Know Your Target Community. Who Benefits from Your Actions?
Who Benefits from Your Actions?
by
Phil Bartle, PhD

Training Handout
Being a social researcher and analyst;
A good potter must know the characteristics of the clay

 Another proverb that we use in community development is, "The
 potter must know her/his clay." Your clay is the community. You want
 to mould it, develop it into something strong. To do so, you must
 know a lot about the community (and about the nature of communities
 in general). You must know as much as possible about its social
 organization, economy, languages, layout (map), problems, politics,
 and ecology.

 Your research should not be merely to get a list of unrelated
 facts; you need to analyse them to understand the nature of
 community as a social system. (See What is Community? and Social
 Research). Think about how the different elements are related.

 A good start is to make a map. Where do people live? What
 facilities are in the community? (eg roads, paths, water supply,
 clinic, school, sanitation, market and other communal facilities and
 services). Later, when you lead community members through an
 assessment of the community situation (resources, needs,
 opportunities, problems); you will guide them in making a community
 map. Doing one now for yourself will help you to prepare for that
 participatory activity later.

 Put your notes into your journal. Make observations about the
 community's: Social organization, economy, language(s), politics,
 shared values, traditions, and its relationship to the physical
 environment (ecology). Continue to analyse how the different
 elements relate to one another.

 You will learn that a community is not merely a collection of
 individuals, but a system that transcends those individuals. As a
 system it has various dimensions, technological, economic,
 political, institutional, ideological and conceptual. People come in
 and go out of the community, by birth, death and migration, yet the
 system persists. And it is always changing. Your job is to
 understand that system so you can nudge that ongoing change in
 certain directions (as indicated in your goals we discussed earlier).

 There is a lot you can learn about your target community, and you
 should never stop.

If you copy any text from this site, please link it back to
 http://www.scn.org/cmp/

Updated: 2003 March 23