Community Mobilization
CD 125
Context
• Development of Communities does not always come through a
functional way
• Community projects to benefit the people do not come easily
• There are programs that are detrimental to communities upon
implementation
• “development aggression” programs and projects are implemented in
the name of development
Now…
• basic conditions still remain
• Communities continue to suffer and unable to cope with the fast and
globalizing work
• Lot of reasons to get organized and mobilized
• Mass mobilization has become a common experience for the
participants and common sights for the uninvolved
Why Community Mobilization
• expand the base of community support for an issue or organisation
• provide a focus for prevention planning and implementation efforts
• create public presence and pressure to change laws, policies, and
practices - progress that could not be made by just one individual or
organization
• bring new community volunteers
• increase access to funding opportunities for organisations and promote
long-terms, organisational commitment to social issues
Therefore,
Community Mobilization is an organized, coordinated,
sustained and joint effort to address issue affecting
community (Maglaya, 1975)
Community mobilization is a process that seeks to create social
change by building awareness and empowering community
members to take charge of their own health through engaging in
a collective, interactive process. (Project Accept)
Community mobilization is the process of engaging communities to
identify community priorities, resources, needs, and solutions in
such a way as to promote representative participation, good
governance, accountability, and peaceful change. (Mercy corps)
Community mobilization is a capacity building process through
which a community, individuals, groups and organizations plan,
carry out and evaluate activities on a participatory and sustained
basis to achieve an agreed-upon goal, either on their own initiative
or stimulated by others.
SOURCE:Labspace http://labspace.open.ac.uk/
Premise
Community mobilization is based on the simple premise that
human beings are by nature social creatures whose behaviors,
attitudes and beliefs are profoundly affected by the norms of
the communities in which they live.
(Calcasa, in the context of addressing domestic violence)
Assumptions
• People act together on the basis of collective interest
• People learn most through combined action and reflection
• Heterogenity of interests -sometimes conflicting
Principles/Factors
• Coordinated effort and strong partnership with clear roles, responsibilities, authorities,
transparency
• The value of forming a group that can accommodate differences and plurality and which
recognizes strengths, resources and competencies of each other, while preserving both
their autonomy and interdependence with an appreciation of divergent perspectives
• Sensitivity to or responsiveness to local beliefs, practices and attitudes about the issue
and maximizing local resources
• The importance of setting up systems – for PIME, reflection, coordination and
accountability and decision making and managing, preventing, resolving conflicts
• The importance of building deep and sustained personal relationship based on trusts,
mutuality, sense of solidarity among and within the mob team
Steps in Mobilizing People (Maglaya, 1975)
• Doing groundwork to establish better communication among the
people
• Spotting and developing an issue
• Agitating the people for action
• Pre-action meeting for planning the mobilization
• Role playing
• Conflict confrontation
• Negotiate
• Establish support groups
Strategies
• Forming community coalitions/alliances
• Campaigns
• Direct Community campaigning - door-to-door canvassing,
community meetings,informal group discussions, etc.
• Public awareness - Enhancing/broadening/widening community
awareness and participation -using tactics that drum up attention
including motorcades, parades, sports fests, movie showing, concerts,
music fests, edutainment, arts, flyers, posters, cenaculo, prayer rallies
Strategies
• acquiring /negotiating for participation of traditional and other
influential persons -traditional leaders, LGU leaders, etc
• partnering with groups that also respond to other community
needs/issues and which we can establish common grounds for this
issue
• winning over the undecided, neutralizing opposing groups,
strengthening the positive forces
Outcome
• Mobilization as a source of new and higher level learning among
participants
• Mobilization as creating higher level of confidence among the participants
• The value of action-reflection-action as a way of refining strategies,
energize participants to sustain their interest especially in scaling up the
mobilization.
• Starting with where the people are and what they have and what they can
and building on it
First Phase Assignment
• Identify one major governance problem/issue/need in the community you
are assigned to
• Describe the problem/issue/need - its history/cause, its manifestation, worst
consequences especially to your partner community if left unaddressed. Describe
the method you use in obtaining this set of information.
• Generally, what is the level of understanding among the affected groups about the
issue and desire to address the issue/problem among the various segments of the
community population, but especially the community you are working with. Describe
the method you used for this assessment.
• If the community were to mobilize to address this problem/issue/need, describe the
steps that they will need to go through. Include the organizational, resource
generation, capacity building processes that will be required.
• Present during the midsem class including the methods/tools you used.
First Phase Assignment
• Submit a full written report on the above including all the
tools/instruments and results and peer/self evaluation and other
documentations
• On peer/self assessment:
• Give numerical rating to each member’s participation with 10 as highest and 0 as lowest
in the following areas: conceptualization and planning (and related preparations),
implementation, finalization of result, presentation, write up. To be signed by the
respective assessor. Give brief comment.
• Each team member to write his/her thoughts and feelings including
questions about CM based from doing this project our class discussion
(500 words) and readings.
Thank you and Good Luck
