COMMUNITY ORGANIZING

SOUTHERN NEW HAMPHIRE UNIVERSITY
AND
OPEN UNIVERSITY OF TANZANIA


COMMUNITY ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
ASSIGNMENT : COMMUNITY ORGANIZING
PROGRAMME : MSC. CED
COURSE TITLE : PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

CODE : ICD 533
CENTRE : ARUSHA

STUDENT NAME : KASSIAN SIA
LECTURERS NAME: DR. JUMA KADUANGA
SUBMISSION DATE: 22 OCTOBER 2007



THE CONCEPT OF COMMUNITY ORGANIZING
1.1 Introduction
The concept Community Organizing has become a catch word in the government and Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) activities and programmes in recent decades. This essay attempts to discuss these two concepts and highlighting their importance in this era of globalization. What is community organizing? What are its driving philosophy, values and goals? Who employs the strategy? What are some examples of community organizing in practice? Why does is seem to be gaining importance and use today? This essay attempts to answer some of these questions. The essay has been divided into three major sections. The first part, which follows after this introduction discusses the concept Community Organizing. The second section discusses its driving philosophy, values and goals. The last part of the essay is conclusion and reflections on the concept.

2.1 The Concept of Community Organizing
Community organization is that process by which the people...organize themselves to 'take charge' of their situation and thus develop a sense of being a community together. It is a particularly effective tool for the poor and powerless as they determine for themselves the actions they will take to deal with the essential forces that are destroying their community and consequently causing them to be powerless
Community Organizing (CO) is a values-based[1] process by which people - most often low- and moderate-income people previously absent from decision-making tables - are brought together in organizations to jointly act in the interest of their "communities" and the common good. Ideally, in the participatory process of working for needed changes, people involved in CO organizations/groups learn how to take greater responsibility for the future of their communities, gain in mutual respect and achieve growth as individuals. Community organizers identify and attract the people to be involved in the organizations, and develop the leadership from and relationships among the people that make the organizations effective.
Typically, the actions taken by CO groups are preceded by careful data gathering, research and participatory strategic planning. The actions are often in the form of negotiations - with targeted institutions holding power - around issues determined by and important to the organizations. The CO groups seek policy and other significant changes determined by and responsive to the people. Where good-faith negotiations fail, these constituency-led organizations seek to pressure the decision-makers - through a variety of means - so that the decision-makers will return to the negotiations and move to desired outcomes. CO groups continuously reflect on what they have learned in their action strategies and incorporate the learning in subsequent strategies.

2.2 History of Community Organizing
To better understand where CO stands today, it is helpful to view its history. Over the decades, CO has increased its sophistication and networking for greater impact and wider results. Today's CO field1 encompasses varied philosophies, approaches, organizational arrangements, actors, priorities, issues and constituencies. CO has taken root in both urban and rural settings. It enables ordinary people to work effectively together for change, often with significant impact at the block, neighborhood, community, city, county, regional, and, at times, state and national levels. Various racial and ethnic groups, and other disadvantaged or disenfranchised groups, use CO to fight for fairness and equity. Robert Fisher and Peter Romanofsky, the editors of Community Organization for Social Change, grouped CO activities and perspectives into four historical periods:[2]
1890 - 1920. Liberals and progressives sought to meet the challenge of industrialization - the bigness of cities and their chaotic social disorganization - by organizing immigrant neighborhoods into "efficient, democratic, and, of course, enlightened units within the metropolis." Since the emphasis of the reformers was mostly on building community through settlement houses and other service mechanisms, the dominant approach was social work.
1920 - 1940. Community organization became a professional sub-discipline within the social work field. Little was written about decentralized neighborhood organizing efforts throughout the Great Depression. Most organizations had a national orientation because the economic problems the nation faced did not seem soluble at the neighborhood level.
1940 - 1960. A new interest in CO from the social work perspective. Federal involvement in reshaping cities and their neighborhoods through the post-World War II urban renewal programs abetted this unique alignment.
1960 - 1980. Neighborhood organizing became widespread beginning in the 1960s. Literature analyzing events at the grassroots during this period is extensive. Experience with federal anti-poverty programs and the upheavals in the cities produced a thoughtful response among activists and theorists in the early 1970s that has informed activities, organizations, strategies and movements through the end of the century, though many major changes in CO have occurred since 1980.

2.3 Types of Community Organizing
There are three basic types of community organizing, grassroots organizing, faith based community organizing, and coalition building.[3] Additionally, political campaigns often claim that their door-to-door operations are in fact an effort to organize the community, often these operations are focused exclusively on voter identification and turn out.
(i) The ideal of grassroots organizing is to build community groups from scratch, develop new leadership where none existed, and otherwise organize the unorganized. It is a values based process where people are brought together to act in the interest of their communities and the common good. It is a strategy that revitalizes communities and allows the individuals to participate and incite social change. It empowers the people directly involved and impacted by the issues being addressed. A network of community organizations that employ this method is National Peoples Action.
(ii) Faith-based community organizing, (FBCO) is a deliberate methodology of developing the power and relationships throughout a community of institutions such as congregations, unions, and associations.
(iii) Coalition building efforts seek instead to unite existing groups, such as churches, civic associations, and social clubs, to more effectively pursue a common agenda. Community organizing is not solely the domain of progressive politics, as dozens of fundamentalist organizations have sprung up, such as the Christian Coalition

3.1 Principles of Community Organizing
Modern CO rests on a solid bed of key principles around which most knowledgeable practitioners and observers are in general agreement. The degree of adherence to these principles, and the relative emphasis placed on one principle or another, provides the best means to distinguish CO groups and efforts from each other. These same principles also help to distinguish CO from other types of strategies for neighborhood and community change and social betterment.
The central ingredient of all effective CO in the view of many involved in the field - what they believe distinguishes CO most clearly from all other social change strategies - is building power. CO builds power and works for change most often to achieve social justice with and for those who are disadvantaged in society.
CO encompasses other principles that were described in a particularly thoughtful article jointly written a few years ago by a veteran foundation official and an experienced community organizer. The authors, Seth Borgos and Scott Douglas, stressed that "the fundamental source of cohesion of every strong CO group is the conviction that it offers its members a unique vehicle for exercising and developing their capacities as citizens."[4] The authors also noted that the most common usage of the term CO "...refers to organizations that are democratic in governance, open and accessible to community members, and concerned with the general health of the community rather than a specific interest or service function..."[5] According to Borgos and Douglas, the key principles of contemporary CO are:
v A Participative Culture. CO organizations view participation as an end in itself. Under the rubric of leadership development, they devote considerable time and resources to enlarging the skills, knowledge and responsibilities of their members. "Never do for others what they can do for themselves" is known as the iron rule of organizing.
v Inclusiveness. As a matter of principle, CO groups are generally committed to developing membership and leadership from a broad spectrum of the community, with many expressly dedicated to fostering participation among groups that have been "absent from the table," including communities of color, low-income constituencies, immigrants, sexual minorities and youth. Working with marginalized groups demands a high level of skill, a frank acknowledgment of power disparities, and a major investment of time and effort.
v Breadth of Mission and Vision. In principle, every issue that affects the welfare of the community is within CO’s purview, where other civic institutions tend to get stuck on certain functions while losing sight of the community’s larger problems. In practice, strong (but by no means all) CO organizations have proven adept at integrating a diverse set of issues and linking them to a larger vision of the common good. This is a holistic function that has been largely abandoned by political parties, churches, schools and other civic institutions.
v Critical Perspective. CO organizations seek to change policies and institutions that are not working. In many communities, they are the only force promoting institutional accountability and responsiveness. Because community organizations take critical positions, they can be viewed as partisan or even polarizing in some contexts, and an obstacle to social collaboration.
4.O Conclusion
This essay has discussed the concept Community Organizing and argued that the process is rooted in the belief that those who benefit least from current social, economic, and political structures have the greatest potential to build long-term, successful movements to change those structures. Community Organization theory maintains that members of the disenfranchised communities have the self-interest to build community-based organizations that can confront inequalities that negatively affects community life.




REFERENCES
Borgos and Scott Douglas, "Community Organizing and Civic Renewal: A View from the South," Social Policy, Winter, 1996.
Robert Fisher and Peter Romanofsky, "Introduction," Community Organization for Social Change, (ed.)Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_organizing




[1] The term "values-based" refers to values that form the basis of CO theory and practice. For most community organizers and CO groups, the values include: community, solidarity, equality, freedom, justice, the dignity of the individual, respect for differences, civility, and political democracy.
[2] See Robert Fisher and Peter Romanofsky, "Introduction," Community Organization for Social Change, ed. Robert Fisher and Peter Romanofsky, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981, pp. xi-xviii.

[3] For detailed discussion on the three types of Community Organizing see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_organizing

[4] See Seth Borgos and Scott Douglas, "Community Organizing and Civic Renewal: A View from the South," Social Policy, Winter, 1996.
[5] Ibid.