Chapter 9: Building Support for the Proposed Change
The reading for this week included a lot of information and provided a framework for planning change on the macro level. The reading was broken into three key components including designing an intervention, building support and selecting an approach to change.
Important points from the reading and questions to think about when creating our own proposals will be highlighted in each section.
Designing an intervention
• Study and analyze the problem, population, and/ or arena – This is similar to what we have already done with our community profiles
• Define what is the cause of the intervention (reduce or eliminate the problem) in our communities?
• What results can be expected from the interventions we implement in our communities? Think of success stories and problems in our communities
This section is a good framework on how to begin figuring out what you want your focus to be in your community.
Building Support
• This section focuses on who is involved /participants- In our case right now involvement includes classmates & possibly anyone we have encountered in the community that is willing to help
• History- Who first recognized the problem and are they able to be involved in your intervention?
• Identify who is coordinating the intervention
• Identify who the intervention will benefit
• Who has control/ authority to approve the proposal?
• What organizations will be involved?
• What needs to be changed for this intervention to be successful?
• Who will be the leader in charge of moving the change toward implementation?
** Some of these questions and points will overlap**
Having support from the community is an important agent in implementing effective and positive change in the community. Without support it will be difficult to propose a change because the community may not be ready and or in agreement with the change.
Capacity & Approach to Change
• Evaluate the readiness to support the proposed change
- Availability of resources, openness, commitments, abilities, degree of outside residence
• Identify the approach to change
- Policy- format statement /course of action
- Program- structured activities
- Project- smaller, time-limited, flexible, & adapted into the need – This is the approach I think most of our proposals will be
- Personnel- change at the personal level (communities & organizations come together
- Practice- a way to carry out a basic function
What stage are you currently in with your intervention proposal? What information do you still need? Out of the three categories, which seems to be the most important and which seems to be the most difficult?
Barissa,
ReplyDeleteThank you for such a fabulous summary of the reading! I would agree with what Jennifer mentioned above. I too feel like I have been working through parts of stages one and two at the same time. Part of this could be because we have such a limited amount of time to get to know our communities, but I also think the two stages also go hand in hand. If you are out in the community getting to know people and institutions, ideally you are also developing rapport as you go.
I would also agree with Jennifer that actually creating the proposal will be the most challenging part. I have been surprised by how much I have enjoyed going to events in my community and getting to know people. It has been so inspiring! However, I still feel like there is so much more to learn about my community. It will be difficult to come up with a proposal based on just a few months of getting to know the community, but I know that is part of the experience. I think I will have a much better understanding of community practice by the end of our project!