Community

Development of partnerships starts in the foundation of trust and respect. If the deliverable or project is prioritized, the partnership can break down. Therefore, when you approach collaboration with the community one needs to consider how that partnership is going to impact the parties involved. These resources are meant to provide a road map to facilitate the interaction with community members. But like so many collaborations, each is different and should always be adapted to the community members you are planning to cooperate with. For example, one of the major challenges of community collaboration is developing capacities to interact with community members. To be successful, researchers need to value willingness to share and exchange power and consider basic premises of respect and acceptance of differences. Without this, partnerships with community members will not be successful. Here are some strategies to initiate a collaboration with the community:

• Organizer’s knowledge
  • Understanding the political power dynamics especially related to external allies and adversaries, and the knowledge of analytical competencies such as assessing needs, setting priorities and readjusting goals and outcomes;
  • Know how the organization works and build a relational the infrastructure, establishing and enforcing decision-making processes, developing a flow of information, implementing communication linkages and other mechanisms.
• Diverse skill set
  • Be cultural competent and address your own personal biases;
  • Recognition of the degree of influence you may have over the group;
  • Be aware that you may be the glue that holds a collaboration together and bridge the community they work with and the external environment;
  • Practice Introspection and self-criticism;
  • Interpersonal skills concerned with group processes and participation. Interaction among the different players and the people skills required to cultivate and build relationships and trust are critical:
  • Listening skills
• Values and attributes
  • These are the core principles and beliefs that underlie the purpose and processes of your collaboration
  • Respect for others; inclusiveness, broad vision; love of justice; trustworthiness

These strategies are great at developing the individual self when trying to engage in community collaboration. However, to build a coalition there other capacities that need to be recognized.

To build a coalition, one needs four capacities (Foster-Fisherman et al., 2001):

• Member capacity
  • Knowledge and skill to work with others, which include: respect, communication, understanding member diversity, and conflict resolution.
  • Knowledge and skill to create and build effective programs; and
  • Positive attitudes among the participants about their role in the coalition, the legitimacy in the coalition effort, and positive attitudes about their stakeholders.
• Relational capacity
  • Internal relations is creating a working climate that is trusting, inclusive, capable of resolving conflicts, united around a shared vision, and where decision making power is shared particularly when status differences exists.
  • External relations include those relationships with other organizational sectors, community residents, key community leaders, policymakers, and other coalitions addressing similar issues.
• Organizational capacity
  • Strong leadership base with skills, relationships, and vision to create the collective outcomes. This means formalizing processes, procedures, guidelines, a detailed work plan and work groups, operating procedures, and a well-developed internal communication system.
• Programmatic capacity
  • This is the design, implementation, and evaluation of actual programs that will have the desired impact.
  • Focus on programmatic objectives, realistic intermediate goals, and addressing community needs