Community Mobilization 1 What is a Community A
Community Mobilization 1
What is a Community? A community is typically characterized by: A sense of belonging A sense of purpose and common goals A high degree of cooperation and participation in pursuing common goals An inter-personal climate characterized by mutual respect, sense of fraternity and/or fellowship, etc. “Community” refers here to High Risk Groups (HRGs): 2 Injecting Drug Users (IDUs) Female Sex Workers (FSWs) Men having Sex with Men (MSM)
What is Community Mobilization? Community Mobilization is: A process of consulting with community Creating space for community Giving community a role in the decision making and management of programs Building capacity of community to assume ownership of programs 3 Contd…
Why Community Mobilization? 1. Achieving Scale and Coverage Makes HIV prevention a community priority Uses organic bonding, through which individuals share emotions and understand/share responsibility so that their peers utilize services, etc. 2. Improving Quality 4 Strengthens collective bargaining power, ensuring safe practices between people with unequal power relations Maintains and reinforces quality of services and not just as beneficiaries Contd…
Why Community Mobilization? 3. Sustainability 5 Ensures sharing of responsibility by each member for consolidation and continuation of intervention Actively initiates mobilization of resources and evolves innovative mechanisms
Level of Participation for material incentives - Affected community participates in activity only because they need the material benefits of doing so, e. g. money Consultation - Affected community is asked about an activity by externals but their views may or may not influence it Information Giving - People are simply informed that an activity has been designed 6
Self-mobilization Joint Decision- Making 7
Challenges ● Keeping ownership alive at community level ● Achieving long-term sustainability ● Systematically mobilizing communities throughout a large area ● Responding to peer-driven needs (monetary and food support, etc. ) ● Monitoring and evaluation that is sensitive to community ownership and need for information for donor support 8
Barriers ● Judgmental attitude of service providers ● Bringing all the community members together on one platform ● Unpredictable behaviours of IDUs due to overwhelming need to do drugs ● Low self-esteem of IDUs ● Social and legal status of IDUs results in denial of their rights and entitlements ● Lack of capacity of the community members and awareness of rights 9
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