Community Empowerment/Training modules

http://cec.vcn.bc.ca/cmp/modules/a-mod.htm

TRAINING MODULES by Phil Bartle, PhD

Training modules contain basic texts, model forms, short handouts for workshops, and notes for trainers. Each module has a single topic, with different documents in it for different actors or purposes.

The first five modules contain short handouts to be used in an introductory workshop. Except for trainers' notes, all are included in one document, Mobilisers' Handbook.

INTRODUCTORY MODULES

(short handouts)

• Getting Prepared, what you need to be a mobilizer;
• Getting Started, preparing the community for action;
• Organizing the Community, combining action and training;
• Into Action, community movement;
• Sustaining the Intervention, beyond a single mobilizer;

Getting Prepared

what you need to be a mobilizer; http://cec.vcn.bc.ca/cmp/modules/pre-int.htm

GETTING PREPARED Mobilizer Guidelines by Phil Bartle, PhD

Introduction to the Module (Hub)

Documents Included in this Getting Prepared Module

   * Know Your Goals, what is it that mobilizers wish to achieve; (10k)
   * Know Your Target Community, social research; how the community functions; (8.5k)
   * Know the Skills You Need, what you need to know how to do; (11k)
   * Know the Basic Concepts, what principles and reasoning need to be understood; (10k)
   * Outside Resources, balancing resources from inside and outside the community; (8k)
   * Preparing the Mobiliser, guidance for the trainer (10k).
   * Key words for the Getting Prepared Module.

Preparing yourself to be a community mobilizer

Before you can successfully stimulate self help development in a community, you must prepare yourself.

You must be clear and knowledgeable about your goals; you must know about your target community; you must have the required skills; you must understand the fundamental concepts of mobilization.

The first thing to do now is to start a journal.

An inexpensive school notebook is OK.

You might wish to use four notebooks and title them: (1) Goals and Concepts; (2) The Target Community; (3) Mobilizing Skills, and (4) A Day-to-Day Journal record.

However you choose to organize yourself, it is important to start making notes and records now.

Write with your replacement in mind as your reader.

This module informs you of the things that you need to get prepared. Do not assume, however, that you can get prepared "once and for all."

We mobilizers are continually learning more and more about all the things mentioned in this chapter.

It is a never ending process, and we will be doomed to failure if we ever think we know it all.

Know Your Goals

what is it that mobilizers wish to achieve; (10k) http://cec.vcn.bc.ca/cmp/modules/pre-goal.htm

KNOW YOUR GOALS What do you want to achieve? by Phil Bartle, PhD

Training Handout The aims and objectives of being a mobilizer

One of the slogans we use in management training is, "If you do not know where you are going, then any road will do." (See "Slogans.") This applies to you, too, in preparing for mobilizing. It is easy to run around, looking busy, arranging meetings, getting latrines constructed, talking to community leaders, moving advocacy groups, stimulating action, without moving forward in accomplishing genuine community strengthening.

You need to clarify your goals, first to yourself, then on paper, then to those around you. Here you should begin writing in your journal, or the section of it you have set aside for goals and concepts. You must set them as your own goals, not think of them merely as a list of someone else's ideals.

The goals of mobilization to develop a community may vary from person to person, community to community. Nevertheless, there are common elements. These include: poverty eradication, good governance, change in social organization, community capacity development, empowering low income and marginalized people, and gender balance

As you go along, reading this, engaging in mobilization, you will see that each of these goals becomes more interesting and challenging, the more you know. Go back to your journal often to update, refine, and add details to all these goals.

Poverty reduction, for example, is more complex and challenging when you work with it, in contrast to just listing it. We learn to avoid "poverty alleviation" because that merely temporarily alleviates the pain and discomfort, and does not lead to a durable solution. Poverty is not merely the absence of money (as you will see later) and attacking the causes of poverty means fighting apathy, ignorance, disease, and dishonesty. That is only one example where your understanding of the goal expands through experience.

Similarly, good governance does not simply mean strong leadership and efficient administration. It also means transparency, people's involvement, trust, honesty, and a vision for the future. You will learn, also, that you can hardly expect community leaders to be (or become) transparent in their use of community resources if you yourself are not transparent in your community activities.

Look in the: Glossary of Key Terms, for introductory discussion about these goals (poverty reduction, community development).

Compare them to your notes in your journal.

Know Your Target Community

social research; how the community functions; (8.5k) http://cec.vcn.bc.ca/cmp/modules/pre-tar.htm

Know Your Target Community Who Benefits from Your Actions? by Phil Bartle, PhD Training Handout

Being a social researcher and analyst; A good potter must know the characteristics of the clay

Another proverb that we use in community development is, "The potter must know her/his clay." Your clay is the community. You want to mould it, develop it into something strong.

To do so, you must know a lot about the community (and about the nature of communities in general). You must know as much as possible about its social organization, economy, languages, layout (map), problems, politics, and ecology.

Your research should not be merely to get a list of unrelated facts; you need to analyse them to understand the nature of community as a social system. (See What is Community? and Social Research).

Think about how the different elements are related.

A good start is to make a map. Where do people live? What facilities are in the community? (eg roads, paths, water supply, clinic, school, sanitation, market and other communal facilities and services).

Later, when you lead community members through an assessment of the community situation (resources, needs, opportunities, problems);you will guide them in making a community map. Doing one now for yourself will help you to prepare for that participatory activity later.

Put your notes into your journal. Make observations about the community's: Social organization, economy, language(s), politics, shared values, traditions, and its relationship to the physical environment (ecology).

Continue to analyse how the different elements relate to one another.

Know the Skills You Need

what you need to know how to do; (11k)

Know the Basic Concepts

what principles and reasoning need to be understood; (10k)

Outside Resources

balancing resources from inside and outside the community; (8k)

Preparing the Mobiliser,

guidance for the trainer (10k).

Getting Started

preparing the community for action;

Organizing the Community

combining action and training;

Into Action

community movement;

Sustaining the Intervention

beyond a single mobilizer;

More...

CEC/Training modules/Intermediate Modules/

Further Modules:

   * Managing a Mobilization Programme, issues related to the peculiar characteristics of the process;
   * Community Research, social variables of the community, obtaining valuable information to empower a community;
   * Water and the Mobilizer, when the community chooses clean drinking water;
   * Non Material Development; when the community chooses advocacy, civil society, social work, female genital mutilation, HIV AIDS;
   * Functional Literacy, learning how to write and read through unorthodox methods; design a functional, practical, useful and relevant programme;
   * Capacity Development, how to strengthen an organization; using the empowerment approach on an NGO, company or agency;
   * Enabling Environment, encouraging communities to be more self reliant; the political and administrative situation affects their empowerment;
   * From Disaster to Development, transforming charity to empowerment how to convert your programme from relief when the disaster ends.

Sociological Modules:

   * Beginners' Sociology, some of the science that spawned the empowerment methodology of this site;
   * Readings;
   * Discussions;
   * Perspectives;
   * Classical Sociologists;
   * Cultural Dimensions;
   * Inequality;
   * Community;
   * Family;
   * Socialization and Education;
   * Crime and Deviance;
   * Religion;
   * Change;
   * Demography;
   * Miscellaneous;
   * Research;
   * References.

Under Construction:

   * Reading;
   * Urban Gardening;
   * Stay Happy and Healthy;
   * Leadership;

Other Documents:

   * An Aural Method to Learn an Oral language
   * The CMP Strategy;
   * Three Handbooks;
   * What is Community?
   * Writing Errors;
   * Training for Strength;
   * ISS Research
   * Working Bibliography;
   * Extra Illustrations;
   * We Need a Volunteer;
   * Utility Documents (including contributor profiles);
   * Ghana Income Generation Report;
   * Individual Guidance.