The purpose of this session is to present some tools that partnership members can use to examine important aspects of community development and mobilization. These tools provide a means through which partnerships can develop a collective view of and assess important aspects of their communities. Although requiring little investment of time and effort, these tools can produce powerful benefits to the partnerships and their communities. They can be used to focus the partnerships on ensuring community ownership and sustained support for grassroots community prevention efforts.
Describe some tools and processes that their partnership could use for involving various communities more fully, generating community ownership, and sustaining support for community initiatives.
Identify ways their partnership might employ community assessment tools and processes back home.
In Unit 4A, the partnerships were introduced to community mobilization as a way of assessing community needs and generating community involvement. This unit will provide the partnerships with an opportunity to try out some techniques of mobilization that they may introduce in their own communities. Because the tools provide ways for the teams to help their partnerships develop a collective vision of their communities, the unit has important links to reentry planning.
One handout (HO-3) that is not in the Participant Manual is needed for delivering this unit. One copy of this handout per participant should be duplicated beforehand. In addition, each participant will need one extra copy of each of the worksheets to use during the workshop. This will permit them to save the copy in their manuals for use back home.
A newsprint sheet (PN-1) should be prepared before the workshop for use in the exercise on community ownership. Be prepared to suggest a name for the temporary partnership and community that your group will create for the purposes of this workshop.
A. Review the purpose of this unit, and briefly describe the structure.
The group will concentrate on 2 "tools" that a partnership might use to get a common picture of what the partnership sees as:
Its community's readiness for prevention action; and
The degree of "ownership" the community may have of the partnership's work.
A third tool, for taking inventory of resources available for supporting grassroots community initiatives, will be briefly discussed.
B. Tell participants that for purposes of this workshop they as a group will temporarily become a fledgling partnership. Give them names, or ask for their suggestions.
Transition
C. Explain that before the "temporary partnership" can begin looking at its "community," the members ought to learn something about the other members.
A. Ask the participants to pair off. If there is an uneven number of participants, the facilitator should be part of a pair.
B. Distribute the Interview Form (HO-1).
C. Explain that using HO-1, both individuals in each pair are to interview each other for a few minutes. Afterwards, each participant will introduce the person interviewed to the rest of the "temporary partnership."
D. Begin the interviews.
E. Call time. Ask each person to introduce his or her partner, using HO-1 to guide those introductions.
Transition
F. Tell the "partnership" that one of its first tasks will be to get a sense of the "community's" prevention readiness. They will now do an exercise whose purpose is to assess this status.
Directions (HO-2: Community Prevention Readiness Index)
A. Distribute a copy of HO-2 to all members of the "partnership." Ask them to complete it for their own "real" communities back home. Assure participants that if they are unsure they may simply guess, since this is merely an exercise.
B. Tell participants that ordinarily you would collect the completed forms, but your magic computer has added up and found the range and average of their "partnership's" scores. The computer has gone further and put the data into a "profile" that shows what the present "partnership" members see as the community's readiness for prevention. Distribute HO-3. Give members a few minutes to examine it (HO-3: Sample Community Readiness Profile).
C. Distribute the Community Prevention Readiness (CPR) Index Discussion Guide developed by William Lofquist (HO-4), and ask participants to look it over quickly, but to read the whole first section of it, "Analyzing the Results of the CPR Index." (HO-4:Community Prevention (CPR) Index Readiness Discussion Guide)
D. Ask the original pairs to join another pair from the previous introductory activity to make small groups of 4 and discuss the following questions from the first section of the discussion guide:
Discussion Questions
Consider the average response for each of the 12 areas. What is the significance of these averages?
Do the averages suggest obvious strengths in certain areas?
Can these strengths be used for building a stronger support system for prevention?
Can you rank the areas according to the order in which they might be dealt with to strengthen the support system?
Directions (HO-5: Community Ownership Potential Grid PN-1: Compilation of Ratings)
A. Explain that another tool that partnerships might find useful for community assessment is the community ownership potential grid. Distribute copies of the grid, and ask the members of the partnership to complete it, using their own community as the basis (HO-5).
B. Post PN-1 in a place where each team member can write his or her ratings (PN-1).
C. As soon as participants have completed the form, ask them to write the number 1 in the cell on the newsprint for all the questions that they answered with a "Yes."
D. Ask participants to spend a few minutes reviewing the summary data on the prepared newsprint and making note of what the data tell them about their fictional partnership.
E. Ask each pair of participants from the previous exercise to join a different pair to form a new small group of 4. The new group is to discuss the graphed data and what next steps they see the partnership taking in response to what the graph suggests.
A. Ask participants to look at the Resource Inventory (HO-6).
B. Point out that this is a self-administering tool that their partnerships could use to assess members' perceptions of the vitality of their community's grassroots activity.
A. Ask participants to discuss what they see as barriers to, and supports for, the use of the community assessment tools provided in this session within their own partnerships.
B. Ask members to be prepared to tell their teams about these tools and to suggest how they could be used back home.
C. Mention the connections between this workshop and the other workshops. Remind participants to think about what they are going to report to their team in the next session.
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