Through my experiences managing workshops and events, I can say that community development is a long process. For it to succeed, a degree of self awareness must develop within the individual, sufficient for him or her to want to engage others in dialogue about a community concern. With the refugees, whom I worked with in Birmingham, this concern focused a lot on the desire to be accepted: to be seen as honourable, honest people and not the work shy-job stealing, mixed message, stereo types, depicted by British tabloid media. Self awareness allows self enablement of the individual, which in turn, allows the opportunity for politicisation of the wider community. By politicising in this way, minorities within a community can find a communal voice and so affect positive change to their advantage. The principles of mutual respect and social justice for all must be adhered too. Whilst society's civilised values of fairness, equality, accountability, opportunity, choice, participation, mutuality, reciprocity and continuous learning are accepted as the norms in the client-facilitator relationship.
No comments:
Post a Comment