Working With the Community

It is not  an easy task to work with the  community unless you decide and make an attempt to do so. This is because generally we have a tendency to move along with our own group. There will be a block when we are asked to deal with other communities. Hence there is a need  to learn  to work with different communities. To acquire the skill of working with the  community some hints are given below. 

Working with  individuals 

Some people do not belong to  any special group in the community, but can be reached at places where they usually go to work, for example, washing by the riverside. This can be used as a way of exchanging information, finding out about coming events such as a meeting or talking about problems. As you get to know  your community better, you can think of other ways of meeting  people. 

Working with  community groups 

One of the ways in which you can help people identify and solve their problems is by helping them organize themselves into groups and work together to accomplish a common goal. Can you think of some of the benefits of working with groups? If you can put them down  in the place provided: 

For your reference some benefits of working with groups are: 

• It encourages cooperation with other  people and enables them  to accomplish things which  they would not be able to  do alone. 
• It  provides  contact with other people so  that  members  can increase their knowledge and experience. 
• It encourages participation and involvement in solving common problems. 
• It develops the skills and talents of individual members. 

Organizing community members into groups works best when there are problems which affect most people, for example, no proper drinking water source, no school, no sufficient food etc. Forming community groups helps community member agree on common problems and recognize that they  can solve those problems by themselves, with external help as required. 

You must  meet at first with individuals, then with larger groups of people. This will help you to identify the right leadership for building community awareness and responsibility for solving problems. This process of building leadership starts by asking such simple questions like "why do people get sick? "What can be done about it"? 

This is a slow process but it helps community  members to begin to see that their problems can be solved by them. It also helps the right kind of leadership to emerge. 

Once leadership is created, the person takes responsibility for talking to  more and more people about problems and every day experiences. Once a group is formed it  should start thinking about some sort of organization, a system of conducting meetings and plans for carrying out activities. The group should be quite clear as to why it came together in the first place. It must then develop and out plans to solve the community problems which brought  it together. 

Several groups like Youth Club. Mahila Mandal. may already be present in the community. They can help you identify local problems. They can also be better organized by you to carry out tasks which are related to improving the food and nutrition situation. Members of these groups already have a style of working together and knowing  their  community and its problems. You should try to get nutrition and health  information to these  groups at their meetings and try to get them interested and eager to help. You should also identify the people who are most credible and others will tend  to follow. These are the people most likely to assume leadership in helping to make community members more aware of problems and consider what  they can do to solve them. Let them guide you. then combine your ideas with theirs to reach effective solutions. Now the next question  that arises is how to keep groups together? 

All groups come together a special reason.  Members of a group should agree on the reason why the group was formed, and  what is to be achieved? They should also feel closely involved in the activities which the group plans to carryout and they have something to contribute. For groups  to work well they  need  to develop clear plans of action. How to develop a plan of action  for a group? Some hints are provided here for your benefit: 

• decide and write down  what is to be accomplished 
• ask group members  what are their interests and what resources they can contribute to the activity 
• make a list of all the things which need to be done (tasks) 
• write down the tasks in the order in which  they should be carried out (the priority). the length of time each will take and their relative importance 
• decide what is needed for the various tasks (e.g., time. money. skills. etc.) 
• decide the labour for carrying OUI tasks among group members, assigning jobs  to people in line with their abilities and preferences 
• set deadlines (the dates by which tasks should be completed), and 
• evaluate the activities. 

Working with other agencies 

There are many causes to nutrition and health problems existing in  the community. Generally these problems cannot be solved by any one agency  working alone.  Different agencies function in a community. These are health workers, agricultural extension workers. community development workers, school teachers etc. These community workers need to work together in a coordinate and cooperative manner. 

Reasons for working with other agencies 

Food and nutrition activity  in the community is often carried by each agency independently  and, as a result, the achievements are discouraging. If community workers cooperate with colleagues who are running other programmes, they will be able to: 

• combine resources 
• combine ideas 
• save on expenses 
• be a member of a group with common goals 
• share information about the community and on plans and projects 
• plan together to avoid conflict, and 
• discuss problems and opportunities with others doing similar jobs. 

The following situation illustrates what  happens when there is no communication and  cooperation between  the community workers.  

• A community development worker starts a campaign  to persuade mothers to burn or burry all their household waste to improve hygiene. At the same time, the agricultural extension worker advises farmers to keep their household waste to make compost for their fields. 

A coordinate group of community workers can  be  far more effective than workers on their own. Workers can share transportation on field visits, record information in a way that others can  use and work towards common goals decided upon between the local community and themselves. 

In order to achieve benefits, one should make a deliberate effort to work with other organizations, combining programmes wherever possible. This is called  'coordination'. The following situations illustrates what happens when coordination is lacking. 

• A field worker successfully persuades all the mothers in a village to give their children suffering from diarrhoea a nutritious diet. The children continue to suffer from diarrhoea. Why? Because the local water supply remains polluted. 

The example show that the action was carried out in isolation. The group involved did not combine or integrate their approaches to the problem. This caused the people concerned to become frustrated and confused. From the example, it is evident that community groups which work  well together can achieve more than each group working on its own. 

There are several advantages in working closely with other community workers. Building  communication and co-operation with other agencies working in the community is a great asset. When people work together they gain the confidence of the local community and they save scarce resources by combining their efforts. They get support and encouragement from their colleagues and share problems with them. This makes community  work  less of a lonely task.