Reference no: EM133692833
Building Adaptive Capacity in Communities
Assessment - Group Discussion
Referencing Style: American Psychological Association
APPROACHES TO COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
There are many different conceptualizations that guide collaboration with communities. You will come across many terms including community engagement, community development and community empowerment. These can be confusing as diverse language is used in various disciplines. Lecture 3.1 discusses different typology and scales used to described approaches to working with communities, drawing on those outlined in the AIDR (2020) handbook:
• Partner designs and delivers to community
• Partner leads with community input
• Community and partner work together
• Community leads with partner support
• Community designs and delivers
Slides and transcript available. The following readings will help you as you develop Assessment 3.
Reading 3.1: Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience (AIDR). (2020). Community engagement for disaster resilience. Commonwealth of Australia.
Reading 3.2: Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience. (2020). Practitioner's Guide: How to choose between community engagement approaches. Commonwealth of Australia.
Reading 3.3: Taylor, J. (2015). Conceptual approaches to community work in J. Taylor (Ed.), Working with communities (2nd ed.pp.107 to 130). Oxford University Press. (You may also wish to revisit this reading when we look at the challenges in the next section).
Optional Audio Resource 3.1: Welcome to Tenfold, Podcast on Community Engagement. Episodes on Let's Talk Community Engagement and Embedding Community Engagement at the Organizational Level may be of particular interest.
Discussion Board 3.1:
A category 4 cyclone impacted a north Queensland town. Many homes and businesses were damaged by the cyclone and flooding. During the first few weeks of 'clean up', in one neighbourhood people have informally met each evening in a local park. Theses neighbours support each other, provide advice, share links to services and organisation and 'just listen'. During the months of 'recovery' these meetings becomes fortnightly barbeques (BBQs)/cook ups. One of the members arranges for speakers from community groups and government departments to come and give information, help apply for grants, and discuss issues such as insurance.
The local Councillor (local government official) hears about this group and attends one of their gatherings. The Councillor offers the neigbourhood group funding, through a Commonwealth (federal) government initiative to continue their group.
According to AIDR (2020), what is the approach to community engagement? What are some of the issues or challenges that the group might face? What other resources might they need?
WHAT IS A COMMUNITY RESILIENCE OR ADAPTIVE CAPACITY INITIATIVE?
For assessment three you are to outline the process of building a community resilience and/or adaptive capacity initiative based on your chosen case study.
Public Health students will be familiar with programs, projects or initiatives that are developed to address a social or health need.
For the purposes of this unit the characteristics are:
1. Addresses a health/social/emergency/climate change/environmental issue
2. Has community resilience or adaptive capacity focus
3. A program or project that has actionable outcomes
4. Involves community engagement
In assessment 3 you are to outline a community engagement plan for an initiative in your chosen case study. The following reading gives insight into what this may involve.
Activity 3.3 and Discussion Board 3.3
Research a community resilience or adaptive capacity initiative/s that could be implemented in the community you discussed in Theme 1. There are a range of examples in the AIDR (2020) guides and in the in the e-Readings.
Start to analyse these initiatives using the following table. Post the discussion to the discussion board and respond to other students.
You could use this guide to start you thinking for assessment 3.
CHALLENGES OF WORKING WITH COMMUNITIES
By now you should be familiar with the reasons why we engage communities with building adaptive capacity initiatives. However, this work is not without challenges. The Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience has developed a guide on how to understand and address these challenges.
Optional Assessment 3 Preparation Activity
Draw up a table comparing the approaches to community engagement for disaster resilience using the readings and lecture materials. You may wish to draw on Taylor's (2015) conceptual framework to help you unpack challenges and opportunities of using different approaches.
What are some of the issues of community engagement with this community?
How could they be addressed?
What could be an adaptive capacity initiative that could be implemented in this community?
You might also have a real-life scenario or a case study that you also wish to discuss.
Draw up a table comparing the approaches to community engagement for disaster resilience using the readings and lecture materials. You may wish to draw on Taylor's (2015) conceptual framework to help you unpack challenges and opportunities of using different approaches.