Community Work Values among the core values of community work are three values; first is SELF-MANAGEMENT, second is Autonomy, third is Co-operation. These are three basic values for working with community groups and social movements, and it is important especially when working with young people to work out what these values look like and mean.
Let’s start with SELF-MANAGEMENT-community work stresses the importance of face-to-face interactions, often in small groups or networks of people working together. Self-management refers to the belief that various styles of democratic and inclusive decision making generally work better in the long run than more elitist and authoritarian styles of organizing people. Democratic styles of decision making might seem to take longer, but it produces better outcomes in the long run, (it is waiting for that long run that can try people’s patience occasionally).
Now we come to promoting young people’s autonomy-promoting peoples autonomy refers to people managing their own affairs and to the achievement over time of a growing confidence and competence that we have when we are making the decisions that affect us most directly.
Promoting autonomy according to youth work profession refers to a process and an objective. Promoting young people’s autonomy is a process by which young people get the confidence and develop the skills to make decisions. It gives effect to a core commitment of modern community work-that young people can be empowered.
In the same way, promoting autonomy is not without its difficulties because it often raises issues relating to (1) to the power of (who you work for youths, who you want to work for youths) and the role of you (who work, wants to work) in community settings and (2) to the belief that young people are too young or too immature to have the capacity to be autonomous. Promoting peoples autonomy can cause considerable anxiety and difficulty if groups pursue empowerment strategies in ways that upset (who you work, wants to work) or start to make decisions and judgments that certain (who works and wants to work) do not agree with.
Equally, many adults against all the evidence of history maintain that chronological or biological age is an impediment to young people being autonomous. This ignores the fact that we have plentiful evidence from history and anthropology of young people taking or being given responsibility for themselves or being given important leadership positions.
Let’s move on to CO-OPERATION-co-operation has for a long time been of central value in community work (Emery & Emery 1974).It represents a belief that in collective processes there is strength and wisdom greater and more worthwhile than that found in decisions made by one or two people, especially when those decisions affect many other people (For example, is MPs and CDOs for two people and constituency for many people).
That’s why I want to say that making collective action work means relying on people being tolerant, being prepared to compromise and to see the value of collective decision making, in other words, be co-operative (These values are at the heart of the community development and young people).
Infact, the value of co-operative is often contrasted with notions of individualism, competition and hierarchy (Vatano 1972, Adams 1990).We must know that most young people, because they are so often placed in communal and collective situations like clubs and teams, are probably at least as good at co-operating as older people, although they may feel less like doing it given their experience of compulsion that so often accompanies their experiences.
In the same way, there is not much that can be done to change the fact that we are leaders,parliamentarians,CDOs,35 or 50 years old and that people we are working with are 7 to 13,14 to 21 years old. We can’t forget the fact that our social and educational background may be very different.
What the effective community worker needs to be able to do includes;
Firstly, Acknowledging these differences as real and secondly showing preparedness to really listen to what people are saying, to learn from them and to hear what they say-this requires considerable patience and skills.
That covers, and am cool to say, ladies and gentlemen, that community work is the product of young men and women addressing good questions like “Why can’t we have a place to meet after school that meets our needs or Why can’t we have a hang-out public spaces so that we may feel safe and welcome, feel good and feel healthy or Why must we allow the loss of natural resources that only satisfy culprit individuals while our population increases very rapidly.
Bewlie Soreh
Western Province
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