Identification of Community Needs

What are needs?

Needs can be defined as the gap between what is and what should be. A need can be felt by an individual, a group, or an entire community. Examining situations closely helps uncover what is truly needed, and leads toward future improvement.

Why assess community needs?

• Assessing community needs help you gain a deeper understanding of the community. Each community has its own needs and resources, as well as its own culture and social structure -- a unique web of relationships, history, strengths, and conflicts that defines it. A community assessment helps to uncover not only needs and resources, but the underlying culture and social structure that will help you understand how to address the community's needs and utilise its resources.
• An assessment of community needs will encourage community members to consider the community's resources and how to use them, as well as the community's needs and how to address them.
• An assessment of community needs will help you make decisions about priorities for program improvement. Failing to take advantage of community resources not only represents taking on a problem without using all the tools at your disposal to solve it, but misses an opportunity to increase the community's capacity for solving its own problems and creating its own change.
• Identifying needs and resources before starting an initiative means that you know from the beginning what you're dealing with, and are less likely to be blindsided later by something you didn't expect.
• Understanding the needs and resources available can be used as a guide to advocacy efforts or service projects. You can't make credible recommendations without knowing about the current situation.

How do you assess community needs (Community Assessment)?

The best way to assess needs and resources is by using as many of the available sources of information as possible. This is dependent on depends on how easy the information is to find and collect, and what your resources -- mostly of people, money, and time -- will support.

1) Start planning with clear goals and an understanding of what you are setting out to do

• Determine how to address the needs of a particular community.
• Assess the impact, intensity, and distribution of a particular issue, to make informed strategies for approaching it. This may involve breaking the issue down further, and investigating only a part of it. For example, instead of looking at the whole issue of environment conservation, you might want to focus on a narrower scope of waste management.

2) Determine what data is already available

• The chances are that a good deal of information about the community already exists. What you already know about the needs and resources of the community or what you think you know may either be wrong, or may conflict with the opinions of community members. You should be ready to accept the facts if they conflict with your opinion, or to consider the possibility of yielding to the community's perception of its own needs.
• You can do a preliminary online search to see if there are any available information about the issue in the context of your community.

3) Figure out what other information you need

• Prepare a list of questions you'll ask and hope to have answers. These questions will depend on your purposes. In most cases, you'll want to find out what is important to members of the identified community or those who might benefit from or be affected by any action you might take as a result of your assessment of needs. You will probably also want to hear the opinions of the people who serve or work with those people.

4) Methods for gathering information

• Research media sources (newspapers, TV programmes, Radio, Internet sources)
• Interviews and focused group discussions
• Observations
• Surveys

5) Decide on how you will reach out to your sources of information

• Posting requests on social media
• Sending posters, flyers
• Emailing survey
• Personal approach

6) Analyse findings

• From your findings, determine what is the main issue you would like to address in your service project and possible causes.
• Find out what the government or other organisations are already doing about the issue and what you can do to help.

Tips for conducting a community needs assessment

1. Remain open minded. Do not presume you know what the community needs.
2. Choose participants carefully. Consider the makeup of community and ensure that you include a diverse cross-section of relevant groups (Eg. gender, age, ethnicity, religion, income level, variations).
3. Include overlooked or marginalised groups. Keep the community social dynamics in mind and provide a platform that's comfortable for them to share their views.
4. Do not promise a project before you make a decision. Assure participants that you'll let them know what your team decides.

References: Community Tool Box, University of Kansas; A handbook on service learning (National Youth Council, 2000)