05/12/2017
Roles of Community Worker
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INTRODUCTION
Community is a group of people who come together and share some same culture, custom, and tradition to form a group as well as society. As student social worker, community organization or working with community is very important work field as community organization itself is the method of social work. Community organization is a well established method in social work and it has value oriented as well as a practice is guided by a sense of general principles. The meaning of community organization is “helping the community to solve its problems and needs”. And, the aim of community organization is “developing capacity” in the community “by making it more organized” to handle its needs and problems.
The term community has two distinct commutive meanings: 1) Community usually refers to a social unit larger than a small village that shares common values. The term can also refer to the national community or international community, and, 2) in biology, a community is a group of interacting living organisms sharing a populated environment. A community is a group or society, helping each other. And, the term organization means organize people to come together to work out the same or common goal.
Definition
According to Murray G. Ross (1967): The community organization is a process by which a community identifies its needs and objectives, gives priority to build, develops confidence, and well to work with them, finds resources ( internal and external) to deal with them, and in doing so extents and develops cooperative and collaborative attitudes practices in the community.
CHARACTERISTICS OF COMMUNITY LEADER
Traits of a good leader are common across disciplines, professions and geographical regions. Community leadership is unique in its approach and goals. Community leadership is not about managing or even coordinating. And it is certainly not about dictating or imposing your own ideas onto others. In addition to traits of superior leadership in any discipline, such as integrity and responsibility, here are ten characteristics that are particular to excellent community leaders:
1. Maximize Individuals’ Strengths
Community leaders often work with volunteers. They may be elected by members of the community, assigned to work with a group, or they simply step forward and want to help. In any case, community leaders rarely have the luxury of choosing who they work with.
Your job involves being able to identify the strengths and interests of each person on your leadership team and maximize those talents and skills in a way that keeps your team engaged in the work. Your fellow leaders need to feel that they are making a meaningful contribution to the group, the community and the work.
2. Balance the Needs of Your Leadership Group
Some individuals may have a strong need for control. Others may have a deep need to be appreciated for their time and service. As a community leader, your job is to balance everyone’s needs, as well as keep your sights focused on the work that needs to be done for the group to move forward.
3. Work as a Team
Let’s face it, community leadership is slow work. It is much less efficient than, say, military leadership, where underlings simply obey the orders of their superior officers. Community leadership means that one person does not do it all.
It can be useful to teach your leadership team the difference between efficiency and effectiveness. An efficient leader will take a task away from someone who is not completing their work in a timely manner. An effective leader will ensure that the person gets the support they need to complete the task. Effectiveness often takes more time than efficiency. Community leadership is about building relationships and working together. Being patient with one another and supporting one another process builds capacity and relationships. But be forewarned, this takes much more time than simply being efficient.
4. Mobilize Others
Even a leadership team can not do it all. You will likely have to work with staff and volunteers to undertake big projects. Community leadership is part education, part inspiration, part motivation and part mobilization.
Mobilizing others is not about telling them what to do, barking orders at them or dictating how things need to get done. It is about finding a balance between what needs to be done, who can do it, who is willing and has time to do it, assigning the work and then showing appreciation for others’ efforts. Learning to have some fun while you work together is an important aspect of mobilizing and motivating others.
5. Pitch In
There is a myth that leaders lead, and do-ers do. But in a community, leading by example is often the most effective way to get full buy-in for projects. Don’t schedule a community clean-up unless you are willing to get out there with a garbage bag yourself.
Community leaders are rarely have the luxury of focussing only on policy and governance. This kind of work involves arriving early, staying late, cleaning up, and generally rolling up your sleeves to pitch in.
6. Practice Stewardship
This is about getting people to take responsibility for their physical space and surroundings. This includes natural areas, structures and spaces. Stewardship means working together to protect, preserve and take care of your community. This involves renewing, repairing, rebuilding and constantly reviewing your physical community to ensure that it is healthy, strong and well-maintained.
7. Be Accountable to the Community
Above all else community leadership is about the people who live with you and near you. The people who form the community are the beneficiaries, but also those who whom you, as a leadership are accountable.
Community leadership is not just about policies, processes or procedures. More than anything, it is about people.
Often when I guide community leaders in my work, I will ask “What do you think will happen at the next Annual General Meeting if this does — or does not — move forward?” This keeps the leadership team focused on why they are doing what they do, and why they are really making decisions.
8. Think forward
There is a saying in some Aboriginal communities about thinking five generations ahead. Being a community leader means not only thinking for today, or even tomorrow, but being able to make wise decisions that will still benefit the residents long after the current leadership team is gone.
9. Recruit and Mentor New Leaders
Speaking of the current leadership team being gone, community leaders often get so caught up in all the work that needs to be done today, that they forget to think about tomorrow. Planning for the future is an important aspect of community leadership. Having a healthy base of volunteers and having individuals ready to take on new positions are indicators of a healthy community.
Community leadership work means building a succession plan to keep the community strong as you move forward into the future.
10. Walk Beside, Don’t Lead From Above
In some models, leadership is a position in a hierarchy. Those at the top of the hierarchy have the power and make the decisions. Community leadership is about developing every person’s capacity for leadership, starting with self-leadership and self-responsibility. Those who have positions of leadership must demonstrate principles and practices of good leadership by living the example. So, the community leader does not take the prime parking spot out of a sense of entitlement. There are no special privileges that put community leaders above others who live in the community. Every member of the community has responsibilities and rights. Community leaders walk beside others and listen to them.
A community leader’s job is not to take on all the problems of the world themselves and fix everything, but rather to work together with everyone in the community, to mobilize and guide others, to facilitate solutions and thing about the long-term health of the community and its people.
ROLES OF COMMUNITY LEADER
1. Enabler: In the enabler role, an addiction counselor helps communities become capable of coping with situations or stress of having members of the society battling substance use and abuse. Addiction counselor conveys hope, reducing resistance and ambivalence, recognizing and managing feelings, identifying and supporting personal strengths and social assets, breaking down problems into parts that can be solved more readily, and maintaining a focus on goals and the means of achieving them.
2. Mediator: The mediator role involves resolving arguments or conflicts micro, mezzo, or macro systems. At the macro level, the mediator helps various subsystems within a community, or a community and some other system, work out their differences. At the micro and mezzo levels, mediation helps in such areas as resolving divorce and child custody cases. A mediator remains neutral and does not side with either party in the dispute.
3. Integrator/Coordinator: Integration is the process of bringing together various parts to form a unified whole. Coordination involves bringing components together in some kind of organized manner. An addiction counselor can function as an integrator/coordinator in many ways, ranging from.
4. Advocator: The leader of the community advocates any issue on behalf of the people.
5. Broker: The community leader is as the bridge between the people and the resources. The role of the community leader is to link the people with the resources.
6. Negotiator: The community leader is as the negotiator of two persons or two groups or two communities in order to bring peace between them.
7. Educator: the community leader is as the educator to educate and let the people know their problems and needs.
8. Group facilitator: The community leader is as a facilitator of the group or community to let the participants share their ideas, and opinions to promote the individuals participations in the community.
9. Researcher: The community leader is as the researcher to find out the needs and problems of the community to find the proper methods to solve them.
10. Speaker: The community leader is as the speaker to speak on behalf of the community and people to bring some changes and development in the community.
11. Activist: The community leader is as the activist who motivate the people to work out on some issues and to work for the betterment or development of the community.
CONCLUSION
Community leadership is something that has a significant importance in every society. Every society, whether small or large, needs a leader and a role model-someone who they look up to and believe in. A community leader should have many essential qualities in themselves the most important of which is leadership and honesty. A good community leader should be a born leader, honest, supportive and loyal to his/her supporters so that the community members who look up to the leader can be proud to follow him/her.
A society or community without a leader is a place where mess takes place, no one is socially secure and where there is no a clear definition of justice. It is a place where evil runs wild, the innocent are punished and the guilty is served no justice. That is where the role of the community leadership comes into play. The community leader has to deal with all the problems of the community members, serve justice to the guilty, and reward the deserving. A community leader is someone who frightens the evil-doers and spreads smiles across the faces of the innocent.
The idea of community leadership has been implemented since a very long time. From the time of the early humans to date, there have been people living in a group or society. And to maintain peace and harmony inside a society and between two or more societies in the same area, a community leader is named. Whenever there would be a problem among society members, the community leader would attend to the problem and whatever solution they proposed is accepted by all. No one ever questions the decisions of community leaders in any society due to respect, and also fear-unless a rebellion forms to dethrone the leader. The community leaders also have to attend to inter-society problems where all the leaders from the communities involved would meet each other and negotiate.
In present times, an example of community leadership, except the idea being implemented in small communities, villages and colonies, is a country’s president. The sole idea of having a single person with decisive powers for a whole country has originated from the millenniums old idea of a community leader. The only differences are that the size of the community has increased and there are also some smaller power icons assisting the president.
The importance of community leadership in a society is tremendous and so are the roles and jobs of the community leader. The main role of a community leader in a society is to maintain order and decorum in the society and to prevent internal and external tussles and to solve them if any. A community leader also has other key roles like the responsibility of the society’s development, exposure to the outside world, the protection of their society from rivals, and to always boost the morale of their society members.
