How does this project build capacity within our community?
As in many community development efforts, this project’s aim is to facilitate and develop connections within this community and to hopefully mobilize resources to build mutual aid. My goal is to influence individuals within the community to see the ways in which they can work together to support each other, and hopefully solidify our sense of community.
As identified by Chaskin (2001), there are four main components of community development that contribute to the progress and success of this project. These components are a sense of community, community level of commitment, ability to solve problems, and access to resources. I think that the most challenging aspects of community development in this scenario are the level of commitment and sense of community. Because of the overwhelming and distancing nature of COVID-19, it is likely that members of this community may feel unmotivated at times to find ways to come together, without actually being able to come together. Because of this, there is a need for motivation and creativity, both of which take energy and commitment, which can be difficult to inspire and maintain. To me, it seems that this community has a lot of ability to solve problems given that many of us have experience and knowledge about community building efforts from our personal lived experiences and the courses offered in these schools. Our access to resources is kind of difficult to assess. In many ways, we have a lot of resources available to us through the school and our collective personal capacity. But taking inventory of these resources and sharing them are what make this project more difficult. I think that the activities we are proposing, such as a communal digital space for us to share information and resources, are appropriate for addressing some of the expressed needs within the constraints of the situation.
Although I am fulfilling somewhat of a leadership role, the main strategy we are using to build our efforts is community organizing. This project is being implemented at a pretty grassroots level, and our main goal of encouraging community members to realize our collective assets and potential for helping each other can only be done through community organizing. I think that once we have a better sense of connectedness, we can shift our focus on organizational development, to further solidify and mobilize our community and efforts as a whole.
I think that a main indicator of the success of this project would be by the presence of and feedback from participants and community members. Because it is hard to reach people in this time, the easiest way to know if anyone is benefiting from this project is if they make it known that they are interested in participating and have had successes making connections or finding resources. It is difficult to know the full extent of success of the project at this time, but having heard feedback, support, and interest from several community members, I would say we have been somewhat successful.