Community Contact

Community contact is an essential strategy to plan and implement an overall/comprehensive programme to develop the community. 

One component of the Community Contact strategy--enhancing  community participation-is  selected to illustrate in &tail for your practical purpose. 

Enhancing Community Participation-How  Can It Be Done? 

Community participation  is controlled mostly by the people who takes initiative and leads others in the community. Therefore, it is essential for you to look at the community leadership. 

1) How to identify the leaders/key people in the community? 

You  can start this process by having a group of ladies including both leaders and followers in the community. Try to lead the discussion by putting the following questions:  

• Before adopting any new practice do you consult any of your relative. friend, neighbour or any other person of your choice? 
• What is the nature of opinion you seek out of them? 
• What is the cause of seeking opinion at various occasions? 

Selection of leaders can be based on the response obtained-"who  is chosen most for what occasions". For example, if the issue is health and nutrition education, "who is chosen most often for consulting issues related to health or nutrition by the people". 

2) How to involve the community more? 

Once you identify a group of leaders/key persons in the community, you are required to work closely with them to deal with the nutrition and health problems of the community. Have a look at the different learning situations illustrated below. You can see a great range of community involvement/participation. 

Now, you start the discussion with the leaders by putting the following questions: 

- Have a critical look at the scenes presented here: you can get an idea of the degree to which participation is controlled by those in the left scenes or by those in the right scene by looking at the rogramme's community-level participants. Answer the questions like 

• Who is taking the lead? 
• In what ways does that person look similar to or different from the remaining people? 
• Are the people taking part actively or passively? 
• How do they share the materials among themselves? 

Thus, it is essential for you to identify with those leaders who share and work for the people. This is possible only through informal discussions with the leaders in  the community. Through this process, you can increase community participation/involvement. 

Practising the Community Contact 

Can you suggest ways of practising community contact. For your reference some ideas are given blow: 

1. Look for actual presentation  or presentation of activities on 'community'  contact and observe. 
2. Follow the activity and try to learn the skills in identifying the woman opinion leaders and in enhancing the community participation, etc. 
3. Make an effort to organise community  contact' on your own, to change the community to adopt desirable practices related to nutrition and health. 

Similar illustrations can be thought of for the other components of community contact. Such an attempt will give you a fairly comprehensive experience in the practice of 'Community Contact'.