This document discusses community work, community development, and community action. It defines community work as helping people identify problems and opportunities in their community and take collective action to address them. Community work involves empowering people, promoting social inclusion, advancing human rights, social justice, and collective action. Community development seeks to empower individuals and communities to handle problems effectively through skills and participation. It defines community development and differentiates community organization and community action, noting community action involves collective action in situations of conflict.

1. Community Work, Community
Development and Community
Action
Dr. Purshottam
Assistant Professor (Guest Faculty)
Department of Social Work, KUK

2. Community Work
• Community work has been defined as a type of
activity practiced by people who are employed to
help others to identify problems and opportunities
that they have and to come to realistic decisions to
take collective action to meet those problems and
opportunities.
• In community work it is the professionals from
different disciplines like education, urban
management, community relations and social work
who help people in a community to develop the
consciousness of their problems and resources and
to take suitable decisions for facilitating necessary
united action.

3. Conti…
Community Work involves
• A commitment to empowerment, to ensure that
people have opportunities to make choices
about the actions they would like to take and
have the ability to have those choices
implemented.
• A commitment to social inclusion so that all
individuals and groups are able to participate
fully in and befit from the social, economic, and
political activity of society as a whole.

4. Conti…
• A commitment to advancing human rights
recognizing the inherent value of each person,
regardless of background, where we live, what
we look like, or what we think or believe.
• A commitment to social justice in terms of the
distribution of wealth, opportunities, and
privileges within a society.
• A commitment to collective action or advocacy
or the genuine importance of people working
together to address common problems or
issues.

5. Community Work and Community
Organisation
• Community Work involves practice of personnel
from different disciplines including social work,
whereas community organisations involves
social workers only.
• Community work is problem oriented, but
Community organization is oriented towards
community planning and integration. It is a type
of activity for solving problems and tackling
situation.

6. Community Development
• Community development is a broader term: it
seeks to empower individuals and groups of
people by providing skills
• Structured intervention to build confidence to
handle problems effectively, community
development helps to foster social inclusion and
equality.
• Community Development may be defined as the
process by which the efforts of people themselves
are united with government authorities to improve
the all over conditions of communities and to
enable them to contribute fully to the national
progress.

7. Definitions
• Friedlander (1958): “Community development is a
method, in which the people of a community
organize themselves for planning and action;
define their common and individual needs and
problems; make group and individual plans to
meet their needs and solve their problems; execute
these plans with a maximum of reliance upon
community resources; and supplement these
resources when necessary with services and
material from government and non- governmental
agencies outside the community”.

8. Community Organization (CO) and
Community Development (CD)
There is a common philosophical base. CD is the larger and
more comprehensive process which includes community
organization.
• Both aim to enable people to live happy and fully
developed life
• CO is a method of social work whereas CD is a
programme planned to bring social change.
• CO emphasis on process, but CD focuses on end.
• CO is a continuous process, without and time binding,
and is achieved as per the pace and participation of
people. CD is time bound and one has to take action
within stipulated time to achieve goals.

9. Conti…
• CO emphasizes people’s participation whereas
CD focuses on people’s development
• CO- Assistance of govt. and other agencies does
not matter, CD- considered important
• CO- people plan and execute programmes, CD-
external agencies plan programme, people’s
participation is optional.
• CO- is universal to all communities but CD
differs from community to community, people
to people.

10. Community Action
• The term ‘Community Action’ has been used “to
indicate participation in or work with community groups
in conflict with authority”.
• It involves the poor and others who identify with them
in developing an awareness of the common situation
which is to be countered by collective actions.
• Thus community action is necessarily needed in a
situation characterized by conflict whereas community
organization can be practised in any situation
irrespective of its cooperative or conflictual nature.
• Community action is a counter- active measure
involving collective action for fulfilling the correct
demands of the common people.