Two important principles in community work

1) Work in groups

The facilitator who is alone, and who goes to the community individually, may be successful however, let’s do not forget what promote what we live. We are going to train people to be together while we are alone. People learn from our behavior, and thus, I recommend that we have to be together too. It means that instead of one facilitator, be a team of facilitators who work together. This is our very precious experience when we were involved in poverty reduction project of the State Welfare Organization in Iran years ago. The facilitating bodies were the social work clinics in provinces. The clinics were run based on an individually managed entity. Therefore, they were somehow promoting individual management and work among communities. Just imagine: lonely facilitator talks about working together. It does not work. Even in our dialogues with some of the managers of the clinics, we heard they said: “there is not a culture of group activities in Iran, how you are trying to promote community work”. This is important to add that there should be a belief in community work too. Not only facilitators have to work in a team, they have to believe in team work. They must talk about their real experiences of success.

2) Do not be frustrated even if people are frustrated

In certain cases of community work (this is about Boompajuhan activities in communities), we found that people were not interested to continue: they are tired or they have not been successful in gaining the attention of others to their precious work or they could not move forward. In certain instances, you might hear that we could not continue since it has been useless. The facilitators have to be patient, and try to have meetings (or processes) with people to find solutions together. This is a problem like many other problems of the village that might have been resolved. This could have a solution too. Then encourage your local group to have a meeting. The members of the local group could talk about that. A structured dialogue could help them to understand the causes of the situation. Be patient and do not become frustrated.

The difference between a community and a neighborhood

A simple answer to the question on the difference of “community” and “neighborhood” could be a reference to the notion of “geography” since neighborhood has a strong geographic element, however, the first and the most important element in a community are the united people (or people bound by something) that may be in close proximity (like a neighborhood) or may not be. In this case, some may add that a neighborhood is a geographical notion while it is sometimes used in a physical sense, while community is a sociological one. Some may add that in a community, people are somehow united (by a common goal or a common ground) – they might have shared activities or even group events – where the people feel a sense of belonging. Meanwhile, the neighborhood has a boundary while there might be no reference to boundaries when we are talking about communities. For instance when you are referring to a neighborhood in a street (the street acts like an official designation – which means officially the street exists), then this street is a like a boundary that defines the neighborhood.

Others may add that a community is composed of certain number of neighborhood while a neighborhood is a community. In fact, each neighborhood may be one sub-community – if a community is composed of more than one neighborhood.

There might be consideration of rural and urban communities when we are discussing about the difference about a community and a neighborhood. In urban communities, neighborhood is important to consider while in rural communities people are living in neighborhood while there might be a sense of solidarity among people, which means a community is a neighborhood too.

There are also those who believe that there is no difference between the two notions: neighborhood and community can be used interchangeably – exactly when they are refereeing to those who are living in proximity and especially when people are from one race or ethnicity.

Photo taken from the book:

Facilitation of the poverty reduction processes:

a community-based approach (2014), published in Iran in Farsi

the picture has been designed

by Maryam Mansouri (Yazd)

In certain urban projects, neighborhood gains more important while whatever you do can be call a community-based activity with a powerful neighborhood component. Recognition of this fact can be important since neighborhood may have certain implications in the work. For instance dividing the community into neighborhood blocks can be done by the people themselves and they can even find names for their neighborhood sub-community. This is especially an important part of any community-based activity in a mega city like Tehran. I have noticed that you can not facilitate a meeting on a common issue in a community where people are from different neighborhoods, while when they are from one neighborhood, then the social capital (the level of trust) increases and the discussion or any further community-based research action moves more smoothly.

In conclusion, I request my facilitator colleagues in a big city like Tehran to pay a special attention to the notion of neighborhood in their community-based activities.