What is a community?

Community means different things to different people at different times. It can mean a group of friends or family, a local neighborhood, a virtual network, a school group, a place of worship, a community association, or a cultural network that is spread across the world. Understanding how communities and neighborhoods can be defined is a crucial first step in thinking about organizing local action or engaging with a particular place or group of people. How Big are Neighborhoods

Why communities matter to people and public agencies ?

Neighborhoods have been the target for a wide range of national initiatives and legislation with physical regeneration, social renewal, community engagement and better public services in mind. In spite of this many people remain disengaged and feel unable to influence decisions that matter to their daily lives. In many cases national regeneration programs have not brought about long-lasting improvements for the most deprived neighborhoods and have been criticized for focusing on physical rather than underlying social issues.

How to understand and define neighborhoods

We look at Neighborhoods as physical groups who share a small geo space, smaller than a village, a slum, street, hosing or apartment complex, part of a town, a block are examples. There are different lifestyles in Neighborhoods, who share same physical resources, environment engage in business and social activities. You may find small groups 3-5 people who play , eat and have fun together. They build larger groups in clubs, societies. Hence Neighborhoods are about 100-200 people or less. Neighborhoods are important as they collectively can help physical regeneration, education, health, environmental and economic improvement including cultural revival. The most visible life form in Neighborhoods are humans. Yet we have  important animal and plant species, useful as well as dangerous or invasive. The physical and natural structure of the Neighborhood defines the quality of life of humans, animals and plants exist. As an example an industry polluting the air and water in the Neighborhood damages human , animal and plant life making it unsuitable for living. The industry also could be the economic and employment source for the neighborhood. It is the local people who need to be concerned and their involvement is necessary in deciding improvement actions.  The best to think as Neighborhoods as smallest building block which builds life on our planet and address micro problems contributing to builds macro, national and global problems. Engaging local people in managing their Neighborhoods is one of the best answers. Neighborhoods overlap creating intermediate and culture groups. The democratic processes are more higher and leaves Neighborhood ideas mostly unattended with regional, town and village plans. The weakness in large plans are that they lack reach to Neighborhoods, families and individuals. Hence Neighborhoods could be the development and conservation focus of the 21st century.

Neighborhood challenges

The demand for neighborhood empowerment emerges from specific local concerns: Community security from violence and crime   The quality of the environment and the street scene, dereliction, vandalism   Underused public spaces   Issues around children and learning, including childcare, primary schools,   Libraries, playgrounds and other facilities   Health and sports, mutual aid, community finance and time banks   Threats to the community – facilities closure, planning decisions   Deciding how to spend new money for regeneration/investment

Local public spaces

Streets, Parks, Play Grounds

Village Centers, Schools, Hospitals

Third Spaces

“Third spaces” like cafés and pubs are vital settings for informal public life - they
places where people can meet old friends, make new acquaintances, discuss the
important issues of the day, and temporarily throw off the weight of the world.
Involvement in informal public life has important psychological, social, and political
implications not always understood. As a result many newly built estates or
regenerated areas lack places to socialize. However, many traditional third spaces
are closing down , we loose local economic outlets – a trend that looks set to continue.

Media and the local public sphere

• Local newsletters or newspapers
  
• Noticeboards
  
• Public maps of the neighborhood
  
• Public signboard
  
• Community radio
  
• Local email discussion or announcement lists
  
• Community websites
  
• Weblogs and email lists
  
• Community radio
  
• Local associations
  
• Public figures

The main reasons for Participation for people are:

• “a personal interest” or common interests
• An aspiration to change things
• Faith
• Exposure and access to community and voluntary sectors
• An opportunity to voice opinions

The three main psychological motivations for participation

• Instrumentality: a desire to change circumstances
• Identity: to belong to a group
• Meaning: to give meaning to one’s life

Klandermans (2004)
 

consequence they will be more likely to be a part of local activities. In addition,
“when an active interest is shown in their opinion...and feel their engagement was
influential and acted upon” a citizen will be more motivated to be involved and stay
involved politically. (8)

Social networks are also an important factor in triggering the involvement of citizens.
Some other key triggers include ‘being asked’, ‘word of mouth’ and the influence of
community motivators or ‘moving spirits’. (9)

Volunteering

Four explanations as to why people volunteer:
• Socio-economic factors: people with higher education and income volunteer
more than those with fewer resources.

• Opportunity or access: this is connected to people’s social networks; people
who volunteer often do so because they have been asked.

• Historical and cultural factors : Volunteering to take place in certain cultures or religions are routinely involved in
activities which might be seen as volunteering. Family, Neighboors

• Individual motivation: some people have personalities which are more helpful
and generous than others.

• “to improve things and help people” (53%)

• time available

• to gain life experience

• a personal attachment to the organization

• in order to widen social networks (a common reason for younger people)


Tools for local action

Every community has its own challenges and needs. What works in one community might fail in a neighboring area because the combination of people, needs, skills, assets, time and funding is different. A whole range of approaches to involving and working with communities have been tried and tested around.


Create a community website
Deal with entrenched community problems
Develop a community charter or neighborhood agreement
Work successfully with voluntary and community groups
Try a new approach to tackling deprivation on small housing estates and slums
Think how councils and public agencies can think about social media
Involve residents in creating socially sustainable new communities
 

A Neighborhood Taskforce
Brings together a group of residents and service providers from a specific local area to work on a single issue for a limited period of time in order to tackle an identified problem that is causing significant problems for residents and  Increase community engagement with public agencies, and the level of partnership working between agencies, service providers and residents.

Identifying the issues
an essential first step is to explore what the community’s most pressing problems are and how different people perceive their causes and effects.

Task force Meetings
You will need to bring together a group of residents, members of community groups and representatives of public agencies to take part in a series of meetings. A facilitator will help the group talk constructively about the problems their community face and the ways in which they could work together to alleviate one of these.

The action plan and initiative
The immediate purpose of the Neighborhood Taskforce is to design a practical initiative that the members of the group can carry out after the Taskforce meetings.

At Meetings
don’t avoid areas of conflict
make the most of resources
think about the positive
focus on action

Helping people feel they belong
Creating strong cohesive communities where people feel like they belong matters. Where we live and who we know play a fundamental role in our sense of belonging, identity and local wellbeing. Understanding why belonging matters and how to help people feel like they belong, get along with (or at least tolerate) their neighbours and make the most of local social networks, is an important part of creating successful places.

What is belonging and why does it matter?
What does neighbourliness mean to them?
Neighbourliness + Empowerment = Wellbeing: Is there a formula for happy communities?
Work successfully with voluntary and community groups

The Youth Today
The Youth organisations can work together to increase the quality, quantity and diversity of opportunities for young people as leaders of change in their
communities

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