Transforming Communities: Restorative Justice as a Community Building Strategy

Restorative justice is entering the social work literature as a strategy that can transform lives harmed by violence. However, the literature has yet to explore how restorative justice can transform communities. Despite the lack of published information, communities across the globe and the United States are experiencing important benefits from restorative justice-based interventions. This article explores 4 restorative justice strategies that seek to transform communities: restorative boards, community conferencing, community restorative support, and truth and reconciliation commissions. The examination of the strategies includes case studies that are used to support a larger discussion of application, practice, outcomes, evaluation literature, and critiques.     

Preparing Community Health Workers for Their Role as Agents of Social Change: Experience of the Community Capacitation Center

Current efforts to better integrate Community Health Workers (CHWs) into the health and social service systems are promising, but may be less effective if they fail to support the role of CHWs as social change agents. The way CHWs are trained influences the roles they play. In this article, we review the literature on CHW training and summarize lessons learned to date. We describe how the Community Capacitation Center in Oregon uses a combination of content, methodology, and values to prepare CHWs to make an optimal contribution to health. Recommendations for CHW training programs and policy makers are provided.     

Creating Community Partnership as Foundation for Community Building: The Case of the Renewed Kibbutz

ABSTRACT

Expansion neighborhoods, built adjacent to kibbutz neighborhoods, are a new phenomenon in the rural peripheral regions of Israel. This article evaluates the process of building community partnerships, describes frictions created between residents of the expansion neighborhoods and kibbutz members, and defines challenges that need to be overcome in order to build an integrated community within the renewed kibbutz.Data collection was based on face-to-face interviews with new residents and officials from 10 kibbutzim. Qualitative analysis show the complexity involved in the process of building community partnerships and emphasizes the need to develop structures that will allow for dialogue and collaboration.     

Building capacity for urban management in Ghana: some critical considerations

Severe capacity gaps continue to constrain effective urban management in Ghana, despite numerous donor-supported training programmes. This paper examines the nature of these capacity gaps and analyses specifically the factors contributing to the low attraction and retention of local government staff: politicisation of the bureaucracy, excessive use of external experts, excessive state intervention in skill development and low remuneration of local government staff. Against this background, the paper reviews critically a recent capacity building initiative: the establishment of the (new) Institute of Local Government Studies in Accra. Suggestions to improve capacity building for urban management in Ghana are offered. These include the need to prepare a coherent strategy to guide and co-ordinate stakeholder inputs in capacity building; to place training in the context of institutional development; and encourage the development and use of local expertise in donor assisted projects; and, promote merit-based remuneration of local government staff.     

Building Community Capacity to Advocate for Policy Change: An Outcome Evaluation of the Neighborhoods Working in Partnership Project in Detroit

This article presents results of the outcome evaluation of Neighborhoods Working in Partnership (NWP), a community-based participatory research project of the Detroit Community–Academic Urban Research Center, designed to enhance policy advocacy skills through training and support, thereby increasing community capacity, engagement, and empowerment of Detroit residents to change policies. Focus groups and conversational interviews were conducted with NWP participants. Results indicate that the workshop empowered participants and enhanced dimensions of community capacity. Participants reported engaging in policy advocacy activities and various policy successes. Participants identified challenges and facilitating factors to their policy campaigns. Recommendations for similar trainings are provided.     

Redefining Food Security in a Community Context: An Exploration of Community Food Security Indicators and Social Worker Roles in Community Food Strategies

Large numbers of households experiencing the effects of food insecurity threaten a community’s viability. Although hunger has been viewed as a social problem, research focused on household-level food security tends to primarily focus on the household economics. This thematic overview of academic and grey literature (a) describes community food security (CFS) research and indicators related to accessibility, affordability, community self-reliance, social justice, and sustainability; (b) provides examples of how community social workers can participate, lead or evaluate CFS strategies that can create sustainable food secure communities; and (c) invites social work researchers to develop holistic measures of CFS.     

New roles for families in child welfare: Strategies for expanding family involvement beyond the case level

This paper examines the strategies and approaches child welfare agencies used to integrate meaningful family involvement into their service delivery systems, under the Children's Bureau Improving Child Welfare Outcomes Through Systems of Care demonstration initiative. Through a series of retrospective interviews with child welfare agency staff, systems of care project staff, family members actively involved in implementing the systems of care initiative, and local program evaluators, researchers investigated the family involvement planning and capacity building activities of child welfare agencies during the initiative's implementation. Findings indicate that child welfare agencies' capacity building efforts primarily centered on human resource development, focusing on three areas: program staffing, family engagement, and agency buy-in. These findings illustrate the importance of developing the capacity of child welfare agency staff and family members before fully implementing family involvement programs and activities. Although more research is needed to document the impact of family involvement, the lessons learned from these grant communities' experiences provide critical information and can inform development of policies and practices to help child welfare and other child- and family-serving systems promote and implement meaningful and sustainable family involvement.     

Toward a Hybrid Model for Effective Organizing in Communities of Color

This paper examines the feminist and Alinsky approaches to community organizing, both of which have had great impact on the field of organizing. Viewing the two models as flexible and interflowing, the authors then propose a hybrid organizing model that draws from the strengths of both approaches. The model also calls for continual assessment of the changing organizing context and flexibility to change the blend of strategies according to the needs of the moment. Finally, the paper looks at how the dynamics of race and ethnicity affect organizing in communites of color, and discusses the usefulness of the proposed model in dealing with these dynamics.     

Assessing the Effectiveness of a Capacity Building Intervention in Empowering Hard-to-Reach Communities

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on hard-to-reach communities with weak histories of engagement and it explores whether facilitated community interventions can empower and develop community resilience. Drawing on data from 6 communities, the article indicates a need for tailored and context-specific support that matches local needs. Implementation of community projects is not linear and the delivery of interventions in hard-to-reach communities is associated with the risk of failure. Developing community resilience among communities that do not engage requires long-term interventions, on-going input, and a collaborative approach to working with communities to support equal and harmonized development.     

Community Development's Role in Cardiovascular Disease Prevention Projects for African Americans

The study investigates the use of community development strategies to address the problem of high morbidity and mortality rates among African Americans in eight Michigan communities. The findings indicate a shift from a traditional medical paradigm, one-to-one doctor–patient approach, to a social behavioral paradigm that incorporates community development approaches, such as technical assistance and self help approaches. This fosters lifestyle changes that are needed to impact the cardiovascular disease-related morbidity and mortality statistics. In addition, the research links the findings of the use of community development approaches to community capacity building. This study concludes that applying community development approaches can serve as the catalyst to planned change as it relates to health empowerment, which in turn will help disenfranchised groups of people to become more empowered in making other significant changes in their communities.     

An Approach to Community Facilitation Using Mediation Techniques: Skills for the Sociological Practitioner

Current community organization literature calls for a focus on the identification of community assets, not community deficits. This includes building relationships in the community to identify and solve community problems. In addition, the asset approach to community development redefines the role of the outside expert as one who is concerned with the process of community development, instead of the content of what needs to be changed. The shift to an asset-based approach calls for a new set of practice skills to be employed by the sociological practitioner. The authors suggest integrating specific skills from the mediation literature with the current community organization model as a first step in developing the practice skills necessary to being an effective community facilitator.     

The Community Action Framework in Practice: An Illustration Based on the Ready by 21 Coalition of Austin/Travis County

The field of positive youth development has expanded focus from articulating and measuring desired manifestations of positive well-being to assembling the environmental conditions known to promote these desired outcomes. Evidence of the effectiveness of community-level efforts promoting positive youth development is still emerging, in particular theory-driven examples of community-driven youth development. This study examined the Community Action Framework, one theory-based community youth development model, through the experiences of the Ready by 21 Austin/Travis County coalition (RB21). The coalition connects youth-serving organizations and also regional coalitions, while promoting the positive development of area youth. Participant observation, interviewing, and archival strategies were integrated to capture information related to the complex and dynamic coalition. Results indicated that RB21 represents a practical and meaningful application of the Community Action Framework. Specific examples and recommendations are provided as guidance for other community level youth development efforts.     

Giving Back in an Asian American Community in the South: An Intergenerational Perspective

This paper explores the intergenerational dynamics of “giving back” among immigrants in an Asian American community in the southern region of the United States. The paper is guided by the intergenerational ambivalence paradigm to explore dynamics between first and second generations in their community involvement. The study used the qualitative method of phenomenological approach to identify emerging themes that include (a) importance of ethnic organizations; (b) defined roles and responsibilities within the ethnic organizations that exist between first and second generations; and (c) the second generation wanting to give back and manage ethnic organizations differently from the first generation.     

城市社区公共空间构筑与基层社会的动员整合——基于上海市G社区的案例分析

城市社区公共空间既是一种物理空间,又是一种制度与文化空间。上海G社区探索楼道公共客厅与楼道居民自治,通过楼道公共空间的拓展与构筑,增强居民归属感,构建居民交流、共商机制,改善社区认同,让社区从一个生活的共同体演变成一种信念的共同体,维护了社区的和谐和稳定,推进基层社会的动员整合。这种社区自治性的成长不仅是社会力量内部整合的基础,也构成了社区共治的基础。由此,未来社区治理的方向是如何建立起社区事务协商参与的多级公共空间,形成共治、自治衔接的有效机制,从而真正实现基层社区国家与社会良性互动、政府行政管理与居民群众自治相衔接的基层社会管理的新格局。     

Critical standpoint: Leaders of color advancing racial equality in predominantly white organizations

Organizations are often core sites for the production and perpetuation of social inequality. Although the United States is becoming more racially diverse, organizational elites remain disproportionately white, and this mismatch contributes to increasing racial inequality. This article examines whether and how leaders of color within predominantly white organizations can help their organizations address racial inequality. Our analysis uses data from a national study of politically oriented civic organizations and ethnographic fieldwork within one predominantly white organization. We draw on institutional work research, the outsider‐within concept, and insights from critical whiteness theory to explain how leaders of color can use their position and “critical standpoint” to help guide their organization toward advancing racial equality. The qualitative analysis shows how such leaders, when empowered, help their organization address race internally by (a) providing alternatives to white‐dominated perspectives, (b) developing tools to educate white members about racial inequality, and (c) identifying and addressing barriers to becoming a more racially diverse organization. The qualitative analysis also shows how leaders of color help their organization address race externally by (a) sharing personal narratives about living in a white‐dominated society and (b) brokering collaborations with organizations led by people of color. This research has implications for organizations seeking to promote social equality: Organizational leaders from marginalized status groups can help their organizations address social inequality, if those leaders possess a critical standpoint and sufficient organizational authority.     

Cooperatives and Community Development: A Perspective on the Use of Cooperatives in Development

Community developers have long understood the importance of local participation in the events and processes that shape communities. Effective, democratic, and people-and-place-centered development strategies have the potential to achieve such participation. This article suggests that cooperatives can be an effective participatory strategy to bootstrap low-income people into the socio-economic mainstream. Woolcock and Narayan's (2000) social capital and poverty transition model is adapted to demonstrate the development potential of cooperative businesses. We hope to stimulate discussion among community development scholars and practitioners, policymakers, and the public on the potential of cooperative business as a community development strategy, particularly in resource limited communities.     

Evaluating the engagement of universities in capacity building for sustainable development in local communities

Universities have the potential to play a leading role in enabling communities to develop more sustainable ways of living and working however, sustainable communities may only emerge with facilitation, community learning and continual efforts to build their capacities. Elements of programme planning and evaluation on the one hand, and capacity building on the other, are needed. The latter entails approaches and processes that may contribute to community empowerment; universities may either lead such approaches, or be key partners in an endeavour to empower communities to address the challenges posed by the need for sustainable development. Although capacity building and the promotion of sustainable development locally, are on the agenda for universities who take seriously regional engagement, very little is published that illustrates or describes the various forms of activities that take place. Further, there is a paucity of studies that have evaluated the work performed by universities in building capacity for sustainable development at the local level. This paper is an attempt to address this need, and entails an empirical study based on a sample of universities in the United Kingdom, Germany, Portugal and Brazil. The paper examines the extent to which capacity building for sustainable development is being undertaken, suggests the forms that this might take and evaluates some of the benefits for local communities. The paper concludes by reinforcing that universities have a critical role to play in community development; that role has to prioritise the sustainability agenda.     

Community Self-Help as Strategy and Outcome: The Examination of an Israeli Experience

Community self-help associations (CSAs) are locally-based organizations in which professional service providers and planners share responsibilites with citizens and members for decision making and action. These responsibilities tend to be delegated, at least initially, from more central authorities to local organiziations and shared between professionals and citizens. The Israeli experience with CSAs provides insights into how mediating structures work and compare social problem-solving approaches to social development strategies.     

A Critical View on the Role of NGOs in Systemic Capacity Building: Insights from Projects for Promoting Access to Water and Self-sufficiency in Food Production in Northern Ghana

The paper takes the example of Northern Ghana with its inadequate provision of basic social infrastructure for exploring the ability of NGOs to provide effective capacity building. It examines if NGOs have sufficient understanding and knowledge for operations and if their philosophy and objectives are enough to enable judgment and lasting successes. Weaknesses and strengths of NGOs are investigated as they still are indispensable organizations for developing backward areas, especially for fostering sustainable rural community development. It is shown that the theoretical framework of ‘landscape development' applies best to analyse how the many simultaneous transformations occur in this context and how they connect. A succinct impact study is exhibited in the paper to demonstrate how some of these effects come about. The survey regards World Vision, an international NGO that has been active in Ghana for a long time.