COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT, SOLIDARITY AND CITIZENSHIP

Name of Learner: _____________________________Grade Level:________________

Section: _____________________________________ Score:_____________________
SYSTEMATIC METHODS OF COMMUNITY ACTION IN UNDERSTANDING
COMMUNITY

Background Information for Learners:

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

Activity 1: TRUE OR FALSE!

Direction: Assess whether the statement is true or false. Write T if the statement is
true and F it is false.
_______1. Conducting community action requires community profiling.
_______2. Needs assessment is a tool to give solution to the problem of community.
_______3. Applying systematic methods in conducting community action promotes
positive change in the community.
_______4. Methodologies and approaches in community action increases
understanding, engagement, and empowerment of communities.
_______5. Different stakeholders are engaged in community action.
Activity 2. COUNT ME IN!
Directions: Among the different methods used in community action choose one that
you can apply in undertaking community action.
Enumerate the steps in each method. (e.g. needs assessment- the issue of Distance
learning of the Department of Education in relation to the pandemic Covid 19)
 1. Identify one method that you can apply in undertaking community
action_______________.
2. Select one method in conducting community action and give the steps of the
specific method.
a. ____________________
b.____________________
c.____________________
d. ____________________
e.____________________
f.____________________