Select a community that is important to you and that you know from personal experience of having resided or currently residing in the community. Respond to the following questions about the community you select. For those areas in which you don’t have the information, identify possible sources (persons, internet sites, community offices, etc.) who might have the information that is missing.
- Identify the community selected.
- Did you live in the community? If yes, for how long and during what period of your life? If no, what led to your selection of this particular community for your assessment assignment?
- What is it about the community that it is important to you?
- Using these questions assess the community in relation to it’s:
- geography and environment (location, demographics, resources, meaning, identity, esteem);
- history, traditions, and culture (historical events, cultural diversity, dominant cultural group, role of geography & environment, sacred traditions);
- economic structures (employment, source of income, diversity, stability, ownership patterns, commuting patterns, recent history of economic activity, linkages with state, regional, national, and global),
- political/power structures (power brokers, form of local government, decision making participants and processes, linkage to external system decision making processes),
- social structures (role of church, education, and family; voluntary organizations, nature of social relationships, social norms and controls, role of language, stratification, stability).
- How have these community characteristics:
- influenced how your view the world?
- shaped your values and identity?
- shaped how you view and what you believe about people and cultures different from you and your culture?
- Interventions for Change:
- What changes might be identified by the community as being desirable to pursue?
- What strengths/resources/assets and strategies are available to the community to foster any changes identified?
- What evidence supports the strategies proposed for change?
