Community empowerment

Pille Javed

Sandra Mägi

2012

Sissejuhatus

Community is important for the person`s health:

Community helps to increase individual`s self esteem as person feels community network support

Empowerment helps to get people together and to encrease control over events that influence their lives (control over physical and social determinants)

What is community?

Gerard Delanty:

Traditional community – geographical area, people mostly with the same needs, same culture and identity, same formal institutions

Political community – citizenship, same goals to solve the special problem

Communication communities

Virtual community – belonging as communication

(Delanty, 2003)

Here we view a community as a place

where people live, for example, a

neighbourhood. Geographic

communities consist of

heterogeneous individuals with

dynamic social relations who may

organize into groups to take action

towards achieving shared

goals.(Laverack, 2007)

The value of community

The most important aspect of the

community is communication between

people and supporting social network

what is important health determinant.

Trust inside community is very

important and helps to develop

community.

Why the community ties are weakening?

Why the social supporting network is weakening in the community?

Globalization: Market economy is growing, local businesses don`t have importance

Consumerism

The individual purposes are growing and the community goals are decreasing – people are not motivated to act together

What is community empowerment? 1

It is important to understand the difference between those concepts that involve participation and those that involve action. The key point is that at some stage communities are no longer just passive participants but that people take an active role in identifying and resolving their own concerns.

It is also important to understand the difference between those concepts that involve action and those that involve community empowerment.

Community empowerment builds from the individual to the group to a wider collective of people involved in bringing about social and political change in their favour. (Laverack, 2007).

What is community empowerment? 2

The key difference between community empowerment and the other community-based concepts is the sense of struggle and liberation that is bound in the process of gaining power.

POWER CANNOT BE GIVEN and must be gained or seized by those who want it against those in authority. Community empowerment is a process by which communities gain more control over the decisions and resources that influence their lives, including the determinants of health.

Community empowerment builds from the individual to the group to a wider collective and embodies the intention to bring about social and political change. The redistribution of power, via improved access to resources or decision-making. (Laverack, 2007).

A ladder of community-based interaction

1. Community readiness

2. Community participation - people sharing their ideas of common needs, becoming active, based on representation

3. Community engagement – people identify problem-solving solutions to issues, based more on action than participation

4. Community organization – people become involved in shared decision-making and problem-solving groups (NGO-s etc.)

5. Community development – the distribution of resources assisted by outside agencies (differend community programmes)

6. Community capacity – a systematic approach to build the assets, that allow communities to better organize and mobilize themselves (programme financed)

7. Community action – a process of ownership by communities of the issues that concern them (through participation, capacity building and community development)

8. Community empowerment – communities gain control over the decisions and resources through gaining power

(Laverack, 2007).

Literature

Laverack, G. (2007). Health Promotion Practice. Building Empowered Communities. Berkshire:

Open University Press.

Kasmel, A, Lipand, A. (2007). Tervisedenduse teooria ja praktika. Tallinn: Eesti Tervisedenduse Ühing.

Delanty, G. (2003) Community. New Yourk: Routledge, cop. 2010.

Bauman, Z. (2001). Community: seeking safety in insecure world. Cambridge: Polity.

Measuring empowerment. : cross - disciplinary perspectives (2006). Washington, D.C. : The World Bank; New Delhi: Oxford; OxfordUniversity Press

www.infed.org/community/community.htm