the
strengths, weakness, needs, and resources which could help tear down the barriers and resistances that prevent
the community from achieving their goals. Community profiling and needs assessment are the most basic methods
used in conducting community action. This toolkit provides guidance for conducting assessments of community
needs and resources.

1. Describe the makeup and history of the community to provide a context within which to collect data on its current
concerns.

a. Comment on the types of information that best describes the community (e.g., demographic, historical, political,
civic participation, key leaders, past concerns, geographic, assets)

b. Describe the sources of information used (e.g., public records, local people, internet, maps, phone book, library,
newspaper)

c. Comment on whether there are sufficient resources (e.g., time, personnel, resources) available to collect this
information

d. Assess the quality of the information e. Describe the strengths and problems you heard about

2. Describe what matters to people in the community, including a description of:

a. Issues that people in the community care about (e.g., safety, education, housing, health)

b. How important these issues are to the community (e.g., perceived importance, consequences for the
community)

c. Methods the group will (did) use to listen to the community (e.g., listening sessions, public forums,
interviews, concerns surveys, focus groups)

3. Describe what matters to key stakeholders, including:

a. Who else cares about the issue (the stakeholders) and what do they care about?

b. What stakeholders want to know about the situation (e.g., who is affected, how many, what factors contribute to
the problem)

c. Prioritized populations and subgroups that stakeholders intend to benefit from the effort d. Methods you will (did)
use to gather information (e.g., surveys, interviews)

4. (For each candidate problem/goal) Describe the evidence indicating whether the problem/goal should be a
priority issue, including:

a. The community-level indicators (e.g., rate of infant deaths or vehicle crashes) related to the issue

b. How frequently the problem (or related behavior) occurs (e.g., number of youth reporting alcohol use in
the past 30 days)

c. How many people are affected by the problem and the severity of its effects

d. How feasible it is to address the issue

e. Possible impact and/or consequences of addressing the problem/goal

5. Describe the barriers and resources for addressing the identified issue(s), including:

a. Barriers or resistance to solving the problem or achieving the goal (e.g., denial or discounting of the problem)
and how they can be minimized (e.g., reframing the issue)

b. What resources and assets are available and how the group can tap into those resources to address the issue
c. Community context or situation that might make it easier or more difficult to address this issue.

To build effective community partnership, first, you have to connect with leaders at partner organizations to
promote engagement to a community with the same mind set. Define and prioritize your goal make sure that goals
and directives are clearly defined so everyone is on the same page. Build new partner relationships and strengthen
long-standing ones. Lastly, ensure screening and referral protocols are seamless, designate a person or group to
take ownership of resource collection so team members know who to talk to for those concerns. There are seven
steps for conducting a successful needs assessment:

1. Clearly define your needs assessment objectives, when defining objectives, ask yourself why are you
conducting the needs assessment and what do you plan to do with the findings.

2. Be realistic about your resources and capacity. Consider how much time, money and staff capacity you can
devote to the needs assessment. The availability of resources will greatly impact the needs assessment
activities you are able to conduct.

3. Identify the target audiences and data sources. Given your objectives and resources, consider the target
audiences and data resources that will help you assess your needs. Consider, also, the competing priorities of
your target audience and how to encourage them to participate in your needs assessment.

4. Think small and big when summarizing results. Upon collecting the necessary data to your needs assessment,
it’s time to dig in to that data, try to summarize and reflect on data for each of your needs assessment
objectives individually.

5. Get feedback, it is important to engommunity members as equal partners in understanding and translating
results from the needs assessment. This ensures that the people most affected by the program will have
power in determining its design.

6. Disseminate- this helps ensure that the project stakeholders are on the same page regarding project priorities
and resource allocation and present your finding internally and externally.

7. Take action. At the conclusion of the needs assessment process, review your original objectives with the final
results and recommendations. Doing so will highlight what steps are needed to achieve your goals and most
importantly, take action and use those findings to develop your project approaches.

In Participatory action planning it is grounded in the belief that blending local knowledge and expert
knowledge leads to strong outcomes. Here are the steps how we implement participatory action planning:

1. Launch- establish a partnership with local stakeholders and lay out an action plan.

2. Understand- Create a diagnostic portrait of the use of public space.

3. Explore- Identify design scenarios that will meet needs and resolve issues.

4. Decide- with the various stakeholders, validate and improve upon the developed solutions.

5. Act- implement the design solutions and advocate for citizen vision.

6. Inaugurate-celebrate the project’s accomplishment.

Tools/Steps for Resource Mobilization:

1. Submitting proposals to typical donor agency is the most conventional way of getting support.

2. Organizing fundraising events where you invite guests and request donations for your organization.
 3. Donation boxes where you request small amounts of money from public.

4. Collecting in-kind contribution such as used clothes, books, etc.

5. Volunteer support where volunteers provide their time and resources to support the work organization.

6. Income from busines-oriented projects of your organization like selling publications, offering consultancies,
microfinance, or micro-enterprise-based activites.

All the above listed types of support are essential for NGO’s though all of them do not contribute equally to the
funding needs of an organization.

References for learners Community Engagement Solidarity and Citizenship by Diwa Learning Town ACPHD (2004): A
Handbook for Participatory Community Assessments Experiences from Alameda County. Oakland: ACPHD URL FAO
(2001): Field Level Handbook. SEAGA Socio-Economic and Gender Analysis Programme. Rome (Italy): FAO URL

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