On community

An interesting topic came up in my final (shut your mouth!) lecture of my social problems of Ecuador class. For the record its a pretty much a horribly depressing class...turns out over half of Ecuador is literally starving to death.

For the semester we focused on health, education, sanitation, poverty....and other equally important topics in a developing country- but the final lecture was the one that made my ears perk up.

How do we look at community? How do we look at a developing community? Conventionally, we look at a community in poverty or a community in trouble- and look at everything it needs. We look at all of its problems. Children are dropping out of school. There is a high unemployment rate. There is a high rate of crime. Half of the people are lacking a high school level education. Health coverage is thin or non existent.

Now how do we help this community after identifying the needs? We highlight all of the problems to get outside help, such as the government, to create programs and fix it all. Working mothers have problems returning to work after having children due to the lack of day cares and pre kindergarten education. The government should create new programs to help working mothers.

What does this manner of thinking lead to? The beneficiaries of the programs become passive with an attitude- of we are poor, we are uneducated, we have have a lot of problems in this neighborhood.

What if we changed our way of thinking? What if instead of identifying the problems of a community we looked at their strengths? We identified individual strengths of the people and worked to create programs connecting the community by their strengths. Building relationships to create change from the inside out.

Maria has skills in taking care of children. Tomas has carpentry skills. Jill is willing to organize a rummage sale.

So what if Jill just had a baby and wants to go back to work, Tomas is moving into a smaller house and has a lot things to sell, and Maria needs some work done on her house.

By blocking out the fact that Tomas is out of work because he has one leg, Jill is a underage mother, and Maria is in a situation of poverty.......and focusing on their strengths- look at the relations and connections within the community. We take a community that otherwise would be labeled solely in the terms of 'dysfunctional' and 'in need'- and highlight them as place of potential and create a network of relationships.

Sure this is just a simple example, but thinking on a big scale of neighbors starting businesses, sharing skills and organizing themselves, think of the change that can begin to take place from within.

I can think of a few other organizations and situations that i think could benefit from this way of thinking...but that's for another stream of consciousness.

I guess its all a matter of 'glass half full' / 'glass half empty' type of mentality- but really, what a change, yea?



A response to: Building Communites from the Inside Out by John Kretzmann and John Mcknight.