Fostering Collective Action: Proactive Community Work

Part Three: Organization for Creation and Sustainability

Item 7: Develop the Will to Act & Form a Group Motor

Go Meet People & Understand the Context

The purpose of community work is the establishment and/or accompaniment of groups in carrying out social development projects.

During the immersion process and gaining knowledge of the social space in which they work, the professional in social intervention often detects a collective problem. Regarding this problem, there might be a passive attitude of waiting or demanding action from others. Imagining that a community worker's action develops solely from an explicit request by people can be, in many cases, an error and naive.
It's an error because someone who does not perceive themselves as proactive is unlikely to ask for certain things. It's naive because a need is not just a state of deprivation, but requires awareness and encouragement regarding the shortcomings people face. For an objective need to become recognized, it requires consciousness and a specific understanding among the people involved. Here lies one of the most important roles of the community worker: go to meet people, fostering a new perspective on the social situations they face, and encouraging them to act.

Community Work is proactive in the sense that it requires a positive initiative by the professional. This initiative aims to create a personal or collective climate where an objective need (a deficiency, poor state of affairs, a problematic situation) becomes a subjective need, developing the will to act among the people or building positive motivation for action. Stimulating awareness of need and dissatisfaction with the current situation is a cornerstone of Community Work: the basis of the initial desire to improve is the axis of motivation for action and mobilization. For P. Freire, critical awareness and self-transforming action are synchronous elements in a process of unveiling the situation (removing the veil that obscures reality).

A problem is often not perceived as such if it seems to have no solution (the availability of solutions and resources also defines how we perceive a need). Discontent must be channeled into a hopeful response. Discontent is addressed with information that promotes viable and encouraging action.
The involvement of the people and collective organization can become real when the necessary awareness and belief in the possibility of resolution emerge together among the target people and groups.
However, this dialectic between problems and solutions must not forget that at the very beginning, the emphasis should be on problems and needs.
M. Sanchez warns that defining problems in terms of need rather than solutions is important because it does not prematurely close off potential new solutions. This sense of need is not only useful in initiating collective action but must also be remembered throughout the process as an element to keep the flame of motivation alive.