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W H AT D O W E M E A N BY U N D E R S TA N D I N G A N D
DESCRIBING THE COMMUNITY?
W H Y M A K E T H E E F F O RT T O U N D E R S TA N D A N D
D E S C R I B E YO U R C O M M U N I T Y ?
W H O M S H O U L D YO U C O N TAC T T O G AT H E R
I N F O R M AT I O N ?
H O W D O YO U G O A BO U T U N D E R S TA N D I N G A N D
DESCRIBING THE COMMUNITY?
For those of us who work in community health and development, it's
important to understand community -- what a community is, and the
specific nature of the communities we work in. Anything we do in a
community requires us to be familiar with its people, its issues, and its
history. Carrying out an intervention or building a coalition are far more
likely to be successful if they are informed by the culture of the
community and an understanding of the relationships among individuals
and groups within it.
Taking the time and effort to understand your community well before
embarking on a community effort will pay off in the long term. A good way
to accomplish that is to create a community description -- a record of your
exploration and findings. It's a good way to gain a comprehensive
overview of the community -- what it is now, what it's been in the past,
and what it could be in the future. In this section, we'll discuss how you
might approach examining the community in some detail and setting
down your findings in a community description.
WHAT IS A COMMUNITY?
While we traditionally think of a community as the people in a given
geographical location, the word can really refer to any group sharing
something in common. This may refer to smaller geographic areas -- a
neighborhood, a housing project or development, a rural area -- or to a
number of other possible communities within a larger, geographicallydefined community.
These are often defined by race or ethnicity, professional or
economic ties, religion, culture, or shared background or interest:
Also important are how various areas of the community differ from
one another, and whether your impression is one of clean, wellmaintained houses and streets, or one of shabbiness, dirt, and
neglect.
If the community is one defined by its population, then its physical
properties are also defined by the population: where they live,
where they gather, the places that are important to them. The
characteristics of those places can tell you a great deal about the
people who make up the community. Their self-image, many of their
attitudes, and their aspirations are often reflected in the places
where they choose -- or are forced by circumstance or discrimination
-- to live, work, gather, and play.
History. The long-term history of the community can tell you about
community traditions, what the community is, or has been, proud of,
and what residents would prefer not to talk about. Recent history
can afford valuable information about conflicts and factions within
the community, important issues, past and current relationships
among key people and groups -- many of the factors that can trip up
any effort before it starts if you don't know about and address them.
Community culture, formal and informal. This covers the spoken and
unspoken rules and traditions by which the community lives. It can
include everything from community events and slogans -- the
blessing of the fishing fleet, the "Artichoke Capital of the World" -- to
norms of behavior -- turning a blind eye to alcohol abuse or
domestic violence -- to patterns of discrimination and exercise of
power. Understanding the culture and how it developed can be
crucial, especially if that's what you're attempting to change.
Once you've explored the relevant areas of the community, you'll have the
information to create a community description. Depending on your needs
and information, this description might be anything from a two-or threepage outline to an in-depth portrait of the community that extends to tens
of pages and includes charts, graphs, photographs, and other elements.
The point of doing it is to have a picture of the community at a particular
point in time that you can use to provide a context for your community
assessment and to see the results of whatever actions you take to bring
about change.
A community description can be as creative as you're capable of making
it. It can be written as a story, can incorporate photos and commentary
from community residents (see Photovoice), can be done online and
include audio and video, etc. The more interesting the description is, the
more people are likely to actually read it.
S O M E A DVA N TAG E S T O TA K I N G T H E T I M E T O
U N D E R S TA N D T H E C O M M U N I T Y A N D C R E AT E A
C O M M U N I T Y D E S C R I P T I O N I N C LU D E :
Getting a feel for the attitudes and opinions of the community when
you're starting work on an initiative.
Being able to talk convincingly with the media about the community.
When you're feeling like you're stuck in a rut and need a fresh
perspective. Organizations have to remain dynamic in order to keep
moving forward. Reexamining the community -- or perhaps
examining it carefully for the first time -- can infuse an organization
with new ideas and new purpose.
Elected officials
Chiefs of police
Health professionals
Clergy
Community activists
Housing advocates
Take advantage of the information and facilities that help shape the
world of those who have lived in the community for a long time.
Read the local newspaper (and the alternative paper, too, if there is
one), listen to local radio, watch local TV, listen to conversation in
cafes and bars, in barbershops and beauty shops. You can learn a
great deal about a community by immersing yourself in its internal
G AT H E R I N G I N F O R M AT I O N
To find out about various aspects of the community, you'll need a number
of different methods of gathering information. We've already discussed
some of them, and many of the remaining sections of this chapter deal
with them, because they're the same methods you'll use in doing a full
community assessment. Here, we'll simply list them, with short
explanations and links to sections where you can get more information
about each.
Public records and archives. These include local, state, and federal
government statistics and records, newspaper archives, and the
records of other organizations that they're willing to share. Many of
the public documents are available at public and/or university
libraries and on line at government websites. Most communities
have their own websites, which often contain valuable information
as well.
U N D E R S TA N D I N G T H E C O M M U N I T Y
Now let's consider what you might examine to understand and describe
the community. You won't necessarily look for this information in the order
given here, although it's a good idea to start with the first two.
The community's physical characteristics.
Get a map of the community and drive and/or walk around. (If the
community isn't defined by geography, note and observe the areas where
its members live, work, and gather.) Observe both the built and the
natural environment. In the built environment, some things to pay
attention to are:
This is a topic that is ripe for examination. In many rural areas, particularly
in developing countries, but often in the developed world as well, there is
very little infrastructure. Roads and bridges may be impassable at certain
(or most) times of year, phone service and TV reception nonexistent,
Internet access a distant dream. Public transportation in many places, if it
exists at all, may take the form of a pickup truck or 20-year-old van that
takes as many passengers as can squeeze into or onto the bed, passenger
compartment, and roof. Is any of this on the government's or anyone
else's radar as a situation that needs to be addressed? What is the
general policy about services to rural and/or poor populations? Answers
to these and similar questions may both explain the situation (and the
attitudes of the local population) and highlight a number of possible
courses of action.
In the category of natural features, we can include both areas
that have been largely left to nature, and "natural" spaces
created by human intervention.
Air and water. Is the air reasonably clear and clean, or is there a
blanket of smog? Does the air generally smell fresh, or are there
industrial or other unpleasant odors? Do rivers, lakes, or other
bodies of water appear clean? Do they seem to be used for
recreation (boating, swimming, fishing)?
Gender
Marital status
Family size
Education
Income
Employment - Both the numbers of people employed full and parttime, and the numbers of people in various types of work
articles written for a larger audience. The less comfortable parts of that
history, especially recent history -- discrimination, conflict, economic
and/or political domination by a small group -- are may not be included,
and are more likely to be found by talking to activists, journalists, and
others who are concerned with those issues. You might also gain
information by reading between the lines of old newspaper articles and
tracking down people who were part of past conflicts or events.
If this all sounds a lot like investigative reporting, that's because it is. You
may not have the time or skills to do much of it, but talking to activists
and journalists about recent history can be crucial. Stepping into a
community with an intervention or initiative without understanding the
dynamics of community history can be a recipe for failure.
Community government and politics.
There are a number of ways to learn about the structure and
operation of local government:
In most of the U.S., these meetings are public by state law, and must be
announced in specific ways at least two days ahead.
Reading the newspaper every day is a good idea in general if you're trying
to learn about the community. It will not only have stories about how the
community operates, but will give you a sense of what's important to its
readers, what kinds of activities the community engages in and views as
significant, what the police do -- a picture of a large part of community
life. Real estate ads will tell you about property values and the demand for
housing, ads for services can help you identify the major businesses in
town, and the ages and education levels of the people in the marriage and
birth announcements can speak volumes about community values.
Newspaper archives can also reveal the stories that help you understand
the emotions still surrounding events and issues that don't seem current.
The newspaper is an enormous reservoir of both direct and between-thelines information.
As we all know, government isn't only about the rules and structures that
hold it together. It's about people and their interactions...politics, in other
words. The political climate, culture, and assumptions in a particular
community often depend more on who elected and appointed officials are
than on the limits or duties of their offices.
The politics of many communities embody the ideal of government
working for the public good. In other communities, politics takes a back
seat to economics, and politicians listen largely to those with economic
power -- the CEO's, owners, and directors of large businesses and
institutions. In still others, the emphasis is on power itself, so that political
decisions are made specifically to keep a particular party, group, or
individual in control.
Obviously, only in the first case is the public well served. In the other
situations, fairness and equity tend to go out the window and decisions
favor the powerful. Understanding the politics of the community -- who
has power, who the power brokers are, who actually influences the setting
of policy, how decisions are made and by whom, how much difference
public opinion makes -- is fundamental to an understanding of the
community as a whole.
There's no formal way to get this information. Government officials may
have very different interpretations of the political scene than activists or
other community members. You'll have to talk to a variety of people, take
a good look at recent political controversies and decisions (here's where
newspaper archives can come in handy), and juggle some contradicting
stories to get at the reality.
Institutions.
Community institutions, unless they are dysfunctional, can generally be
viewed as assets. Finding them should be easy: as mentioned above, the
Chamber of Commerce will probably have a list of them, the library will
probably have one as well, the local newspaper will often list them, and
they'll be in the phone book.
They cover the spectrum of community life, including:
Public libraries.
Senior centers.
Public sports facilities. These might be both facilities for the direct
use of the public -- community pools and athletic fields, for example
-- or stadiums and arena where school, college, or professional
teams play as entertainment.
Economics/employment.
Some of the information about economic issues can be found in public
records, but some will come from interviews or conversations with
business people, government officials, and activists, and some from
categories interact, and how that all comes together to form the
community that exists. That will give you and anyone else interested a
reasonably clear and objective description of the community, as well as a
sense of how you see it.
For a fuller picture, you could add photographs of some of the locations,
people, conditions, or interactions you describe (perhaps as a Photovoice
project), as well as charts or graphs of demographic or statistical
information. For even more detail, you might compose a portrait in words
of the community, using quotes from interviews and stories of community
history to bring the description to life.
Given the availability of technology, you don't have to limit yourself to any
specific format. Computers allow you to easily combine various media -photos, graphics, animation, text, and audio, for example. The description
could add in or take the form of a video that includes a tour of the
community, statements from and/or interviews with various community
members (with their permission, of course), an audio voice-over, maps,
etc. A video or a more text-based description -- or both -- could then be
posted to a website where it would be available to anyone interested.
Once you have a description put together, you might want to show it to
some of the community members you talked to in the course of exploring
the community. They can suggest other things you might include, correct
errors of fact, and react to what they consider the accuracy or inaccuracy
of your portrait and analysis of their community. With this feedback, you
can then create a final version to use and to show to anyone interested.
The point is to get as informative and accurate a picture of the community
as possible that will serve as a basis for community assessment and any
effort that grows out of it.
The last word here is that this shouldn't be the last community description
you'll ever do. Communities reinvent themselves constantly, as new
buildings and developments are put up and old ones torn down, as
businesses move in and out, as populations shift -- both within the
community and as people and groups move in and out -- and as economic,
social, and political conditions change. You have to keep up with those
changes, and that means updating your community description regularly.
As with most of the rest of the community building work described in the
Community Tool Box, the work of understanding and describing the
community is ongoing, for as long as you remain committed to the
community itself.
IN SUMMARY
Understanding a community is crucial to being able to work in it. Failing to
understand it will deny you credibility and make it difficult for you both to
connect with community members and to negotiate the twists and turns
of starting and implementing a community initiative or intervention. An
extremely important part of any community assessment, therefore, is to
start by finding out as much about the community as you can -- its
physical and geographical characteristics, its culture, its government, and
its assumptions. By combing through existing data, observing, and
learning from community members, you can gain an overview of the
community that will serve you well. Recording your findings and your
analysis of them in a community description that you can refer to and
update as needed will keep your understanding fresh and help others in
your organization or with whom you collaborate.
Contributor
Chris Hampton
Catie Heaven
Online Resources
A community description of Nashua, New Hampshire.
Community Health Status Indicators provides health assessment
information at the local level through a Health Resources and Services
Administration-funded collaboration.
County Health Rankings & Roadmaps. Ranking the health of nearly
every county in the nation, the County Health Rankings help us see how
where we live, learn, work, and play influences how healthy we are and
how long we live. The Rankings & Roadmaps show us what is making
residents sick, where we need to improve, and what steps communities
are taking to solve their problems. The health of a community depends on
many different factors ranging from individual health behaviors,
education and jobs, to quality of health care, to the environment,
therefore we all have a stake in creating a healthier community. Using the
County Health Rankings & Roadmaps, leaders and advocates from public
health and health care, business, education, government, and the
community can work together to create programs and policies to improve
people's health, reduce health care costs, and increase productivity.
Describing the Community, from a WHO (World Health Organization)
manual: Emergency Preparedness: A Manual for Managers and Policy
Makers. WHO, 1999.