The document discusses the concept of community, defining it as a social group with shared interests or characteristics, and emphasizes the importance of community action in fostering engagement and empowerment among members. It outlines the key roles and purposes of community action, such as improving local services and supporting marginalized groups, while also highlighting the dynamics of community change driven by social, cultural, and environmental factors. Additionally, it connects community action to applied social sciences, suggesting that understanding community dynamics is crucial for professionals in fields like education and social work.

1. COMMUNITY,
COMMUNITY ACTION
AND DYNAMICS

2. COMMUNITY
• Community is a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality,
share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage.
• Community is all the people living in an area or a group or groups of people who share
common interests.
• Community is a locality inhabited by such a group.
• Community is a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common
characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect
from the larger society within which it exists.
• Community is a group of people living in the same place or having particular
characteristics in common.

3. Individuals having significant interaction within a
specified area becomes one
of the contributory factors in forming
community. The word community was derived
from the Latin word communis which means
“common” or “shared”.

4. It may share a certain sense of place whether it is
geographical area or through a virtual space.
Geographical community is a community where
members share the same geographical vicinity such as
a village, province or neighborhood. Non-
geographical community is a community formed
based on needs, ideas, interests, identity, practices,
and roles in social institutions such as at home, all
work, in government, society, or the community at
large.

5. Communities may also be in two levels: Micro-level
community, a group is formed based on personal ties. This
may include groups formed for pursuing common interests or
goals like forming a small organization to hold a fund-raising
activity such as concerts. At macro-level, large group affiliation
is formed such as national communities, international
communities, and virtual communities. Companies and
corporations may develop various programs that would include
different members across the country. They will work on
meeting certain objectives and expand on the aspect of
community involvement.

6. Role of the Community
The role of the community includes the
following: community consultation, joint
planning, joint design, joint delivery and
community-led activities.

7. The following are the
importance of studying community:
1. It motivates people to work together – people feel a sense of community and
recognize the benefits of their involvement.
2. It encourages social, religious, or traditional obligations for mutual help.
3. People see a genuine opportunity to better their own lives and for the community.6
4. It understands policies promoting community participation that values social
capital.
5. Community participation could be understood as the direct involvement of citizenry
in the affairs of planning, governance, and overall development programs at local or
grassroot levels.

8. COMMUNITY ACTION
• Community action is any activity that increases the understanding, engagement and
empowerment of communities in the design and delivery of local services.
• Community action includes a broad range of activities and is sometimes described as
‘social action' or ‘community engagement'. These activities can vary in their objective,
the role the community plays, the types of activities involved, their scale and their
integration within the council. What they have in common is that they all involve greater
engagement of local citizens in the planning, design and delivery of local services.

9. There are 3-key points in grasping
the definition more meaningful:
Understanding – raise an awareness about
certain communal issues that needs to be
addressed. People develop the feeling of
involvement once they truly comprehend the
situation within. They come together to
support advocacies that will overcome
community needs and difficulties.

10. There are 3-key points in grasping
the definition more meaningful:
Engagement – Once issues are assessed
properly and people in the community
understand the needs, they work collaboratively
to act on it. The main goal of engaging in the
community is to improve the partnership and
coalitions among the community. It is important
that engagement occurs so that members will be
able to involve meaningfully in the activities that
they have created.

11. There are 3-key points in grasping
the definition more meaningful:
Empowerment – enable the people to
independently decide, plan-out and take action
to control the situation they have in the
community. This means, initiative and decisions
come from internal group organized for the
benefit of everyone. It is also necessary that the
community can provide significant networks and
linkages that will genuinely serve the advocacies
that they have built.

12. Purposes of Community
Action
1. To help and encourage the children and
the youth.
2. To help and support the marginalized
sector.
3. To invigorate and honor the elderly.
4. To strengthen the community, as a whole.

13. Importance of Community
Action
Accordingly, community action poses
importance to the dynamism of the people.
Community action is implemented not just out
of the whims of the leaders or just for a show,
rather, it is undergone for a cause. Because
of this ,the significance of a community action
could be broken down into the following:

14. 1. Community action is about putting communities
at the heart of their own local services. This means
that the people in the community are motivated in
making the community’s objectives and needs as their
focus and they themselves will be the ones taking
charge of the services to satisfy such. The community
members are the participants to any community action
initiative and whatever and however they are
capacitated, they themselves will be the ones who shall
deliver the identified service and gain from it.

15. 2. Building community and social capacity.
This presupposes that community action activities would help
develop skills which would capacitate the people for any
endeavor while they would be intimated with the needed
knowledge and ideas. The skills which the people would be
capacitated with shall have a long range effect, meaning, the
people could use such skill in engaging in business, or to earn an
income or to capacitate other people. This way, the people
become active participants to the community-building.
As mentioned earlier, it is not capacitating the people for just a
day or a week, but could even be for a lifetime.

16. 3. Community resilience.
This means that the community could become self-sustaining
with the skills and knowledge they are capacitated with. For
instance, the women sector are made to undergo trainings like
basket-weaving or the male sector are given a training on
handicrafts production using local materials, then the
community is able to support itself economically. When the
community becomes a self-sustaining entity, then the
community as a whole shall be able to withstand whatever
problems, difficulties and issues that will get in their way.

17. COMMUNITY DYNAMICS
The changes in the community are brought
about by social, cultural and environmental
experiences whether it is positive or negative
development that impacts within the community.
People adopt the changes and it has shaped
their way of life.

18. According to Oxford Languages and Google,
“dynamics refer to the forces or properties which
stimulate growth, development, or change within a
system process.” Basing from this definition, we could
deduce that the word dynamics entails vigor, energy,
stamina, strength enthusiasm, and any other positive
stimulus within the person and beyond him, so as to
bring about growth and development or any welcome
change in the person.

19. Community dynamics then would refer
to a process of change in the midst of
the people in the community, powered
by the unequalled vigor and enthusiasm
of the same people. Further, there shall
exist community dynamics when the
people are capacitated as well.

20. For a more thorough understanding of what
community dynamics is, let us take a look at the
indicators of its significance, which is summarized
as follows:
1. Community dynamics allows the members of the community to think
creatively and act strategically towards the achievement of community-set
goals.
2. With community dynamics at hand, the quality of living of the more
vulnerable sectors of the community is alleviated.
3. Community dynamics allows the people to develop a good insight of
how and what they feel about the place they live in.

21. Community Dynamics and
Applied Social Sciences
In all three areas, the practitioner needs to have a background about
the personality that makes up a community she is bound to work for
and work with. Because if one has not experienced being immersed
with a certain community previously, she would not be in the know on
how to deal with the energy, stamina and enthusiasm of your clientele.
Having a feel of community dynamism would capacitate say for
instance a social worker to effectively and efficiently dispense of her
job in the field dealing with the marginalized sector as her clientele, or
a police officer in dealing with offenders or a teacher dealing not only
with her students but with the stakeholders as well.

22. Community Action and
Applied Social Sciences
Most of the community action programs designed and
implemented are related to the tasks of Social
Workers, Communication practitioners or Teachers or
Counsellors and the like. Examples of which are
Reading Program for the Children and the Youth,
Leadership Training and a lot more. It goes without
saying then that community action and Applied Social
Sciences work together and would provide the
appropriate training for the would-be-graduates of
college programs aligned with Applied Social Sciences.

23. Career Choices and Community
Dynamics and Community Action
As per observation, most graduates of the Humanities and Social
Sciences strand, venture into college programs like Psychology,
Education, Criminology, Communication Arts and Bachelor of Arts
courses. And if you look deeper into the nature of work one has to
engage with after graduation, you are right, the job calls for some
skills and knowledge of community dynamics and community
action. For instance, as cited earlier, as an Education graduate one
would not only be charged with teaching the learners but to become
the guidance counsellor giving advices to the students and even the
parents or go for home visitations maybe bringing with her some
provisions for the concerned student.