Skills in Community Organization
3.1 Introduction
The Community Organization should have certain skills which practicing the Community Organization. The skills basically indicate how the people have to be approached and how the people could be assisted. Skills are the worker’s capacity to apply knowledge and understanding to a given situation. Skills in Community Organization workers are developed through teaching and training. Community Organization through the skills of programming arrives at satisfactory and fruitful relationships. He is skillful in analyzing the social situation using agency and community resources, serving the people for self dependent.
3.2 SIGNIFICANCES OF SKILLS FOR A COMMUNITY ORGANIZER
The skills for the community organizer should be part of him-self/her-self. It should be employed spontaneously. Skills should be developed highly so that it could bring automatic responses to the situation. For example observe a child who is well versed in video games or computer games, how he/she respond to each new situation and operate the keys accordingly without thinking about it. One more illustration is that when you or your friend driving two wheeler or four wheeler, how the change of speed takes place, how the negotiation to curves, managing the traffic, applying the horn, etc., taking place ... A skillful driver need not think or take time to respond and act... because; it comes automatically. Skill development is similar to that. When the skills are learnt thoroughly, they become part of the professional self.
To become more productive, a community organizer needs to develop the following abilities and skills in the community.
1. To exchange ideas among the members freely and clearly, using language understood by everyone and with no fears of starting arguments or hurting feelings.
2. To examine objectively how well the community and its members are working.
3. To share the leadership jobs among the community members and to become sensitive to the feelings of all.
4. To accept new ideas and new members into the community without irreparable conflict, and to discipline itself to work toward long range objectives, and to profit from failures.
5. To think clearly about its own problems, finding causes and working through to some solutions.
6. To adjust its procedures and plans to meet the feelings and the desires of the members.
7. To create new jobs or committees as needed and to terminate them, or, the community itself, when the need is passed. Trecker has listed the following basic skills of community organization:
3.2.1. SKILL IN ESTABLISHING PURPOSEFUL RELATIONSHIP
(a) The community organizer must be skilful in gaining the acceptance of the community and in relating himself to the community on a positive professional basis.
(b) The community organizer must be skilful in helping individuals in the community to accept one another and to join with the community in common pursuits.
3.2.2. SKILL IN ANAL YSING THE COMMUNITY SITUATION
(a) The community organizer must be skilful in judging the developmental level of the community to determine what the level is, what the community needs, and how quickly the community can be expected to move. This calls for skill in direct observation of communities as a basis of analysis and judgment.
(b) The community organizer must be skilful in helping the community to express ideas, work out objectives, clarify immediate goals and see both its potentialities and limitations as a community.
3.2.3. SKILL IN PARTICIPATION WITH THE COMMUNITY
(a) The community organizer must be skilful in determining, interpreting, assuming, and modifying his own role with the community.
(b) The community organizer must be skilful in helping community members to participate, to locate leadership among them selves, and to take responsibility for their own activities.
3.2.4. SKILL IN DEALING WITH THE COMMUNITY FEELING
(a) The community organizer must be skilful in controlling his/her own feelings about the group and must study each new situation with a high degree of objectivity.
(b) The community organizer must be skilful in helping community to release their own feelings, both positive and negative. He/She must be skilful in helping community to analyze situations as a part of the working through community or inter-community conflict
3.2.5. SKILL IN PROGRAMME DEVELOPMENT
(a) The community organizer must be skilful in guiding community thinking so that interests and needs will be revealed and understood.
(b) The community organizer must be skilful in helping community to develop programmes which they want as a means through which their needs may be met.
3.2.6. SKILL IN USING AGENCY AND COMMUNITY RESOURCES
(a) The community organizer must be skilful in locating and then acquainting the community with various helpful resources which can be utilized by them for programme purposes.
(b) The community organizer must be skilful in helping certain individual members to make use of specialized services by means of referral when they have needs which cannot be met within community.
3.2.7. SKILL IN EVALUATION
(a) The community organizer must have skill in recording the development processes that are going on as he works with the community.
(b) The community organizer must be skilful in using his records and in helping the community to review its experiences as a means of improvement.
Apart from the above skills the community organizer should possess the following skills in Community Organization practice.
3.3 ORGANISING
The following are the important facts to be taken into account in organizing to do any job by the Community Organizer.
· The Community Organizer in the community must organize his work not solely as an individual but always in relation to many other people.
· The Community Organizer in the community must organize his work in relation to a clear set of goals and purposes which are inherent in the nature of the agency which he represents.
· The Community Organizer in the community must organize his work with a comprehension of the whole job to be done.
· Community organizer must organize his job with a special regard for priorities and arrangements of tasks in terms of significance and importance.
· Organize his job with a particular awareness of the degree to which channels of communication have been established and are open throughout the whole agency.
· Organize his job so as to consider his own readiness to do a certain thing and the readiness of other to respond.
· Organize his job so that there is a systematic arrangements of task in relation to the capacities and capabilities of his associates.
· The Community Organizer to recognize the factor of self in right and self understanding as being control in the tasks of organizing to do the job.
3.3.1 ORGANIZING CONFERENCES
3.3.2 Introduction
With out any formal commitments, the achievements cannot be attained. So conference techniques will be very useful in community organization. Conference serves as a mean to bringing groups together. Conference helps for identification of major facts and problems.
A conference will invite delicates / representatives and experts.
3.3.3 Uses of Conferences
· Many ticklish problems find solution
· Helps for sharing of experiences
· Helps for advent of Nero methodology and course of action
· It is a formal way of learning things
3.3.4 Steps in organizing conference
· Venue of the conference should be decided well in advance
· Arrangements should be made well in advance
· Paper communication should be send to all the members, representatives, delegates etc, about the venue, time, agenda etc.
· Physical amenities should be arranged
· Should find solutions and recommendations after fruitful discussion.
3.3.5. Committee skills and committee meetings
Killen has defined committee as “A group of individuals who have been assigned specific duties and responsibilities in addition to their normal work”.
The committee skills involve
· Dividing the responsibilities
· Specializing the area
· The whole work in split into equal halves
· Producing much efficacy.
The community organizer should organize the following committees for proper functioning of the activities.
· Fund –raising committee
· Advisory committee
· Volunteers committee
· Evaluation committee
· Public relation committee
· Finance committee
Committee operations
· Staffing of committee
· Promotional and coordinating through committees
· Organizing boards and advisory boards
· Formation campaign committee
· Formation of sub-committee
Committee meetings
The community organizer should arrange for the committee meetings often for the purpose of implementing the practice to solve the problems of the community successfully. The committee meetings will help the community organizer to know about the various problems of the community in different aspects. It will also help the community organizer to improve his/her skills in various ways.
3.4 USE OF RELATIONSHIPS
3.4.1 Introduction
The relationship is the dynamic interaction of attitudes and emotion between the community organizer and the people in the community with the purpose of helping the people achieve a better adjustment between himself and his environment.
3.4.2 Purposes of relationship
· Better solution of &community’s problem
· Exploitation of means for solving problem
· Stating reality and emotional problems
· Solution of the personal problem
· Development of personality
3.4.3 Use of relationship
The relationship is the medium of treatment through which the people in the community are enabled to find new ways of perceiving their problems and of handling themselves. It gives the people a sense of being listened being given importance. The Community Organizer understanding of the dynamics of the relationship makes it possible to provide some gratification, Protection, and guidance to the people when his ego needs support, and at the same time to help the people marshal strength to meet their life situation.
3.5 TRAINING
Training helps for development. Training and development refer to the imparting of specific skills abilities to improve current or future peoples’ performance by increasing the peoples’ ability to perform through learning, usually by changing the peoples’ attitude or increasing their skills and knowledge. The need for training is determined by the peoples’ performance deficiency.
3.5.1 The benefits of training
· Leads to improve more positive attitudes towards Community by the people
· Improve the moral of the people
· Helps people identify with the goals of the Community
· Improves relationship between Community Organizer and the people in the community
· Helps prepare guidelines for work
· Provides information for future needs in all areas of the community
· Aids in developing leadership skills, motivation, loyalty, better attitudes
· Creators an appropriate climate for growth, communication
· Helps the people in the community to change
· Aids in handling conflict, thereby helping to prevent stress and tension
· Builds Cohesiveness in community
· Make the community a better place to work and live.
In community organization, the preparedness of the community is essential for which, the members of the community have to be trained. The training need not be only for addressing a problem. The training could be in different fields wherein the members of the community are equipped with various Skills. The training could be in skill training or the capacity building activity. The training would also enable the community to be self-reliant especially in decision making. In capacity building of the people and the personnel of an organization is important while working with the community. In the process of capacity building the community organizer has to be a good trainer. The community organizer has to use his training ability and skills in this regard.
3.6 COMMUNICATION
Communication is a basic skill required in the community organization process. The community should be made to understand the whole process and the plan of action for which the sharing of information is absolutely necessary. While sharing the information there should not be any distortion or any misinterpretation or misunderstanding. In other words, the community should be informed in such a way they understand in the right way for which; the community organizer should possess the communication skills.
3.7 NEGOTIATION
It is an art of dealing with different individual or individuals or groups while tackling any problem or a need. Negotiation is to arrive at a conclusion by discussing with the parties who are involved in the issues. The community organizer plays a major role in bringing the conflicting groups to a common platform to discuss and to find a solution.
3.8 CONFLICT RESOLUTION
Community organization attempts to bridge the gap between the needs and the resources. In the process there is every possibility of encountering conflicts. The conflict could be within the community or it could be between the affected members and the oppressive force like land owners, authorities, government etc. Therefore, the organizer should be an expert in dealing with a conflict by assessing the conflict, understanding the conflict, finding the symptoms and causes, finding out the possible solutions, selecting an appropriate solution, working a plan of action, mobilizing funds, executing the action plan and so on.
Problems of the community involve the affected people by the problem and the others who are the causes for the problem. Therefore, there could be a conflict between these two groups or between the people and the system. The organizer is equipped with the skill of identifying the conflicting situation and making the people to understand the conflict, to work out the ways and means to find solutions to the conflict.
3.9 CONSULTATION
As a community organizer he or she cannot be acting alone with a kind of autocratic nature. Instead it is needed that the community is consulted in all the matters and especially at the time of making any decision. Consultation is not sharing of information about the final decision on the other hand it is the process wherein the community is enabled to arrive at the best solutions and decision for which, consultation skill is being utilized.
3.10 NETWORKING
In a community while working with the people the participation of the people strengthens or increases the power of the people. At times support from like-minded people or organization has to elicit so that a pressure is built against the oppressive force and to create pressure and increase the bargaining power, for which networking with other people and the community organizer does organization.