Introduction
Social work as a practice as well as a profession has long been focused around ‘community work’, the idea of why it is necessary and how it can be strengthened is something that has not been delved into in detail. Through my engagement with both academics as well as practitioners, I find two preliminary reasons for this:
- It has extensively been talked about only in conventional academic jargon that never left purely classroom setups. It has thus escaped input as well as reach to those it attempts to talk about, i.e., the ‘community’.
- While the term has been considered a hot topic that has mass acceptance in social work spaces, it has barely been understood in detail, let alone practiced holistically.
This short piece is my attempt to briefly delve into why community work is a necessity in the social sector, and how at the base of its praxis is the idea of strengthening communities itself.
Basing The ‘Why’ Of Community Work
Most, if not all social science disciplines, ranging from psychology and sociology to even behavioral economics, are rooted in the study of how humans operate at two levels – as an individual, as well as in a group. This functioning in a group forms the basis for Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), and research spaces across the thematic areas they work upon. This is the one commonality that I can vouch for based on my personal experiences working with women in Himachal Pradesh, adolescents in Bihar and Assam, young girls in Madhya Pradesh, and the informal sector in Delhi-NCR. The framing of who we have worked with itself is based on group classification, which has its perks and challenges. Quite simply put, working with groups allows for wider impact, is time efficient, and has the potential to benefit individuals more when they work together because of shared experiential learning and observational knowledge being accrued. At the same time, engagement levels within groups may differ. Synchronising schedules and motivations, avoiding intra-group conflict and collective decision-making are all risky terrains that have to be navigated thoughtfully when one engages in group work.
You may be wondering why there is so much rambling about ‘group work’, when the purpose of this piece is to rethink ‘community work’.
This distinction between a group and a community is exactly what we need to think more about when we engage with different people at the field level. While all communities are groups, all groups are not communities. The way we design our programme activities and outcomes must take this distinction into account, as the effort, it may take to work between these two (slightly) different units can vastly differ, based on how ambitious our work is – and in all honesty, any work situated in changing social realities has the challenge of undoing decades (if not millennia) of structural marginalisation!
Picture this – you are working towards improving the rate of attendance in government schools in a town of Uttar Pradesh by pushing for more co-curricular activities. Your idea revolves around involving more community members, by asking them to volunteer their time and/or resources to make the school space a better one. You approach a local volunteering group, a college students’ association and a women’s club, asking their members to collaborate and take this project forward alongside you. Though there are no monetary benefits for these associations, you are hopeful that they will be enthusiastic about this plan since they are members of the community, the ask from them is not very high, and the schools are a public good that benefits the town not just in the short term, but also in the longer run. However, despite a few months of rigorous execution from your end, the participation of two of these external groups is unsatisfactory, and has impacted the result of what had been envisioned. There have been several reminders and follow up meetings however, there is no marked improvement in their participation. You are stumped – why would groups from the community not be willing to engage in community work, especially when they are aware of the dismal state of the government schools there, and the protracted impact of quality education?
A societal reality that we overlook is that people often choose which community affiliation they want to be invested in. The way we experience a space is directly related to our social identity, so the concerns and ideas about the same town may differ between people belonging to different caste groups, religious groups, and those who are in the formal and informal sectors. Building a project that involves ‘community members’, like this one, assumes that people residing in the same spatial set up see themselves as a part of the same community, which may not be true when their understanding and experience of it differs so vastly.
The next obvious question then is – How is a group different from a community? Multiple scholars have given answers ranging from a few paragraphs to a few hundred pages, but entering that rabbit hole is for another time. The simplest answer which one can find to this rather layered question was offered to me by my Professor on the first day of my Masters in Community Organisation and Development Studies. Any shared characteristic between a group of people has the potential to turn them into a community. One of the most common answers given by academics situates itself in how communities have shared values and/or principles. Moreover, the self-identification of an individual as a part of the community is an integral factor in placing them as one of its members.
So, while groups form the bedrock of human functioning, communities are as integral to human existence, since they satisfy the very innate human desire for belongingness, affinity, and actualization. Community spaces are radically anti-capitalist in their very conceptualization. As sociologist bell hooks keeps reiterating in her book All About Love, perhaps the basis for most human actions is the need to be loved actively, and communities are spaces where care and compassion can actively be used as tools to care, nurture and grow.
The why of community work as an integral part of the social sector is thus embedded in this collective need for functioning, betterment, and affiliation. It is thus important for us to conceptualise communities in the way their members self-identify, and not as mere distant practices of group classification, especially as social workers who aim to execute complex social programmes on the ground.
How can community work be made more reflexive?
Now that we are viewing community work from a more humanistic lens that goes beyond a mere checklist of targets to be achieved, it becomes important for us to make this a reflexive and participatory practice. This can be done in multiple ways, some of which are given below:
(a) Viewing the community as the central participant – not a receiver
This active reminder at all steps – from identification of thematic areas to be worked upon, to mapping available resources, to understanding the bandwidth of engagement possible – becomes helpful, considering the energy being expended from all sides.
(b) Using expressive arts and other novel methods for community engagement
While forms like nukkad natak (street theatre) have become vastly considered options for information dissemination, using techniques from different arts (ranging from theatre, movement exercise, and painting to even writing wherever possible) for engaging with the community for different processes may prove to be beneficial. Just like learning patterns for all children differ, engagement patterns also differ across individuals, and so a traditional meeting style format may make people hesitant in voicing their opinions or concerns.
(c) Engaging in peer learning and leadership models
As social work practitioners, we need to understand the hesitance of communities (especially those which have been historically marginalised) in letting us into their space. We must remind ourselves that while we may view this as a ‘betterment project’, it is an honor to even be let into the collective lives of those who have not had the same access to resources that we have been privileged to. Thus, changing the lens of social work as a practice of ‘acts of charity’ to a tool that actively works for social justice is necessary for any sustainable change. This also means that an active effort needs to be made to start any programme to pass over its working to the community itself, and design its model as such.
Potential Challenges and Risk Mitigation Strategies
There is no conclusion to a conversation this broad. Hence, this piece ends with two infographics that hope to be expanded and acted upon as starting points for more holistic conversations around how community work can be (re)conceptualised.
Potential risk mitigation strategies
- Keeping the community at the centre of every step and ensuring they are heard. Picking the right village resource persons that can mobilize people and have good social skills is critical to this, as it ensures honest and freeflowing conversations.
- Ensuring that culturally sensitive people (preferably from the community itself) are engaged in the project in all tiers of staffing possible. A rigorous training programme for core staff persons as well as village resource persons is an important step that could be considered. Strict guidelines to ensure no overt or covert act of discrimination takes place, with open channels for communicating any such instance are necessary in circumstances where differential power equations come into place.
- Team-set deadlines with ample of buffer time for unforeseen circumstances could be made for every quarter/month/week. Internal peer reviews and checks could be useful in increasing the overall motivation of the team.