MCOSA, MPN, MISD, MCTFT, and CADCA sponsored

ART OF COMMUNITY MOBILIZING WEBINAR

November 18, 2011

What is community mobilizing?

  • Getting people organized to address a community problem effectively.
  • Bringing a lot of people together for change.
  • Attempting to take an issue that already exists and taking action.
  • Community mobilizing is generally “top down”.
  • Mobilizing is “expert” driven.

How is mobilizingdifferent from community organizing?

Community organizing has issues that arise from the grass root levels. Community organizing is generally “bottom up”.

Organizing vs. Mobilizing

  • Community Mobilizing – experts know the issues; experts understand the appropriate solutions; experts drive action.
  • Community Organizing – Community knows problems and solutions; Community has right and capability to define and describe what it needs to know; Community determines direction to take

Mobilizing can happen quickly (ex. retailers putting Sudafed behind the counter so a consumer has to ask for it in order to purchase it).

Organizing can take a longer time.

Many coalitions coordinate events, and go no further – they don’t harness the energy that the event creates.It may take years but the coalition must understand that it just doesn’t stop with an event.

The art of doing good community building and doing organizing is to continually harness the resident energy into bigger and bigger change (more and more structural change) so that the risk factors that are putting their community and block in jeopardy can be addressed.

What gets in the way?

  • Fear – because people don’t want to get involved.
  • I don’t know how to talk to people, I don’t know what to say, I don’t know how to get involved, and I don’t know what to do.

Putting your ideas into practice – Get out of the office and into the streets to build relationships.

Concepts for Action

  • Develops a constituency for change
  • Build supports for policies
  • Organizes different parts of the community for strategic roles
  • Develops leadership, sustainability
  • Assessment – become familiar with community and its issues.
  • Coalition Building – invite people together to make change a long-term focus; gives voice to real issues of real people
  • Leadership Development – helps build skills and increase the capacity of the community to solve its own problems
  • Planning – identify alcohol and other drug issues and select real issues the community can change
  • Mobilizing & Action – Engage community and facilitate action

Community Organizers Skills:

  • Have to believe in your heart about what you are doing – need passion.
  • Be able to share and transmit that passion to others.
  • Helps residents understand what the end result will look like then carefully choreographs them through a series of steps to help them get to the end in a very systematic kind of way.
  • Not selling the coalition, but rather selling “there is a way this person can be instrumental in solving the problem”. You are bringing people into the problem, not into the coalition.

Steps in Doing the Work of Community Organizing:

Step One: Listening

  • Engage in “knocks and talks”
  • Do one on ones
  • Host community meetings
  • Participate in small group settings.

Step Two: Relationship Building

  • An ongoing process of deepening understanding of the community and its members

Step Three: Challenge

  • Join the coalition
  • Take on a task
  • Build the membership

Step Four: Action

Step Five: Evaluation

  • Hitting your benchmarks
  • Building coalition capacity & power
  • Building coalition unity
  • Setting up next actions

Step Six: Reflection

  • Linking back to why this is important
  • To the members
  • To the community
  • Reaffirming our Values
  • To social justice
  • To equality
  • To people having a voice

Step Seven: Celebration

The Stick Person

  • What is important?
  • What are priorities?
  • What are joys?
  • What are concerns?
  • What makes her tick?
  • What does she like to do?
  • What does she like to accomplish?

Links from The Art of Community Mobilizing broadcast are listed below:

The Midwest Academy

CADCA Coalition Institute

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