essay about community action

JavaScript seems to be disabled in your browser. For the best experience on our site, be sure to turn on Javascript in your browser.

Importance of Local Community Action in Shaping Development

Introduction

The need for local participation and the organization of local residents to meet the challenges facing their communities is of increasing importance. Extension professionals and policy-makers are more frequently faced with the task of establishing programs in settings characterized by conflict among different groups of stakeholders with very different needs, values, and policy preferences. In many communities, these conflicts are often rooted in differences between groups that seek to protect community quality and those that seek to exploit local resources (especially the local workforce and natural resource base) as a means of achieving economic development. Equally common is the consistent transfer of responsibilities for services from government agencies to the private community sector. Such conditions have resulted in local residents taking on a greater role in providing services and planning for future needs. 

In response to the pressures and changes in our communities, activists, grassroots social change organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and coalitions of concerned community groups have emerged to shape and guide the development process. Similarly organized local residents have played instrumental roles in identifying new development options in localities that historically were presented with few such options. Small-scale civil society organizations (SCSOs) sometimes develop in communities with holistic responses to community needs (McGovern, 2013; Olson and Brennan, 2018; Olson and Brennan, 2017). These and other types of community-based action in these and other settings is seen as essential to community development and to the social and economic well-being of the locale.

Community and the Action Process

The emergence of community involves both interaction among residents and community action.  Community action refers to the process of building social relationships in pursuit of common community interests and maintaining local life (Wilkinson, 1991).  Community action is seen as being the foundation of the community development process because it encompasses deliberate and positive efforts designed to meet the general needs of all local residents.  This process represents multiple and diverse interests in the locality, and consequently provides a more comprehensive approach to community development (Wilkinson, 1991). Therefore, the action process is intended to benefit the entire community and to cut across divides that may exist (class, race, social), often arising from an emotional or social need (Phillimore & McCabe, 2015).

In the process of community development, local action focuses on the improvement of social well-being and involves people working together in pursuit of their general interests.  This power is manifested in the ability of individuals to come together and work toward common goals. When diverse individuals and their organizations interact with one another, they begin to mutually understand the needs and wants that are common to all residents (Wilkinson, 1991; Bridger, Brennan, and Luloff, 2011; McGovern, 2013; Phillimore & McCabe, 2015).  Such action provides local residents with the ability to retain community identities, maintain local control over decision-making, and address their own development needs. It is a central component of community and social well-being.

The existence of community action directs attention to the fact that local people acting together often have the power to transform and change their community (Gaventa, 1980; Bridger, Brennan, and Luloff, 2011; Olson and Brennan, 2018; Olson and Brennan, 2017; McGovern, 2013). Community action and corresponding development can be seen as the process of building relationships that increase the adaptive capacity of local people within a common territory.  This adaptive capacity is reflected in the ability of people to manage, utilize, and enhance those resources available to them in addressing their local issues (Wilkinson, 1991; Bridger, Brennan, and Luloff, 2011; Luloff and Bridger, 2003; Phillimore & McCabe, 2015; McGovern, 2013). As long as people care about each other and the place they live, every community has the potential for such collective action.  This ability allows distinctions to be made between simple aggregates of people and actual communities.

The Community Action Process

To impact social well-being, community action must seek the development of community, not simply the individual elements within it (Summers, 1986; Christenson and Robinson, 1989; Wilkinson, 1991; McGovern, 2013; Olson and Brennan, 2018; Olson and Brennan, 2017). The community action process can be seen as containing far more than simple individual actions and efforts (Wilkinson, 1991; Seyfang & Smith, 2007; McGovern, 2013). Most effective action efforts proceed through a series of steps that focus on solving specific problems and bringing residents closer together.  Five stages of accomplishment, including initiation, organization of sponsorship, goal setting, recruitment, and implementation, can be identified within this process (Wilkinson, 1970; Wilkinson, 1991):

The first stage, initiation, focuses on promoting awareness of the issue related to the action. Initiation and spread of interest occur when community members recognize and define an issue as being a problem or need, and begin to discuss it as a potential focus for group action.

The second stage focuses on the organization of sponsorship. This step addresses the structures, organizations, and resources available within and outside of the community.  Such factors are important in relation to assessing community needs and the development of action efforts to address perceived problems.

The third stage is goal setting and strategy development. This stage develops targets for action and identifies strategies for achieving community-decided goals.

The fourth stage is recruitment and mobilization of needed resources including people, money, and materials.  Community members possess a variety of experience, skills, funding, materials, networks, and other resources vital to achieving desired community goals.  Organizing and maximizing these resources significantly impacts the success of community action efforts.

The final stage involves the application of these resources in the implementation of plans to achieve the desired goals.  At this stage, specific actions are taken, assessed, adjusted, and implemented again.

Community action and the emergence of community should not be seen as representing romantic or idealized notions of local harmony and solidarity (Wilkinson, 1991; Bridger, Brennan, and Luloff, 2011; Luloff and Bridger, 2003; McGovern, 2013; Olson and Brennan, 2018; Olson and Brennan, 2017). The truth is that focused and deliberate action represents something far different. Action emerges out of interaction between diverse social groups, who often have clashing or at least distinctly different points of view. Interaction facilitates the coming together of such groups to assess their common and general needs. From this they form plans for action that benefit all involved, and ultimately the community in general.

The importance of organizing diverse local residents to help shape local development cannot be overstated.  By providing a comprehensive assessment of local conditions that represents all segments of the community, more efficient and successful programs can be developed.  The input and guidance from local residents allows development to build on the unique conditions and character of the community and allow local decision making to remain in the locale.  All of these create an environment where active local residents directly shape the community and its well-being.

Bridger, J.C., Brennan, M.A., and Luloff, A.E. 2011. "The Interactional Approach to Community", Chapter 9, p. 85-100 included in J. Robinson and G. Green (eds.), New Perspectives in Community Development. Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press.

Christenson, J. A. and J. W. Robinson. 1989. Community Development in Perspective. Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press.

Gaventa, J. 1980. Power and Powerlessness:  Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Luloff, A.E., and J. Bridger. 2003.  Community Agency and Local Development.  Pp. 203-213 in, Challenges for Rural America in the Twenty-First Century, edited by D. Brown and L. Swanson. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.

McGovern, Pauline. 2013. "Cross-sector partnerships with small voluntary organizations: some reflections from a case study of a mutual support group." Voluntary Sector Review 4 (2): 223-240.

Olson, B. and Brennan, M.  2018. "From Community Engagement to Community Emergence: The Holistic Program Design Approach."  International Journal of Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement. 5(1): 5-19. 

Olson, B. and Brennan, M. 2017.  "From Community Engagement to Community Emergence:  A Conceptual Framework and Model to Rethink Youth-Community Interaction".  In:  The Comprehensive Handbook for Community Development. R. Phillips and B. McGrath, Editors. Taylor & Francis Publishers. 

Phillimore, J., & McCabe, A. 2015. Small-scale civil society and social policy: the importance of experiential learning, insider knowledge and diverse motivations in shaping community action. Voluntary Sector Review, 6(2), 135-151.

Seyfang, G., & Smith, A. 2007. Grassroots innovations for sustainable development: Towards a new research and policy agenda. Environmental politics, 16(4), 584-603.

Summers, G. 1986. "Rural Community Development." Annual Review of Sociology. 12:341-371.

Wilkinson, K. 1970. "Phases and roles in community action." Rural Sociology. 35 (1): 54-68.

Wilkinson, K. 1991. The Community in Rural America. New York, NY: Greenwood Press, 1991.

Useful Websites and Resources

Center for Economic and Community Development

Center for Regional Development

The Community Development Society

Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development

Southern Rural Development Center

UNESCO Chair in Community, Leadership, and Youth Development Program at Penn State

• Community and Leadership Development
• International Development
• Research Methods and Statistics
• Social Change/Social Movements
• Rural Sociology
• Environmental/Natural Resource Sociology

You may also be interested in ...

Susquehanna County Ag Day

Extension Memories of the Twentieth Century

Grant Writing: How to Find Funds and Write a Winning Proposal

Gender in Agricultural Programs: Filling the GAP

Agriculture: Working for You

Positive Youth Development / Strategies for Creating a 4-H Welcoming Environment

The Farmer Stress Management Toolbox Part 2

How to Become a Community Leader

The Joy of Farm Watching: A Roadside Guide to Pennsylvania Agriculture

Best Practices for Managing and Moderating Community Social Media Groups

Personalize your experience with penn state extension and stay informed of the latest in agriculture..

How to Write the Community Essay – Guide with Examples (2023-24)

September 6, 2023

Students applying to college this year will inevitably confront the community essay. In fact, most students will end up responding to several community essay prompts for different schools. For this reason, you should know more than simply how to approach the community essay as a genre. Rather, you will want to learn how to decipher the nuances of each particular prompt, in order to adapt your response appropriately. In this article, we’ll show you how to do just that, through several community essay examples. These examples will also demonstrate how to avoid cliché and make the community essay authentically and convincingly your own.

Emphasis on Community

Do keep in mind that inherent in the word “community” is the idea of multiple people. The personal statement already provides you with a chance to tell the college admissions committee about yourself as an individual. The community essay, however, suggests that you depict yourself among others. You can use this opportunity to your advantage by showing off interpersonal skills, for example. Or, perhaps you wish to relate a moment that forged important relationships. This in turn will indicate what kind of connections you’ll make in the classroom with college peers and professors.

Apart from comprising numerous people, a community can appear in many shapes and sizes. It could be as small as a volleyball team, or as large as a diaspora. It could fill a town soup kitchen, or spread across five boroughs. In fact, due to the internet, certain communities today don’t even require a physical place to congregate. Communities can form around a shared identity, shared place, shared hobby, shared ideology, or shared call to action. They can even arise due to a shared yet unforeseen circumstance.

What is the Community Essay All About?             

In a nutshell, the community essay should exhibit three things:

• An aspect of yourself, 2. in the context of a community you belonged to, and 3. how this experience may shape your contribution to the community you’ll join in college.

It may look like a fairly simple equation: 1 + 2 = 3. However, each college will word their community essay prompt differently, so it’s important to look out for additional variables. One college may use the community essay as a way to glimpse your core values. Another may use the essay to understand how you would add to diversity on campus. Some may let you decide in which direction to take it—and there are many ways to go!

To get a better idea of how the prompts differ, let’s take a look at some real community essay prompts from the current admission cycle.

Sample 2023-2024 Community Essay Prompts

1) brown university.

“Students entering Brown often find that making their home on College Hill naturally invites reflection on where they came from. Share how an aspect of your growing up has inspired or challenged you, and what unique contributions this might allow you to make to the Brown community. (200-250 words)”

A close reading of this prompt shows that Brown puts particular emphasis on place. They do this by using the words “home,” “College Hill,” and “where they came from.” Thus, Brown invites writers to think about community through the prism of place. They also emphasize the idea of personal growth or change, through the words “inspired or challenged you.” Therefore, Brown wishes to see how the place you grew up in has affected you. And, they want to know how you in turn will affect their college community.

“NYU was founded on the belief that a student’s identity should not dictate the ability for them to access higher education. That sense of opportunity for all students, of all backgrounds, remains a part of who we are today and a critical part of what makes us a world-class university. Our community embraces diversity, in all its forms, as a cornerstone of the NYU experience.

We would like to better understand how your experiences would help us to shape and grow our diverse community. Please respond in 250 words or less.”

Here, NYU places an emphasis on students’ “identity,” “backgrounds,” and “diversity,” rather than any physical place. (For some students, place may be tied up in those ideas.) Furthermore, while NYU doesn’t ask specifically how identity has changed the essay writer, they do ask about your “experience.” Take this to mean that you can still recount a specific moment, or several moments, that work to portray your particular background. You should also try to link your story with NYU’s values of inclusivity and opportunity.

3) University of Washington

“Our families and communities often define us and our individual worlds. Community might refer to your cultural group, extended family, religious group, neighborhood or school, sports team or club, co-workers, etc. Describe the world you come from and how you, as a product of it, might add to the diversity of the UW. (300 words max) Tip: Keep in mind that the UW strives to create a community of students richly diverse in cultural backgrounds, experiences, values and viewpoints.”

UW ’s community essay prompt may look the most approachable, for they help define the idea of community. You’ll notice that most of their examples (“families,” “cultural group, extended family, religious group, neighborhood”…) place an emphasis on people. This may clue you in on their desire to see the relationships you’ve made. At the same time, UW uses the words “individual” and “richly diverse.” They, like NYU, wish to see how you fit in and stand out, in order to boost campus diversity.

Writing Your First Community Essay

Begin by picking which community essay you’ll write first. (For practical reasons, you’ll probably want to go with whichever one is due earliest.) Spend time doing a close reading of the prompt, as we’ve done above. Underline key words. Try to interpret exactly what the prompt is asking through these keywords.

Next, brainstorm. I recommend doing this on a blank piece of paper with a pencil. Across the top, make a row of headings. These might be the communities you’re a part of, or the components that make up your identity. Then, jot down descriptive words underneath in each column—whatever comes to you. These words may invoke people and experiences you had with them, feelings, moments of growth, lessons learned, values developed, etc. Now, narrow in on the idea that offers the richest material and that corresponds fully with the prompt.

Lastly, write! You’ll definitely want to describe real moments, in vivid detail. This will keep your essay original, and help you avoid cliché. However, you’ll need to summarize the experience and answer the prompt succinctly, so don’t stray too far into storytelling mode.

How To Adapt Your Community Essay

Once your first essay is complete, you’ll need to adapt it to the other colleges involving community essays on your list. Again, you’ll want to turn to the prompt for a close reading, and recognize what makes this prompt different from the last. For example, let’s say you’ve written your essay for UW about belonging to your swim team, and how the sports dynamics shaped you. Adapting that essay to Brown’s prompt could involve more of a focus on place. You may ask yourself, how was my swim team in Alaska different than the swim teams we competed against in other states?

Once you’ve adapted the content, you’ll also want to adapt the wording to mimic the prompt. For example, let’s say your UW essay states, “Thinking back to my years in the pool…” As you adapt this essay to Brown’s prompt, you may notice that Brown uses the word “reflection.” Therefore, you might change this sentence to “Reflecting back on my years in the pool…” While this change is minute, it cleverly signals to the reader that you’ve paid attention to the prompt, and are giving that school your full attention.

What to Avoid When Writing the Community Essay  

• Avoid cliché. Some students worry that their idea is cliché, or worse, that their background or identity is cliché. However, what makes an essay cliché is not the content, but the way the content is conveyed. This is where your voice and your descriptions become essential.
• Avoid giving too many examples. Stick to one community, and one or two anecdotes arising from that community that allow you to answer the prompt fully.
• Don’t exaggerate or twist facts. Sometimes students feel they must make themselves sound more “diverse” than they feel they are. Luckily, diversity is not a feeling. Likewise, diversity does not simply refer to one’s heritage. If the prompt is asking about your identity or background, you can show the originality of your experiences through your actions and your thinking.

Community Essay Examples and Analysis

Brown university community essay example.

I used to hate the NYC subway. I’ve taken it since I was six, going up and down Manhattan, to and from school. By high school, it was a daily nightmare. Spending so much time underground, underneath fluorescent lighting, squashed inside a rickety, rocking train car among strangers, some of whom wanted to talk about conspiracy theories, others who had bedbugs or B.O., or who manspread across two seats, or bickered—it wore me out. The challenge of going anywhere seemed absurd. I dreaded the claustrophobia and disgruntlement.

Yet the subway also inspired my understanding of community. I will never forget the morning I saw a man, several seats away, slide out of his seat and hit the floor. The thump shocked everyone to attention. What we noticed: he appeared drunk, possibly homeless. I was digesting this when a second man got up and, through a sort of awkward embrace, heaved the first man back into his seat. The rest of us had stuck to subway social codes: don’t step out of line. Yet this second man’s silent actions spoke loudly. They said, “I care.”

That day I realized I belong to a group of strangers. What holds us together is our transience, our vulnerabilities, and a willingness to assist. This community is not perfect but one in motion, a perpetual work-in-progress. Now I make it my aim to hold others up. I plan to contribute to the Brown community by helping fellow students and strangers in moments of precariousness.    

Brown University Community Essay Example Analysis

Here the student finds an original way to write about where they come from. The subway is not their home, yet it remains integral to ideas of belonging. The student shows how a community can be built between strangers, in their responsibility toward each other. The student succeeds at incorporating key words from the prompt (“challenge,” “inspired” “Brown community,” “contribute”) into their community essay.

UW Community Essay Example

I grew up in Hawaii, a world bound by water and rich in diversity. In school we learned that this sacred land was invaded, first by Captain Cook, then by missionaries, whalers, traders, plantation owners, and the U.S. government. My parents became part of this problematic takeover when they moved here in the 90s. The first community we knew was our church congregation. At the beginning of mass, we shook hands with our neighbors. We held hands again when we sang the Lord’s Prayer. I didn’t realize our church wasn’t “normal” until our diocese was informed that we had to stop dancing hula and singing Hawaiian hymns. The order came from the Pope himself.

Eventually, I lost faith in God and organized institutions. I thought the banning of hula—an ancient and pure form of expression—seemed medieval, ignorant, and unfair, given that the Hawaiian religion had already been stamped out. I felt a lack of community and a distrust for any place in which I might find one. As a postcolonial inhabitant, I could never belong to the Hawaiian culture, no matter how much I valued it. Then, I was shocked to learn that Queen Ka’ahumanu herself had eliminated the Kapu system, a strict code of conduct in which women were inferior to men. Next went the Hawaiian religion. Queen Ka’ahumanu burned all the temples before turning to Christianity, hoping this religion would offer better opportunities for her people.

Community Essay (Continued)

I’m not sure what to make of this history. Should I view Queen Ka’ahumanu as a feminist hero, or another failure in her islands’ tragedy? Nothing is black and white about her story, but she did what she thought was beneficial to her people, regardless of tradition. From her story, I’ve learned to accept complexity. I can disagree with institutionalized religion while still believing in my neighbors. I am a product of this place and their presence. At UW, I plan to add to campus diversity through my experience, knowing that diversity comes with contradictions and complications, all of which should be approached with an open and informed mind.

UW Community Essay Example Analysis

This student also manages to weave in words from the prompt (“family,” “community,” “world,” “product of it,” “add to the diversity,” etc.). Moreover, the student picks one of the examples of community mentioned in the prompt, (namely, a religious group,) and deepens their answer by addressing the complexity inherent in the community they’ve been involved in. While the student displays an inner turmoil about their identity and participation, they find a way to show how they’d contribute to an open-minded campus through their values and intellectual rigor.

What’s Next

For more on supplemental essays and essay writing guides, check out the following articles:

• How to Write the Why This Major Essay + Example
• How to Write the Overcoming Challenges Essay + Example
• How to Start a College Essay – 12 Techniques and Tips
• College Essay

Kaylen Baker

With a BA in Literary Studies from Middlebury College, an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University, and a Master’s in Translation from Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis, Kaylen has been working with students on their writing for over five years. Previously, Kaylen taught a fiction course for high school students as part of Columbia Artists/Teachers, and served as an English Language Assistant for the French National Department of Education. Kaylen is an experienced writer/translator whose work has been featured in Los Angeles Review, Hybrid, San Francisco Bay Guardian, France Today, and Honolulu Weekly, among others.

• 2-Year Colleges
• Application Strategies
• Best Colleges by Major
• Best Colleges by State
• Big Picture
• Career & Personality Assessment
• College Search/Knowledge
• College Success
• Costs & Financial Aid
• Dental School Admissions
• Extracurricular Activities
• Graduate School Admissions
• High School Success
• High Schools
• Law School Admissions
• Medical School Admissions
• Navigating the Admissions Process
• Online Learning
• Private High School Spotlight
• Summer Program Spotlight
• Summer Programs
• Test Prep Provider Spotlight

“Innovative and invaluable…use this book as your college lifeline.”

— Lynn O'Shaughnessy

Nationally Recognized College Expert

College Planning in Your Inbox

Join our information-packed monthly newsletter.

I am a... Student Student Parent Counselor Educator Other First Name Last Name Email Address Zip Code Area of Interest Business Computer Science Engineering Fine/Performing Arts Humanities Mathematics STEM Pre-Med Psychology Social Studies/Sciences Submit

Search form

• Table of Contents
• Troubleshooting Guide
• A Model for Getting Started
• Justice Action Toolkit
• Best Change Processes
• Databases of Best Practices
• Online Courses
• Ask an Advisor
• Subscribe to eNewsletter
• Community Stories
• YouTube Channel
• About the Tool Box
• How to Use the Tool Box
• Privacy Statement
• Workstation/Check Box Sign-In
• Online Training Courses
• Capacity Building Training
• Training Curriculum - Order Now
• Community Check Box Evaluation System
• Build Your Toolbox
• Facilitation of Community Processes
• Community Health Assessment and Planning
• Section 9. Community Action Guide: Framework for Addressing Community Goals and Problems

Chapter 1 Sections

• Section 1. A Community Tool Box Overview and Gateway to the Tools
• Section 3. Our Model of Practice: Building Capacity for Community and System Change
• Section 5. Our Evaluation Model: Evaluating Comprehensive Community Initiatives
• Section 6. Some Core Principles, Assumptions, and Values to Guide the Work
• Section 7. Working Together for Healthier Communities: A Framework for Collaboration Among Community Partnerships, Support Organizations, and Funders
• Section 8. Some Lessons Learned on Community Organization and Change
• Section 10. Using Internet-Based Tools to Promote Community Health and Development
• Section 11. Participatory Evaluation
• Main Section

What is action planning?

How does action planning help a community, why is action planning important, when should you create an action plan, what are the components of an action plan framework.

Have you had the motivation to mobilize your community to address a problem that affects the local population, but just not known how to begin? You might wonder; “How do I investigate the problem?”, “Whom do I involve in the strategies to address the problem?”, “How do I successfully facilitate a group of diverse representatives from a community to reach consensus about a common vision and the actions that will turn ideas into results?”

This tool has the answers to these and other important questions. It will prepare you to lead your community in action planning.

The overall goal of action planning is to increase your community’s ability to work together to affect conditions and outcomes that matter to its residents—and to do so both over time and across issues of interest.

As your community works towards a broad vision of health for all, creating supportive conditions for change requires comprehensive efforts among diverse sectors of the community. These include health organizations, faith communities, schools, and businesses. Representatives of each sector come together to form a community coalition. Your community coalition can strive to influence systems changes—programs, policies, and practices that can enhance the community’s capacity to be a healthy environment.

A community coalition initiates its work by generating an action plan.

An action plan outlines what should happen to achieve the vision for a healthy community. Desirable changes and proposed activities (action steps), timelines, and assignment of accountability provide a detailed road map for collaborators to follow.

Regardless of the complexity of the problem at hand within your community, action planning helps you:

• Understand the community’s perception of both the issue at hand and its potential solutions
• Assure inclusive and integrated participation across community sectors in the planning process
• Build consensus on what can and should be done based on the community’s unique assets and needs
• Specify concrete ways in which members of the community coalition can take action

The list above describes how an action plan helps a community’s sectors and residents within those sectors work together to achieve a common vision. This tool will address each item and provide guidance for your action planning work that lies ahead.

Proper planning of any initiative is critical for yielding the best results or outcomes possible. An action plan, while a significant investment of time and energy, can be an effective tool that grounds all collaborators with a common purpose. Developing an action plan is a critical first step toward ensuring project success.

An action plan assures that:

• No detail is overlooked
• Proposed action steps are feasible and/or realistic
• Collaborators follow through with their commitments
• Measurable activities are documented and evaluated

Overall, action planning is important because it provides a reference point with a detailed time line and assignment of accountability for accomplishing tasks along the path to making a difference.

Research findings of the Center for Community Health and Development suggest that there are a number of factors that appear to have a positive effect on rates of community and system change—and one of those includes action planning:

• Analyzing Information About the Problem, Goals, and Factors Affecting Them
• Establishing Your Group's Vision and Mission
• Defining Organizational Structure and Operating Mechanisms
• Developing a Framework or Model of Change
• Developing and Using Strategic and Action Plans
• Arranging for Community Mobilizers
• Developing Leadership
• Implementing Effective Interventions
• Assuring Technical Assistance
• Documenting Progress and Using Feedback
• Making Outcomes Matter
• Sustaining the Work

Ideally, you should develop an action plan within the first six to twelve months of the start of an initiative or organization. Once an action plan is generated, it should be revisited frequently (e.g., as often as monthly but at least annually) so it can be modified to meet the changing needs of your community.

While some issues may be universal (for example, mental health issues), each community will have different assets and barriers for improving conditions for its residents. Therefore, each community’s intervention strategy for influencing programs, policies, and practices will be unique. However, a series of steps—a framework—helps guide the process of community action and change within the context of a community’s unique needs.

If you approach the action planning process as a manageable series of steps, you can take charge and help your community coalition work through each one with confidence.

Determine what people and sectors of the community to involve

As you begin your action planning process, you will need to accomplish three things:

• Document the problem or issue with information and statistics
• Learn more about your community
• Involve community members

How do you go about accomplishing these steps?

Listen to the community about issues and options . Conduct focus groups and public forums to obtain information about perceived issues and solutions within the community.

The key pieces of information you should gather in each listening session or focus group include:

• The perceived problem or issue
• Perceived barriers or resistance to addressing the issue
• Resources for change
• Recommend solutions and alternatives
• Current and past initiatives to address the problem or issue

Gather data to document the problem . In addition to hearing the community perspective on problems or goals related to the issue at hand, it is important to document the issue using existing information sources.

• "What are the issues related to the problem/topic in your community?"
• "What are the consequences of these issues?"
• "Who is affected?"
• "How are they affected?"
• "Are these issues of widespread concern?"

While the information that you collect can answer the questions above, remember that it will also play a key role in helping you determine how effective your group was in addressing the problem. You will use these baseline data—data that document the extent of the problem prior to implementation of your initiative—for comparison with data that document the extent of the problem after implementation of your initiative.

Listed below are helpful data sources that you may want to investigate. Keep in mind that not all of them will be relevant to your particular issue or problem.

• State or county health department data
• State social services department data
• Hospital admissions and exit records
• Police records
• Chamber of commerce data
• Nonprofit service agency data
• School district data
• Information from your local reference librarian
• Data from specialized local, statewide, or national organizations

Also see federal websites such as:

• The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s reportable disease files
• The National Center for Health Statistics’ Statistical Abstract of the United States
• Census data
• Maternal and Child Health Bureau, HRSA, Title V Block Grant Information System

Become aware of local resources and past and current efforts : If current efforts targeting your issue exist, think of ways in which they can become more effective via support, advocacy or other means.  Consider the following:

• Do current efforts have a parallel vision?
• How many people are they serving?
• Do the services and program meet local needs?

Particularly if pre-existing initiatives had a similiar mission and failed, seek to understand why and apply those lessons learned to your action planning.  You might gain valuable insight by talking with the agency or group with the failed initiative.

Involve key officials and grassroots leaders in a planning group : While you may easily identify key officials, service providers, or representatives from relevant agencies, extend the boundaries of your planning coalition to be as inclusive as possible. Remember that your planning group should reflect the diversity of the local community.

Your group might use interviews with both key officials and key grassroots leaders to answer the following questions:

• Who can make things happen on this issue?
• What individuals are in a position to create (or block!) change?
• What contact people within the initiative would be most successful in getting those key officials to become involved?
• What neighborhoods and ethnic and cultural communities are particularly affected by this issue?
• What individuals and groups make things happen in these neighborhoods?
• What contact people within the initiative would be most successful in involving members of these neighborhoods?

Convene a planning group

Once you identify and include interested participants for the planning group, publicize planning sessions to assure that they are open to all group members. As facilitator, you should extend additional courtesies to planning group members, such as starting and ending meetings on time, using an agenda, and covering items in as little time as possible. Other responsibilities that you might have as a facilitator include:

Managing conflict . The richness of diverse views represented within your planning group may also lead to conflict among members. group leaders may need to elevate discussions to a higher level on which there may be a basis for agreement. Leaders can also remind group members of the shared vision as a means of fostering discussion on a common gound.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Planned Approach to Community Health (PATCH) documentation includes suggestions for reaching consensus in group meetings:

• Avoid the “one best way” attitude, and opt for that which reflects the best collective judgment of the group
• Avoid “either/or” thinking; often the best solution combines several approaches
• A majority vote may not always be the best solution. When participants give and take, several viewpoints can be combined.
• Healthy conflict may actually help participants reach a consensus; do not end conflict prematurely.
• Problems are best solved when all participants try to communicate and listen.

Conflict resolution is the process of settling disagreements among group members . The CDC recommends trying one of four approaches to resolve conflicts about goals, plans, activities, or procedures:

• Avoidance: While this can be a temporary solution, particularly if a conflict does not seem important enough to discuss, be sure to reassess the problem at a later date.
• Accommodation: Use tact and discretion to ask participants to yield or conform to the positions of others.
• Compromise: When a consensus cannot be reached, compromise may be the only solution. With compromise, everyone both wins and gives up something.
• Collaboration: While this may be the best approach, reserve it for issues of greatest importance. Collaboration requires all group members to acknowledge the conflict, consider many possible solutions and the consequences of each, and select the alternatives that best meet the needs of the group.

Creating a supportive context for planning and action . Several aspects of your community group can influence the element of support in the planning environment. They are: leadership, size and structure, organization, and diversity and integration.

• Leadership – Although a single person may accept overall responsibility, effective organizations usually have a number of leaders who work with constituents to fulfill the group’s mission. Leaders should have a clear vision and the capacity for listening and relating to others in the group.
• Size and Structure – A maximum group size of 15 is recommended. If this seems prohibitive given the number of persons interested in participation, you can also structure smaller groups such as “task forces” for specific functions within the action plan.
• Organization – If your planning group or surrounding community is particularly large, you may want to allocate work to subcommittees for each sector of the community to be involved (e.g., health organizations, businesses, schools). If your planning group or surrounding community is relatively small, the group might work as a whole to accomplish action planning.
• Diversity and Integration – Include all types of participants: persons in positions of authority, grassroots leaders, and local residents with experience.

Offering ongoing encouragement . Throughout the planning process, let group members know when they are doing a good job. Positive feedback is very important—especially when people are volunteering their time and energy.

If you find it challenging or intimidating to facilitate planning sessions in which diverse ideas and opinions are spoken, try applying some of the information below to your situation. Having a “plan” for effective facilitation will help you yield the most positive outcomes and best ideas from your planning meetings.

Tips for Group Facilitation

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Planned Approach to Community Health (PATCH) documentation offers the following suggestions for facilitating meetings:

• Create an environment conducive to communication by seating participants around small tables or in semicircles.
• Make participation an expectation; ask questions frequently and use open-ended questions to encourage thought and participation.
• Create opportunities for participants to work in teams.
• Give small assignments in advance, and ask participants to come to meetings prepared to share their work.
• Encourage participants to evaluate the group’s working dynamic and offer solutions to improving interaction if needed.
• Talk with quiet participants during breaks, and help them express their ideas and share their thoughts with the group.
• Use flip charts or overhead transparencies to record comments, but face participants while writing or ask someone else to do it.
• Suggest the “next step” if a meeting seems to be stagnating.
• Walk around to gain attention, but look directly at participants.
• Expect to make some mistakes! Acknowledge them, correct them, and move on.

Lead brainstorming sessions . Brainstorming is a problem-solving technique that encourages all members of a group to contribute ideas. You may find this technique of idea generation particularly helpful in the early phases of action planning. There are three common approaches to brainstorming:

• Freewheeling: Participants randomly call out suggestions, which are then recorded on a flip chart. Some group members may dominate in this setting.
• Round robin: Each member is called upon for a suggestion in turn, and ideas are recorded on a flip chart. This is a more organized approach and prevents domination of the session by only a few individuals.
• Slip: Each member submits anonymous suggestions on a slip of paper, and ideas are then recorded on a flip chart.

CDC suggests that a group facilitator follow these guidelines for a brainstorming meeting:

• No critical remarks allowed; evaluation comes later
• Give the thought only; explanation comes later
• Give only one idea at a time
• Adding to or improving on someone else’s idea is appropriate
• Give all participants a chance to share ideas.
• Ask one or two people to record ideas.
• Keep a lively tempo to the process.
• Praise the quantity versus quality of ideas.

Convening and facilitating a planning group for a common vision, mission, or purpose can be challenging yet rewarding. Participation of diverse individuals can require skilled facilitation. However, you can successfully facilitate a group meeting by applying the guidelines presented above. The more meetings you lead throughout the action planning process, the more confident you will become!

Develop an action plan to address proposed changes

Your planning meetings, brainstorming sessions, and other group discussions will yield an extensive compilation of great ideas (and maybe some that are not so great!).

What do you do with all of that information? How do you sort through the pile of rocks to find the gems?

First, you will need to distill the many ideas and voices into a common vision and mission. Next, you will need to refine the relevant ideas into objectives with corresponding strategies and actions.

As you distill the large number of ideas into a common vision, the VMOSA process (vision, mission, objectives, strategies, and action) will help your planning group develop a blueprint for moving from dreams to actions to positive outcomes for your community. VMOSA gives both direction and structure to your initiative. The five components of VMOSA should be completed in the order in which they are presented here.

Your planning group needs a vision statement to serve as a unifying statement for your effort, help communicate you goals and attract participants, remind participants of the desired outcome, and guide important decisions. The vision statement should be a few short phrases or a sentence. Catchy phrases such as "Healthy teens," "Safe streets, safe neighborhoods" and "Education for all" illustrate the common characteristics of a vision statement.

Craft a vision statement that is:

• Understood and shared by members of the community
• Broad enough to include a diverse variety of perspectives
• Inspiring and uplifting
• Easy to communicate

Your planning group’s mission statement will be more specific than the vision . As the next step in the action planning process, it expresses the "what and how" of your effort, describing what your group is going to do to make your vision a reality. An example of a mission statement: "Our mission is to develop a safe and healthy neighborhood through collaborative planning, community action, and policy advocacy."

While your vision statement inspires people to dream, your mission statement should inspire them to action.

Create your mission statement to be:

• Outcome-oriented

Objectives are the specific, measurable steps that will help you achieve your mission. Develop objectives that are SMART+C: specific, measurable, achievable (eventually), relevant to your mission, and timed (with a date for completion). The +C reminds you to add another important quality to your goals: make them challenging!

Strategies explain how your group will reach its objectives.

Broad strategies for change include:

• Coalition building
• Community development
• Policy or legislative change.

The big picture

Charting a logical pathway for community and system change: A key question to ask as your group formulates strategies is, “What combination of changes in programs, policies, and practices are necessary to make a difference with the mission of promoting health for all?” Your group will want to take inventory of potential community and system changes for addressing the problem or issue of interest. To do this, sort your “inventory” of ideas and objectives generated via the planning group into five specific strategy categories:

• Providing information and enhancing skill
• Altering incentives and disincentives
• Modifying access, barriers, and opportunities
• Enhancing services and support
• Modifying policies and practices

To facilitate the process of thinking about how ideas fit most logically together, you may want to draft a one page flowchart that forms pathways leading logically to widespread behavior change and elimination or reduction of the problem to be addressed. You might want to think of this flow chart as a way to double check for any gaps that may remain despite your extensive planning and discussion up to this point. Furthermore, as you look at the pathways and linkages along the way to change, the visual representation may prompt you to think of potential resources and barriers for accomplishing objectives. These noted resources and barriers will be applied to the development of action steps—the last piece of your action plan (to be discussed in the next section).

Determining strategies within your community’s context

Once your planning group has a clear vision and mission and has chosen community and system changes to be sought, you will have the foundation for making informed decisions regarding types of strategies to implement. The information below is a guide to talking through the development of strategies as they relate to the priorities and desired changes in the context of your community.

When developing strategies to accompany your objectives, consider the following factors:

• Population levels to be affected
• Universal versus targeted outreach
• Personal and environmental factors
• Which community sectors can benefit from and contribute to efforts
• Behavioral strategies to be used.

The levels to be targeted (individuals vs. families and kinship groups vs. organizations and sectors vs. broader systems).

Whether the strategy will be universal (e.g., include all of those who may be at risk or may benefit) or targeted (e.g., targets those who may be at greater risk for the problem):

• Universal example : targeting all men ages 40 and over in the community regarding the importance of prostate cancer screening.
• Targeted example : targeting all men ages 40 and over in the community with a family history of prostate cancer.

The personal and environmental factors to be addressed by the initiative:

• Personal factors : knowledge, beliefs, skills, education and training, experience, cultural norms and practices, social status, cognitive or physical abilities, gender, age.
• Environmental factors : social support, available resources and services, barriers (including financial, physical, and communication), social approval, policies, environmental hazards, living conditions, poverty.

Individuals who can most benefit and contribute and how they can be reached or involved in the effort .

• Targets of change - those who may at particular risk for the issue and those whose actions (or omission of actions) contribute to the problem.
• Agents of change - those who may be in a position to (and have a responsibility to) contribute to the solution or initiative (includes targets of change)
• Community sectors through which targets and agents of change can be reached or involved

The behavior change strategies to be used. Approaches may include:

• Providing information and enhancing skills - Delivery of information or training through media, courses, workshops, webinars or other modes.
• Enhancing services and supports - Increasing, improving or expanding assistance or social or technical supports related to the identified goal(s). This could include expanding or changing components or offerings such as mental health or social services or expanding hours or to new locations.
• Modifying access, barriers, and opportunities - Changes in the environment (e.g., changes in office hours, reduced entry fees, changes to the built environment such as trails or lighting) that reduce barriers and improve access.
• Changing consequences - Changing the incentives or disincentives for outcomes. This might include public recognition or tax breaks. This might also take the form of implementation of policies that call for consequences to actions, such as a junk food tax.
• Modifying policies and broader systems - Changing existing policies or regulations at the organizational or governmental level to promote desired behaviors/ outcomes. This might take the form of written regulations or organizational policies.

For each strategy, consider what programs, policies, and/or practices should be created or modified. Make a list, keeping in mind how they work together to address the problem or goal. And finally, review your planning group’s strategies for:

• Consistency with the overall vision, mission, and objectives
• Goodness of fit with the resources and opportunities available
• Anticipated resistance and barriers and how they can be minimized
• Whether those who are affected will actually be reached
• Whether those who can contribute will be involved

Building consensus on proposed strategies for change Once you think that the strategies are finalized and in place, you will want to build consensus on proposed changes within your planning group. Keeping in mind the fact that multiple sectors of the community are represented in the planning group, you should complete two types of review:

• Taken together, do these proposed changes maximize this sector’s contribution to the mission
• What other changes in programs, policies, or practices could or should be made in this sector
• Would all changes, taken together, be sufficient to reduce the problem?
• What other changes in programs, policies, or practices could or should be made within the community or system?
• “Is this proposed change important to the mission?”
• “Is this proposed change feasible?”

You can even put these two questions into a survey format and create a table for planning group members to respond to. Before administering the survey, set criteria for which sought changes will be kept or eliminated with a ranking score system.

You can see below that a sample ranking system ranging from ‘1’ for “Not at All [Important or Feasible]” to ‘5’ for “Very [Important or Feasible]” has been used. We suggest that you set criteria of an average value of 3 or higher for a proposed change to be retained.

How do you calculate the average ranking score using a scale like the one in the table above?

Example: For a proposed change, 20 planning group members select one of the score values in their response. Of those, you have: 10 responding “3” 4 responding “2” 6 responding “4” Given the suggested criteria of an average ranking of 3 or higher, will you keep or toss the proposed change? Step 1. 10(3) + 4(2) + 6(4) = 62 Step 2. 62 / 20 responses = an average ranking of 3.1 Step 3. Based on the scoring criteria, you determine to keep the proposed change since the overall consensus via the survey is 3.1.

What is most important about the process demonstrated above is that each group member participates in the consensus vote on each proposed change. And when you are finished, your community will be armed with a targeted action plan that has the approval of all community sector representatives.

The Grande Finale – The Complete Action Plan!

By now, you have come a long way in your action planning process. You have gathered information, involved key community members, outlined a vision, mission, objectives, and developed appropriate strategies for your community. In this final step of action plan development, you will specify in detail who will do what, by when, to make what changes happen. The action plan will also note the resources needed, potential barriers or resistance, and collaborators or communication lines that need to be active. You can rely on this plan to know what actions you should take day by day.

Action Step Criteria

Your action plan will consist of numerous action steps needed to bring about change in the community. Each action step should outline:

• What actions or changes will occur
• Who will carry out those changes
• By when the changes will take place, and for how long
• What resources are needed to carry out proposed changes
• Communication (who should know what?)

Drafting Action Steps

Action steps are similar to well-written objectives in their structure and content, but include some additional information. First, let’s start by looking at how to draft a strong objective. Then, we will take it one step further and write a comparable action step. You may already be working from objectives in a funded grant proposal. If that is the case, you have a time saving, solid foundation for your action steps.

The best action steps have several characteristics in common with well-written objectives. Those parallel characteristics are:

• Specific . That is, they tell how much (e.g., 40 %) of what is to be achieved (e.g., what behavior of whom or what outcome) by when (e.g., by 2010)?
• Measurable . Information concerning the objective can be collected, detected, or obtained from records (at least potentially).
• Achievable . Not only are the objectives themselves possible, it is likely that your organization will be able to pull them off.
• Relevant to the mission . Your organization has a clear understanding of how these objectives fit in with the overall vision and mission of the group.
• Timed . Your organization has developed a timeline (a portion of which is made clear in the objectives) by which they will be achieved.
• Challenging . They stretch the group to set its aims on significant improvements that are important to members of the community.

Example: Your community is working to establish on-site childcare for community health clinic clients by the year 2010. Based on the desired systems change, here is a sample action statement: “By June 2009, all necessary regulatory permits will be obtained.”

Now, let’s take this information and generate a complete action step. In addition to the criteria for well-written objectives, action steps address resources needed, anticipated barriers, and a communication plan. Now we will complete the five action step criteria (what, who, by when, what resources, and communication) using the sample, “By June 2009. . . “

Criteria 1 : What actions or changes will occur?

    All necessary regulatory permits will be obtained [for the on site provision of child care for health clinic clients.

Criteria 2: Who will carry out those changes?

    Danelda Jackson and Tom Glinn, staff of the community health clinic

Criteria 3: By when will the changes take place, and for how long?

    2009, in order to open in 2010. They will be renewed annually after that.

Criteria 4: What resources are needed to carry out the proposed changes? (For example, resources may be material, financial, or temporal).

Contractors

What potential barriers might affect this action step? Barriers to success might include:

• Faltering commitment on behalf of collaborators
• Key individuals or groups opposing efforts
• Lack of sustained interest in the initiative at the community level
• Simultaneous events such as economic downturn or parallel or competing initiatives
• City staff may resist providing a permit because it may appear to intensify the use of the clinic site.

Criteria 5 : Communication (who should be informed about these actions?)

    Clinic staff and patrons and community residents should be made aware of the availability of on site child care at the clinic.

Note: You may find it most helpful to set up a template for a table in a word processing program so you can efficiently record each action step generated by your planning group. The table below has been filled in with the criteria and sample information listed above.

Review your action plan for completeness

Once the planning process is complete, be sure to obtain review and approval of the final action plan from all group members.

Assess the action plan for:

• Comprehensiveness
• Feasibility
• Flexibility

Remember that the action plan will be revisited from time to time for modifications, as a community’s needs change. However, ultimately, this “blueprint for action” will be used over time, across sectors of the community, and across issues of interest. Therefore, strive to make it a powerful tool for community change.

Follow Through

Your completed action plan may contain many action steps . And while you will have mapped those out carefully along a timeline, you will probably have action steps that should occur simultaneously. Furthermore, you may sense a need to prioritize the order in which you execute action steps that are supposed to take place in the first six months of your initiative.

You may find it easier to determine that ordering or prioritization strategy if you ask the following questions:

• Which changes are the most important or key to the initiative's objectives?
• Which changes would inspire and encourage participants and build credibility within the community?
• Which changes need to be completed before others can? For example, some changes may require other changes and relationships to be established.
• Which changes are easier or quicker? Could completing them give the planning group’s members a sense of success?

Part of following through with proposed action steps will be the task of maintaining collaborator commitment and interest. An invaluable approach to fostering this working relationship is communication: communication about timelines, upcoming planning meetings, progress, results, intermediary feedback, etc.

Communicate progress

Communication is paramount to continued support and commitment within all sectors of the community. Continue to hold planning group meetings and additional public forum meetings, making sure to publicize these appropriately via local newspapers, email listservs, etc. Communicate with all relevant audiences, and let them know how their feedback was used to modify the action plan when relevant. You may want to refer back to the “communication” column of your action step table to make sure that you have corresponded with all people who need to know about the status of a particular action step.

It is best to include a communication plan in your action plan, and regularly share information about progress and outcomes relevant to the initiative. And the best means of having sound information to report is an evaluation plan.

Document progress

After you have worked so hard to plan and implement action steps, your community group will most certainly want a means of measuring progress towards the vision. It is important to evaluate your initiative toward that end.

The purpose of evaluation is to document and measure the completion or success of action steps. From your action planning group’s perspective:

• Evaluation may help you clarify action steps so they are measurable.
• Documentation and evaluation help you continually refine your program. Remember—an action plan is an ever-changing blueprint that can be modified according to community needs. If evaluation of action steps reveals successes, failures, or other lessons learned, that information should be applied to future planning cycles or revision of the overall action plan.
• Evaluation data provide information about the relative costs and effort for tasks so activity and budget adjustments can be made as needed.

It is important to include evaluation components as you develop your action plan versus as you implement it. Be sure that your action plan details how information will be collected, analyzed, and communicated. Because the action plan will be implemented over a long period of time, you may want to document intermediary accomplishments on a monthly basis. Such cumulative records help you identify trends in rates of community and system change over a number of years

Celebrate progress and revisit/renew the action plan

Even the most effective initiatives can benefit from reflection on their accomplishments. Therefore, you should review your action plan as frequently as needed, but at least annually. Arrange for ongoing review and discussion of group progress and proposed changes in the action plan. And, when new and important changes occur (e.g., a long-awaited policy change by a major employer), celebrate them.

Overall, focus on “small wins” versus creating “the perfect program.” This approach will:

• Reward outcomes versus actions
• Provide multiple opportunities for celebration
• Allow coalition partners to work together by asking each other to do their part while not demanding that everyone be locked into a single course of action
• Provide a sensitive measure of progress that can be monitored periodically to support improvement and accountability

Throughout evaluation of progress, celebration of progress, and renewal of the action plan as the community environment changes over time, maintain this key perspective:

Your community coalition is a catalyst for change, helping to bring about a series of community and system changes related to the mission, rather than simply the delivery of a single program or service. While evaluation has its place in all initiatives, try to focus more on contribution rather than attribution as your community implements its action plan.

Action planning includes:

• Key officials
• Grassroots leaders
• Representatives of key sectors
• Representatives from all parts of the community, including diverse ethnic, cultural, and socioeconomic groups
• Listening to the community
• Documenting problems that affect healthy youth development
• Identifying risk and protective factors
• Developing a framework for action
• Becoming aware of local resources and efforts
• Refining your group's vision, mission, objections, and strategies
• Refining your group' s choice of targets and agents of change
• Determining what community sectors should be involved in the solution
• Developing a tentative list of changes to be sought in each sector
• Building consensus on proposed changes
• Outlining action steps for proposed changes
• Documenting progress on bringing about community and system changes
• Renewing your group' s efforts along the way

When you complete these activities, celebrate (for now)   You have developed a blueprint for action.

• Understand the community’s perception of both the issue at hand and its potential solutions.
• Assure inclusive and integrated participation across community sectors in the planning process.
• Build consensus on what can and should be done based on the community’s unique assets and needs.
• Specify concrete ways in which members of the community coalition can take action.

Myles Horton, the late founder of the Highlander Center, talked about "making the road by walking." The work of transforming communities and systems to promote healthy youth development will be made by joining with local people who care enough to make needed changes. As we do this important work, we realize that we walk the path of those before us. And, eventually, with those who will carry on this cause after we are gone.

Online Resources

Concerns Report Handbook: Planning for Community Health

Preventing Adolescent Substance Abuse: An Action Planning Guide for Community-Based Initiatives

Preventing Adolescent Pregnancy: An Action Planning Guide for Community-Based Initiatives

Preventing Youth Violence: An Action Planning Guide for Community-Based Initiatives

Preventing Child Abuse and Neglect: An Action Planning Guide for Community-Based Initiatives

Promoting Child Well-Being: An Action Planning Guide for Community-Based Initiatives

Promoting Health for All: Improving Access and Eliminating Disparities in Community Health

Promoting Healthy Living and Preventing Chronic Disease: An Action Planning Guide for Communities

Promoting Urban Neighborhood Development: An Action Planning Guide for Improving Housing, Jobs, Education, Safety and Health, and Human Development

Reducing Risk for Chronic Disease: An Action Planning Guide for Community-Based Initiatives

Youth Development: An Action Planning Guide for Community-Based Initiatives

Print Resources

Fawcett, S., Carson, V., Collie, V., Bremby, R., & Raymer, K. (May 2000). Promoting Health for All: An Action Planning Guide for Improving Access and Eliminating Disparities in Community Health. KU Work Group on Health Promotion & Community Development, Lawrence, Kansas.

Francisco, V., Holt, C., Swenson, J., & Fawcett, S. (November 2002). Youth Development: An Action Planning Guide for Community-Based Initiatives . KU Work Group on Health Promotion & Community Development, Lawrence, Kansas.

Puddy, R., Fawcett, S., & Francisco, V. (July 2002). Promoting Child Well-Being: An Action Planning Guide for Community-Based Initiatives . KU Work Group on Health Promotion & Community Development, Lawrence, Kansas.

Tarlov, A., & St. Peter, R. (2000 ). The Society and Population Health Reader: A State and Community Perspective . New York: The New Press. Chapter Four: Fawcett, S., Francisco, V., Hyra, D., Paine-Andrews, A., Shultz, J., Russos, S., Fisher, J., & Evensen, P. Building Healthy Communities.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Planned Approach to Community Health: Guide for the Local Coordinator . Atlanta, GA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.

Choose Your Test

Sat / act prep online guides and tips, how to write a great community service essay.

College Admissions , Extracurriculars

Are you applying to a college or a scholarship that requires a community service essay? Do you know how to write an essay that will impress readers and clearly show the impact your work had on yourself and others?

Read on to learn step-by-step instructions for writing a great community service essay that will help you stand out and be memorable.

What Is a Community Service Essay? Why Do You Need One?

A community service essay is an essay that describes the volunteer work you did and the impact it had on you and your community. Community service essays can vary widely depending on specific requirements listed in the application, but, in general, they describe the work you did, why you found the work important, and how it benefited people around you.

Community service essays are typically needed for two reasons:

#1: To Apply to College

• Some colleges require students to write community service essays as part of their application or to be eligible for certain scholarships.
• You may also choose to highlight your community service work in your personal statement.

#2: To Apply for Scholarships

• Some scholarships are specifically awarded to students with exceptional community service experiences, and many use community service essays to help choose scholarship recipients.
• Green Mountain College offers one of the most famous of these scholarships. Their "Make a Difference Scholarship" offers full tuition, room, and board to students who have demonstrated a significant, positive impact through their community service

Getting Started With Your Essay

In the following sections, I'll go over each step of how to plan and write your essay. I'll also include sample excerpts for you to look through so you can get a better idea of what readers are looking for when they review your essay.

Step 1: Know the Essay Requirements

Before your start writing a single word, you should be familiar with the essay prompt. Each college or scholarship will have different requirements for their essay, so make sure you read these carefully and understand them.

Specific things to pay attention to include:

• Length requirement
• Application deadline
• The main purpose or focus of the essay
• If the essay should follow a specific structure

Below are three real community service essay prompts. Read through them and notice how much they vary in terms of length, detail, and what information the writer should include.

From the Equitable Excellence Scholarship:

"Describe your outstanding achievement in depth and provide the specific planning, training, goals, and steps taken to make the accomplishment successful. Include details about your role and highlight leadership you provided. Your essay must be a minimum of 350 words but not more than 600 words."

From the Laura W. Bush Traveling Scholarship:

"Essay (up to 500 words, double spaced) explaining your interest in being considered for the award and how your proposed project reflects or is related to both UNESCO's mandate and U.S. interests in promoting peace by sharing advances in education, science, culture, and communications."

From the LULAC National Scholarship Fund:

"Please type or print an essay of 300 words (maximum) on how your academic studies will contribute to your personal & professional goals. In addition, please discuss any community service or extracurricular activities you have been involved in that relate to your goals."

Step 2: Brainstorm Ideas

Even after you understand what the essay should be about, it can still be difficult to begin writing. Answer the following questions to help brainstorm essay ideas. You may be able to incorporate your answers into your essay.

• What community service activity that you've participated in has meant the most to you?
• What is your favorite memory from performing community service?
• Why did you decide to begin community service?
• What made you decide to volunteer where you did?
• How has your community service changed you?
• How has your community service helped others?
• How has your community service affected your plans for the future?

You don't need to answer all the questions, but if you find you have a lot of ideas for one of two of them, those may be things you want to include in your essay.

Writing Your Essay

How you structure your essay will depend on the requirements of the scholarship or school you are applying to. You may give an overview of all the work you did as a volunteer, or highlight a particularly memorable experience. You may focus on your personal growth or how your community benefited.

Regardless of the specific structure requested, follow the guidelines below to make sure your community service essay is memorable and clearly shows the impact of your work.

Samples of mediocre and excellent essays are included below to give you a better idea of how you should draft your own essay.

Step 1: Hook Your Reader In

You want the person reading your essay to be interested, so your first sentence should hook them in and entice them to read more. A good way to do this is to start in the middle of the action. Your first sentence could describe you helping build a house, releasing a rescued animal back to the wild, watching a student you tutored read a book on their own, or something else that quickly gets the reader interested. This will help set your essay apart and make it more memorable.

Compare these two opening sentences:

"I have volunteered at the Wishbone Pet Shelter for three years."

"The moment I saw the starving, mud-splattered puppy brought into the shelter with its tail between its legs, I knew I'd do whatever I could to save it."

The first sentence is a very general, bland statement. The majority of community service essays probably begin a lot like it, but it gives the reader little information and does nothing to draw them in. On the other hand, the second sentence begins immediately with action and helps persuade the reader to keep reading so they can learn what happened to the dog.

Step 2: Discuss the Work You Did

Once you've hooked your reader in with your first sentence, tell them about your community service experiences. State where you work, when you began working, how much time you've spent there, and what your main duties include. This will help the reader quickly put the rest of the essay in context and understand the basics of your community service work.

Not including basic details about your community service could leave your reader confused.

Step 3: Include Specific Details

It's the details of your community service that make your experience unique and memorable, so go into the specifics of what you did.

For example, don't just say you volunteered at a nursing home; talk about reading Mrs. Johnson her favorite book, watching Mr. Scott win at bingo, and seeing the residents play games with their grandchildren at the family day you organized. Try to include specific activities, moments, and people in your essay. Having details like these let the readers really understand what work you did and how it differs from other volunteer experiences.

Compare these two passages:

"For my volunteer work, I tutored children at a local elementary school. I helped them improve their math skills and become more confident students."

"As a volunteer at York Elementary School, I worked one-on-one with second and third graders who struggled with their math skills, particularly addition, subtraction, and fractions. As part of my work, I would create practice problems and quizzes and try to connect math to the students' interests. One of my favorite memories was when Sara, a student I had been working with for several weeks, told me that she enjoyed the math problems I had created about a girl buying and selling horses so much that she asked to help me create math problems for other students."

The first passage only gives basic information about the work done by the volunteer; there is very little detail included, and no evidence is given to support her claims. How did she help students improve their math skills? How did she know they were becoming more confident?

The second passage is much more detailed. It recounts a specific story and explains more fully what kind of work the volunteer did, as well as a specific instance of a student becoming more confident with her math skills. Providing more detail in your essay helps support your claims as well as make your essay more memorable and unique.

Step 4: Show Your Personality

It would be very hard to get a scholarship or place at a school if none of your readers felt like they knew much about you after finishing your essay, so make sure that your essay shows your personality. The way to do this is to state your personal strengths, then provide examples to support your claims. Take some time to think about which parts of your personality you would like your essay to highlight, then write about specific examples to show this.

• If you want to show that you're a motivated leader, describe a time when you organized an event or supervised other volunteers.
• If you want to show your teamwork skills, write about a time you helped a group of people work together better.
• If you want to show that you're a compassionate animal lover, write about taking care of neglected shelter animals and helping each of them find homes.

Step 5: State What You Accomplished

After you have described your community service and given specific examples of your work, you want to begin to wrap your essay up by stating your accomplishments. What was the impact of your community service? Did you build a house for a family to move into? Help students improve their reading skills? Clean up a local park? Make sure the impact of your work is clear; don't be worried about bragging here.

If you can include specific numbers, that will also strengthen your essay. Saying "I delivered meals to 24 home-bound senior citizens" is a stronger example than just saying "I delivered meals to lots of senior citizens."

Also be sure to explain why your work matters. Why is what you did important? Did it provide more parks for kids to play in? Help students get better grades? Give people medical care who would otherwise not have gotten it? This is an important part of your essay, so make sure to go into enough detail that your readers will know exactly what you accomplished and how it helped your community.

"My biggest accomplishment during my community service was helping to organize a family event at the retirement home. The children and grandchildren of many residents attended, and they all enjoyed playing games and watching movies together."

"The community service accomplishment that I'm most proud of is the work I did to help organize the First Annual Family Fun Day at the retirement home. My job was to design and organize fun activities that senior citizens and their younger relatives could enjoy. The event lasted eight hours and included ten different games, two performances, and a movie screening with popcorn. Almost 200 residents and family members attended throughout the day. This event was important because it provided an opportunity for senior citizens to connect with their family members in a way they aren't often able to. It also made the retirement home seem more fun and enjoyable to children, and we have seen an increase in the number of kids coming to visit their grandparents since the event."

The second passage is stronger for a variety of reasons. First, it goes into much more detail about the work the volunteer did. The first passage only states that she helped "organize a family event." That really doesn't tell readers much about her work or what her responsibilities were. The second passage is much clearer; her job was to "design and organize fun activities."

The second passage also explains the event in more depth. A family day can be many things; remember that your readers are likely not familiar with what you're talking about, so details help them get a clearer picture.

Lastly, the second passage makes the importance of the event clear: it helped residents connect with younger family members, and it helped retirement homes seem less intimidating to children, so now some residents see their grand kids more often.

Step 6: Discuss What You Learned

One of the final things to include in your essay should be the impact that your community service had on you. You can discuss skills you learned, such as carpentry, public speaking, animal care, or another skill.

You can also talk about how you changed personally. Are you more patient now? More understanding of others? Do you have a better idea of the type of career you want? Go into depth about this, but be honest. Don't say your community service changed your life if it didn't because trite statements won't impress readers.

In order to support your statements, provide more examples. If you say you're more patient now, how do you know this? Do you get less frustrated while playing with your younger siblings? Are you more willing to help group partners who are struggling with their part of the work? You've probably noticed by now that including specific examples and details is one of the best ways to create a strong and believable essay .

"As a result of my community service, I learned a lot about building houses and became a more mature person."

"As a result of my community service, I gained hands-on experience in construction. I learned how to read blueprints, use a hammer and nails, and begin constructing the foundation of a two-bedroom house. Working on the house could be challenging at times, but it taught me to appreciate the value of hard work and be more willing to pitch in when I see someone needs help. My dad has just started building a shed in our backyard, and I offered to help him with it because I know from my community service how much work it is. I also appreciate my own house more, and I know how lucky I am to have a roof over my head."

The second passage is more impressive and memorable because it describes the skills the writer learned in more detail and recounts a specific story that supports her claim that her community service changed her and made her more helpful.

Step 7: Finish Strong

Just as you started your essay in a way that would grab readers' attention, you want to finish your essay on a strong note as well. A good way to end your essay is to state again the impact your work had on you, your community, or both. Reiterate how you changed as a result of your community service, why you found the work important, or how it helped others.

Compare these two concluding statements:

"In conclusion, I learned a lot from my community service at my local museum, and I hope to keep volunteering and learning more about history."

"To conclude, volunteering at my city's American History Museum has been a great experience. By leading tours and participating in special events, I became better at public speaking and am now more comfortable starting conversations with people. In return, I was able to get more community members interested in history and our local museum. My interest in history has deepened, and I look forward to studying the subject in college and hopefully continuing my volunteer work at my university's own museum."

The second passage takes each point made in the first passage and expands upon it. In a few sentences, the second passage is able to clearly convey what work the volunteer did, how she changed, and how her volunteer work benefited her community.

The author of the second passage also ends her essay discussing her future and how she'd like to continue her community service, which is a good way to wrap things up because it shows your readers that you are committed to community service for the long-term.

What's Next?

Are you applying to a community service scholarship or thinking about it? We have a complete list of all the community service scholarships available to help get your search started!

Do you need a community service letter as well? We have a step-by-step guide that will tell you how to get a great reference letter from your community service supervisor.

Thinking about doing community service abroad? Before you sign up, read our guide on some of the hazards of international volunteer trips and how to know if it's the right choice for you.

Christine graduated from Michigan State University with degrees in Environmental Biology and Geography and received her Master's from Duke University. In high school she scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT and was named a National Merit Finalist. She has taught English and biology in several countries.

Student and Parent Forum

Our new student and parent forum, at ExpertHub.PrepScholar.com , allow you to interact with your peers and the PrepScholar staff. See how other students and parents are navigating high school, college, and the college admissions process. Ask questions; get answers.

Ask a Question Below

Have any questions about this article or other topics? Ask below and we'll reply!

Improve With Our Famous Guides

• For All Students

The 5 Strategies You Must Be Using to Improve 160+ SAT Points

How to Get a Perfect 1600, by a Perfect Scorer

Series: How to Get 800 on Each SAT Section:

Score 800 on SAT Math

Score 800 on SAT Reading

Score 800 on SAT Writing

Series: How to Get to 600 on Each SAT Section:

Score 600 on SAT Math

Score 600 on SAT Reading

Score 600 on SAT Writing

Free Complete Official SAT Practice Tests

What SAT Target Score Should You Be Aiming For?

15 Strategies to Improve Your SAT Essay

The 5 Strategies You Must Be Using to Improve 4+ ACT Points

How to Get a Perfect 36 ACT, by a Perfect Scorer

Series: How to Get 36 on Each ACT Section:

36 on ACT English

36 on ACT Math

36 on ACT Reading

36 on ACT Science

Series: How to Get to 24 on Each ACT Section:

24 on ACT English

24 on ACT Math

24 on ACT Reading

24 on ACT Science

What ACT target score should you be aiming for?

ACT Vocabulary You Must Know

ACT Writing: 15 Tips to Raise Your Essay Score

How to Get Into Harvard and the Ivy League

How to Get a Perfect 4.0 GPA

How to Write an Amazing College Essay

What Exactly Are Colleges Looking For?

Is the ACT easier than the SAT? A Comprehensive Guide

Should you retake your SAT or ACT?

When should you take the SAT or ACT?

Stay Informed

Get the latest articles and test prep tips!

Looking for Graduate School Test Prep?

Check out our top-rated graduate blogs here:

GRE Online Prep Blog

GMAT Online Prep Blog

TOEFL Online Prep Blog

Holly R. "I am absolutely overjoyed and cannot thank you enough for helping me!”

Advertisement

A Reflection on Community Research and Action as an Evolving Practice

• Original Paper
• Open access
• Published: 12 November 2021
• Volume 30 , pages 535–544, ( 2021 )

Cite this article

You have full access to this open access article

• Stephen B. Fawcett   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4572-4208 1  

3457 Accesses

8 Citations

4 Altmetric

Explore all metrics

Community research and action is an evolving field of practice with multiple influences. Its varied ways of knowing and doing reflect recombined elements from different disciplines, including behavioral science, community psychology, public health, and community development. This article offers a personal reflection based on my evolving practice over nearly 50 years. The focus is on three types of influence: (a) engaging with different communities, fields, and networks (e.g., discovering shared values, diverse methods); (b) building methods and capabilities for the work (e.g., methods for participatory research, tools for capacity building); and (c) partnering for collaborative research and action, locally and globally. This story highlights the nature of the field’s evolution as an increasing variation in methods. Our evolving practice of community research and action—individually and collectively—emerges from the recombination of ideas and methods discovered through engagement in a wide variety of contexts.

Similar content being viewed by others

Action Research

Focus Groups, Community Engagement, and Researching with Young People

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Gradually, the observer realizes that these organisms are connected with each other, not linearly, but in a net-like, entangled fabric. —Alexander von Humboldt, German naturalist and explorer

In our professional lives, we follow branches from a field of origin—perhaps behavioral science or public health—into other related fields. In exchanges with others with different training and experience, we share ideas and methods that alter our practice and enrich our collective work. Like the “entangled life” of fungi (Sheldrake, 2020 ), we are connected in a web of relationships through which ideas and methods are shared and recombined in novel forms.

Community research and action is an evolving practice with multiple influences. Its varied activities result from exposure to, and selection for, different ways of knowing and doing. Recombined elements of research and practice reflect influences from different disciplines, including applied behavioral science, community psychology, public health, applied anthropology, urban planning, and community development, among others. For instance, if we are trained in behavioral science, we may especially value systematic methods of measurement and intervention. Exposure to community-oriented disciplines, such as community psychology or community development, may add an emphasis on participatory approaches, as represented in community-based participatory research and community engagement in designing and implementing strategies for action. Subsequent exposure to public health methods may add systems approaches and methods for changing conditions that affect health and health equity.

This article offers a reflection on the evolving practice of community research and action. Illustrated with my 50-plus years of experience, it focuses on three important mechanisms: (a) engaging with different communities, fields, and networks; (b) building methods and capabilities for the work; and (c) partnering for collaborative research and action.

Background and Context for Learning and Contributing

Personal background.

Personal backgrounds shape our openness to engaging people and seeing issues and concerns, as well as the possible ways of addressing them. My family and cultural background as an Irish Catholic led to exposure to Catholic social teaching. This called for a preferential option for the poor, solidarity with those who are marginalized, and a duty to pursue justice and address inequities. My undergraduate training in biology led to a lifelong interest in understanding mechanisms—how things work—including how community processes can produce changes in community conditions and outcomes.

After college, I joined the Volunteers in Service to America, where I lived and worked in low-income public housing in Kansas City. Going door to door, I met with and listened to people talk about what mattered to them. Through the kindness and wisdom of local guides (especially community leaders Myrtle Carter, Leotha Pinckney, and Freddie Coleman), I was led to see the community’s strengths and weaknesses, threats to progress, and opportunities for improvement through collective action. Together, we organized a tenants’ association to address community-determined concerns related to housing, education, violence, and building a good community for raising children. This experience in community organizing led to an appreciation for understanding the felt concerns of people in communities and their reality-based ideas for taking action.

During subsequent graduate/PhD training in applied behavioral science, I studied methods for measuring behavior and creating interventions and environmental conditions that can promote socially important behaviors and outcomes. I learned about methods to analyze personal and environmental factors contributing to problems and goals, and to design and implement effective interventions. Guides and mentors (e.g., Mont Wolf, Todd Risley, Jim Sherman, Keith Miller, and Dick Schiefelbusch) helped me see how the field could further systematic work in community research and action.

Each of us has our own combination of background, training, and experience that prepare us for the work of community research and action. However, curiosity and a desire for impact may lead us to search for additional methods that complement those acquired in early training and experience.

Context and Base for Learning and Contributing

Each of us has a different context for learning and contributing to community well-being. For many of us, this involves work at the individual level, listening and caring for family members, neighbors, and coworkers. Others may have public service roles or professional responsibilities related to improving conditions at the level of organizations, whole communities, or broader systems.

My professional mission has been to help understand and improve how people and organizations can work together to change conditions for improved health, well-being, and equity (Fawcett, Schultz, et al., 2010b ). In my role as a professor in a research university, I had the privilege of working in the field of community research and action. In my teaching, I tried to guide students in their learning about applied behavioral research and building healthy communities. With colleagues, I established an undergraduate program in community health and development and a joint PhD/MPH program (PhD in applied behavioral science, master’s in public health).

My primary base for learning and contributing was as founding director (in 1975) of the Work Group/Center for Community Health and Development at the University of Kansas (KU; https://communityhealth.ku.edu/ ). With generations of graduate students and colleagues, we sought to achieve the center’s mission of promoting community health and development through collaborative research, teaching, and public service. Since 2004, our KU center has valued its designation as a World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Community Health and Development, thereby connecting us with global partners with whom to exchange, learn, and contribute.

Mechanisms for Evolving Practice: Engagement, Methods Building, and Partnerships

Community work fosters humility. This is true because we so often fall short of the desired goal of achieving improved conditions and outcomes. This may lead us to search for people and methods to achieve a better result and to have a broader impact. In this section, I consider three such mechanisms for evolving practice: (a) engaging with different communities, fields, and networks; (b) building methods and capabilities; and (c) partnering for collaborative research and action.

Engagement With Different Communities, Fields, and Networks

Through involvement in varied contexts, we are exposed to different people and ideas, values, and methods. In my own work, I have had the opportunity to learn from and with communities locally, nationally, and globally. We see countless examples of people working together to improve conditions and outcomes. For instance, we can learn from those working in community organizations throughout the United States (Fawcett, 1999 ) or from community health workers engaged in different parts of the world (Fawcett, Abeykoon, et al., 2010a ). Working in solidarity with these colleagues, we note shared values in community work—for engagement, empowerment, equity, and attention to broader determinants of health and well-being.

Engagement with different disciplines and fields brings exposure to diverse methods for community research and action. If we bring only a critical eye from narrow training in a single discipline, we may fail to see the potential contribution of new methods to help understand the situation and improve conditions. By contrast, if we bring an appreciative stance, we can see how methods found in other contexts and disciplines can expand our approaches for engagement, assessment, planning, intervention, and evaluation of efforts.

My own experience reflects a layering of disciplinary influences over time. From 1969 to 1971, work in community organizing brought an appreciation for starting with the felt needs of local people and other valuable approaches in community development. Beginning in 1975, my teaching and research were grounded in PhD training in applied behavioral science. Particular strengths of this field include methods to measure behavior and assess conditions, analyze personal and environmental factors contributing to problems and goals, and design and implement effective interventions.

In pursuit of additional methods to inform community work, I sought out potential guides in the field of community psychology. Beginning in the late 1970s, this has been a career-long engagement, with attempts to integrate work in behavioral community psychology (e.g., Fawcett et al., 1980 ). Through the generosity of guides in community psychology (e.g., Lenny Jason, Rick Price, Tom Wolff, and Bill Berkowitz), I discovered inspiring people and work and new methods for community research and action. By seeking an integration of the fields of applied behavioral science and community psychology—a form of behavioral community psychology—we tried to bridge important values and standards of these two disciplines (Fawcett, 1990 , 1991 ).

Beginning in the early 1990s, our work with the Kansas Health Foundation and a subsequent endowed professorship reoriented our center’s work to the field of public health. Through guides in public health (e.g., Marni Vliet, Larry Green, Marshall Kreuter, Michael McGinnis, and Bobbie Berkowitz), we discovered the shared values of social justice, evidence-based practice, and commitment to creating conditions for health and equity that are the pillars of this discipline.

Beginning in 2004 and still ongoing, our center was designated by the WHO as a Collaborating Centre for Community Health and Development. This allowed us to learn and contribute with colleagues from around the world, with encouragement and support from guides in global health (e.g., Bill Foege, Gauden Galea, Alfonso Contreras, Gerry Eijkemans, Peter Phori, and Rima Afifi). The WHO Collaborating Centre’s two primary objectives—building capacity for the work of community health and development and expanding the evidence base for collaborative action—continue to be a focus for our broader KU center.

These and other disciplines, and related interest groups and networks, have created a rich web of opportunities for many of us to learn how to engage in community research and action.

Building Methods and Capabilities for the Work

Every practitioner seeks to discover and adapt methods to make the work of promoting community health and development more effective. We develop tools and protocols, such as for assessment or intervention, to make the work easier for ourselves and others. We build capabilities, such as for workforce development or participatory evaluation, to enable others to do this work—without us, in their different contexts, long after we are gone.

Our KU center has focused its development efforts on two strategic capabilities: (a) tools for capacity building and (b) methods for participatory research and monitoring and evaluation.

Tools for Capacity Building: The Community Tool Box and Action Toolkits

In 1995, a team of colleagues (myself, Jerry Schultz, Vincent Francisco, Bill Berkowitz, and Tom Wolff) began building the Community Tool Box ( http://ctb.ku.edu/ ). That work continues with our KU center, under the leadership of Christina Holt. The Community Tool Box is now a massive (over 7,000-page), free, and open-source collection of tools for building capacity for this work. It features hundreds of learning modules—including task analyses, rationales, and application examples—for skills related to promoting community health and development. Learning modules aim to build capacity for core competencies in community research and action, including engagement, assessment, planning, intervention, advocacy, and evaluation. Available in English and Spanish, and partially in Arabic and Farsi, the open-source Community Tool Box reached over 6,000,000 unique users last year.

In recent years, we have also developed customized capacity-building resources, known as Action Toolkits, with a number of different partners. These online resources mix other content sources with curated content from the Community Tool Box—including its task analyses—to build skills for implementing a partner’s framework for action. For instance, the African Health Action Toolkit ( https://who-afro.ctb.ku.edu ), developed with partners at the WHO Regional Office for Africa, is intended to build capacity for addressing social determinants of health and furthering sustainable development goals in the region. The Healthy Cities Action Toolkit ( https://paho.ctb.ku.edu/ ), developed with the WHO/Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) Regional Office for the Americas and available in English and Spanish, aims to support efforts to promote healthy cities in the Americas. Partnering with a state health department, we built the Kansas Healthy Communities Action Toolkit ( https://ksactiontoolkit.ctb.ku.edu/ ) to further health-equity work. Other partnerships have produced an array of Action Toolkits, including those for improving community health, promoting racial justice, strengthening democratic action, and promoting compassionate communities.

Methods for Participatory Research and Monitoring and Evaluation

Our center also invested in developing a capability for monitoring and evaluation (M&E) that would allow us to work with partners locally and globally. The technology for this M&E system, known as the Community Check Box Evaluation System, supports the documentation of the intervention and participatory sensemaking to reflect on patterns in the data (Fawcett et al., 2017 ). With partners, we have used this M&E system to help understand and improve a variety of collaborative efforts.

Participatory M&E—a form of participatory action research—holds promise for understanding and addressing a variety of health and development issues. Capabilities that make this easier can be helpful in facilitating partnerships for community research. For instance, we have used this methodology to support evaluations of initiatives to (a) promote community health and development (e.g., Fawcett et al., 2016 ), (b) enhance care coordination for those with low incomes (e.g., Hassaballa et al., 2015 ), (c) prevent the spread of Ebola in Liberia (e.g., Munodawafa et al., 2018 ), (d) provide a health-systems response to COVID-19 (Holt et al., 2021 ), and (e) respond to COVID-19 in the WHO Africa Region. For instance, in the latter example, the WHO Regional Office for Africa used the M&E system to document the unfolding of COVID-19 response activities in African countries, support country partners’ reflections on patterns, and adjust its technical support for country efforts (Phori et al., manuscript under revision ).

The sensemaking protocol of the M&E system enables stakeholders—including those most affected and those responsible—to construct their own meaning of the data. They do so by systematically reflecting on (a) what we are seeing (i.e., in data patterns), (b) what it means (e.g., identifying factors and critical events associated with increases/decreases in measures), and (c) what the implications for adjustment and improvement are. We have seen the value of protocols for participatory M&E, and the related use of the Community Check Box Evaluation System, in an array of partnerships.

By building tools and platforms for making the work easier and more effective—and more participatory—we can strengthen engagement with partners and extend the learning, reach, and impact of our efforts.

Partnering for Collaborative Research and Action

Collaborative partnerships involve a sharing of resources, responsibilities, risks, and rewards (Himmelman, 2002 ). This requires trust and the experience borne of respectful engagement with different communities and fields. Capabilities that make the work easier and more effective, such as those for capacity building or evaluation, make it more likely that partners will choose to work together.

Our center has had the privilege of working with an array of partners on a variety of initiatives, typically in the roles of training, technical support, and evaluation. For instance, locally, in an over decade-long partnership with the Latino Health for All Coalition, we have provided technical support and evaluation for the coalition’s efforts to promote physical activity, healthy nutrition, and access to health services (e.g., Collie-Akers et al., 2013 ), including enhancing health access and culturally competent health services (Fawcett et al., 2018 ) and enrolling underserved groups in affordable health insurance (e.g., Fawcett, Sepers, et al., 2015b ). In a partnership with a state health department, we designed and supported the implementation of a maternal and child health M&E system to document and improve system changes related to improving conditions for population-level maternal and child health.

Nationally, we have used this systematic M&E capability to document and characterize the intensity of community efforts to prevent childhood obesity in the national Healthy Communities Study that involved over 300 communities (Fawcett, Collie-Akers, et al., 2015a ; Frongillo et al., 2017 ; Strauss et al., 2018 ). As evaluators of the Bristol Meyers Squibb Foundation’s national Together on Diabetes Program, we also used this M&E system to support the accountability and quality improvement of multiple partners working to address equity issues in diabetes care (e.g., Hassaballa et al., 2015 ).

Globally, in partnership with the WHO Regional Office for Africa, we have worked to expand the evidence base for how communities and countries respond to communicable disease outbreaks such as Ebola (e.g., Munodawafa et al., 2018 ). In a current project, the Community Check Box serves as the infrastructure for a WHO AFRO effort to document and better understand country-level responses to COVID-19 within the Africa region. This project uses the participatory sensemaking protocol to identify factors that enabled and impeded the response and associated effects on new cases of COVID-19 (Phori et al., manuscript under revision ).

Locally, and globally, the Community Tool Box—with over 6,000,000 unique users—has the broadest reach of the center’s projects and capabilities (Holt et al., 2013 ). It builds capacities to provide training and technical support for the workforce, including assessment, planning, intervention, advocacy, and evaluation. Its free and open-source materials support the work of millions of learners and practitioners from over 200 countries—including those working in their own communities and organizations, and in government, nongovernmental organizations, and civil society. Action Toolkits, based on the Community Tool Box, help serve the customized capacity-building needs of partners with extensive reach, such as the WHO’s Regional Office for the Americas/PAHO ( https://paho.ctb.ku.edu/ ), Regional Office for Africa ( https://who-afro.ctb.ku.edu ), and Regional Office for the Western Pacific ( https://who-wpro.ctb.ku.edu/engage/ ).

Conclusion: Our Shared Story of Exchange and Variation

This article posits three mechanisms by which community research and practice evolves: (a) engaging with different communities, fields, and networks; (b) building methods and capabilities for the work; and (c) partnering for collaborative research and action. This personal reflection tells a story of evolution—of change and adaptation, of selection and recombination of elements, and ultimately of variation. This process of evolution seems to hold for us individually, and collectively as a community of practitioners developing and adapting ways of doing the work.

As with biological evolution, chance and opportunity play an important part in variation. For instance, although we may seek guides to help show the way in different communities and fields, they may not be available to us. Although we might hope to build capabilities to make the work easier, we may not find the resources to do so. Despite our interest in partnerships, our modest relationships and limited experience may not enable us to forge them. In addition, as with biological mutations, not all variations in community methods are good; there is a risk that change may not equal improvement.

Paleontologist and evolutionary scientist Stephen Jay Gould ( 1996 ) noted in Full House that the story line for biological evolution is more variation than progress. Chance events and related differential exposures, vulnerabilities, and capabilities lead to life-forms of great variety. Evolutionary history shows more evidence of variation than improved functioning. This might also apply to the field of community research and action. Analogously, rather than look for one approach as the pinnacle, we might do better to appreciate the accumulating variation that emerges from our collective engagements, methods building, and partnerships.

This personal reflection highlights the mechanisms that increase variation—and perhaps some progress—in the field of community research and action. Our evolving practice emerges from exchange among partners and the recombination of ideas and methods discovered through engagement with different communities and fields. This is the work of seekers—those with curiosity and openness to new methods and adaptations that may have a relative advantage. May we have “entangled” lives, ones that are enriched by a web of relationships through which we learn, change, and improve our collective contributions to community health, development, and equity.

Collie-Akers, V. L., Fawcett, S. B., & Schultz, J. A. (2013). Measuring progress of collaborative action in a community health effort. Revista Panamericana de Salud Pública/Pan American Journal of Public Health, 34 (6), 422–428.

PubMed   Google Scholar  

Fawcett, S. B. (1990). Some emerging standards for community research and action. In P. Tolan, C. Keys, F. Chertok, & L. E. Jason (Eds.), Researching community psychology: Integrating theories and methodologies (pp. 64–75). American Psychological Association.

Chapter   Google Scholar  

Fawcett, S. B. (1991). Some values guiding community research and action. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 24 , 621–636.

Article   Google Scholar  

Fawcett, S. B. (1999). Some lessons on community organization and change. In J. Rothman (Ed.), Reflections on community organization: Enduring themes and critical issues (pp. 314–334). F. E. Peacock Publishers.

Google Scholar  

Fawcett, S. B., Fletcher, R. K., & Mathews, R. M. (1980). Applications of behavior analysis in community education. In D. S. Glenwick & L. A. Jason (Eds.), Behavioral community psychology: Progress and prospects (pp. 108–142). Praeger.

Fawcett, S., Abeykoon, P., Arora, M., Dobe, M., Galloway-Gilliam, L., Liburd, L., & Munodawafa, D. (2010a). Constructing an action agenda for community empowerment at the 7th Global Conference on Health Promotion in Nairobi. Global Health Promotion, 17 (4).

Fawcett, S., Schultz, J., Watson-Thompson, J., Fox, M., & Bremby, R. (2010b). Building multisectoral partnerships for population health and health equity. Preventing Chronic Disease, 7 (6), Article A118 http://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2010/nov/10_0079.htm

Fawcett, S. B., Collie-Akers, V., Schultz, J., & Kelley, M. (2015a). Measuring community programs and policies in the Healthy Communities Study. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 49 (4), 636–641.

Fawcett, S. B., Sepers, C. E., Jones, J., Jones, L., & McKain, W. (2015b). Participatory evaluation of a community mobilization effort to enroll residents of Wyandotte County, Kansas residents through the Affordable Care Act. American Journal of Public Health, 105 (S3), S433–S437.

Fawcett, S. B., Schultz, J., Collie-Akers, V., Holt, C., & Watson-Thompson, J. (2016). Community development for population health and health equity. In P. Erwin & R. Brownson (Eds.), Scutchfield and Keck’s principles of public health practice (4th ed., pp. 443–460). Cengage Learning.

Fawcett, S. B., Schultz, J., Collie-Akers, V., Holt, C., Watson-Thompson, J., & Francisco, V. (2017). Participatory monitoring and evaluation of community health initiatives using the Community Check Box Evaluation System. In N. Wallerstein, B. Duran, J. Oetzel, & M. Minkler (Eds.), Community-based participatory research for health (3rd ed., pp. 399–404). Wiley.

Fawcett, S. B., Torres, J., Jones, L., Moffett, M., Bradford, K., Ramirez Mantilla, M., Cupertino, A. P., & Bravo de los Rios, J., & Collie-Akers, V. (2018). Assuring health access and culturally competent health services through the Latino Health for All Coalition. Health Promotion Practice, 19 (5), 765–774.

Frongillo, E. A., Fawcett, S. B., Ritchie, L. D., Arteaga, S., Loria, C. M., Pate, R. R., John, L. V., Strauss, W. J., Gregoriou, M., Collie-Akers, V. L., Schultz, J. A., Landgraf, A. J., & Nagaraja, J. (2017). Community policies and programs to prevent obesity and child adiposity. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 53 , 576–583.

Gould, S. J. (1996). Full house: The spread of excellence from Plato to Darwin . Three Rivers Press.

Book   Google Scholar  

Hassaballa, I., Ebekozien, O., Ogungbadero, A., Williams, F., Schultz, J., Hunter-Skidmore, J., Fawcett, S., & Watson-Thompson, J. (2015). Evaluation of a diabetes care coordination program for African-American women living in public housing. Journal of Clinical Outcomes Management, 22 (8), 365–372.

Himmelman, A. (2002). Collaboration for a change . Himmelman Consulting.

Holt, C. M., Fawcett, S. B., Schultz, J. A., Berkowitz, B., Wolff, T., & Francisco, V. T. (2013). Building community practice competencies globally through the Community Tool Box. Global Journal of Community Psychology Practice, 4 (4), 1–8.

Holt, C. M., Fawcett, S. B., Hassaballa-Muhammad, R., Partridge, D., & Jordan, S. (2021). Participatory monitoring and evaluation of the COVID-19 response in a local public health system. Health Promotion Practice, 22 (6), 750–757.  https://doi.org/10.1177/15248399211041085

Munodawafa, D., Moeti, M., Phori, P. M., Fawcett, S. B., Hassaballa, I., Sepers, C., DiGennaro Reed, F., Schultz, J., & Chiriseri, E. T. (2018). Monitoring and evaluating the Ebola response effort in two Liberian communities. Journal of Community Health, 42 , 321–327.

Phori, P. M., Fawcett, S. B., Nidjergou, N. N., Silouakadila, C., Hassaballa, R., & Kakule, S. D. (manuscript under revision). Participatory monitoring and evaluation of the COVID-19 response in the Africa region.

Sheldrake, M. (2020). Entangled life: How fungi make our worlds, change our minds, and shape our futures . Random House.

Strauss, W. J., Nagarajal, J., Landgraf, A. J., Arteaga, S. S., Fawcett, S. B., Ritchie, L. D., John, L. V., Gregoriou, M., Frongillo, E. A., Loria, C. M., Weber, S. A., Collie-Akers, V. L., McIver, K. L., Schultz, J., Sagatov, R. D., Leifer, E. S., Webb, K., & Pate, R. R. (2018). The longitudinal relationship between community programmes and policies to prevent childhood obesity and BMI in children: the Healthy Communities Study. Pediatric Obesity .

Download references

Author Note

I am grateful to the many wonderful students, colleagues, and partners who were my teachers in this work. My academic home, the Department of Applied Behavioral Science at the University of Kansas, was a fine place to grow as a teacher and researcher. My research center home, the Work Group/Center for Community Health and Development and the Live Span Institute, at the University of Kansas, continues to provide a terrific base for learning, exploration, and contribution. Current and recent colleagues at the center—including Vincent Francisco, Christina Holt, Jerry Schultz, Vicki Collie-Akers, and Jomella Watson-Thompson—still make me feel appreciated in the role of senior advisor. Finally, thanks to my many guides in different communities and fields; you welcomed me, protected me, and showed me around. Your generosity allowed me to see the many and varied forms of community research and action. These gems of engagement remain available for our enchantment, selection, and reinvention for the common good.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Center for Community Health and Development, Life Span Institute, University of Kansas, 4082 Dole Center, 1000 Sunnyside Ave, Lawrence, KS, 66045, USA

Stephen B. Fawcett

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stephen B. Fawcett .

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest.

The author declares no conflict of interest.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Fawcett, S.B. A Reflection on Community Research and Action as an Evolving Practice. Behav. Soc. Iss. 30 , 535–544 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42822-021-00083-x

Download citation

Accepted : 15 October 2021

Published : 12 November 2021

Issue Date : December 2021

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s42822-021-00083-x

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Community research
• Participatory research
• Capacity building
• Behavioral science
• Community psychology
• Public health
• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

Community activism

In this article, we talk about what community activism is and how you can get involved. We'll cover some of the ways in which community activists can make a difference, and provide you with some guides to get started.

What is a community activist? #

Community activism is a broad term that can refer to any form of community engagement or involvement. Community activists may be involved in a variety of activities, from organizing community events to advocating for social justice.

It can take many different forms, but all community change-makers share a commitment to making their community a better place. Whether they are working to improve access to education or fighting for economic justice, community activists are working to make their communities stronger and more vibrant.

Community activists are an important part of democracy. By getting involved in their community, activists can help shape the policies and decisions that affect their lives. By raising their voices, community activists can bring about positive change in their communities.

Resources for community activists #

Activist Handbook has many guides for community activists. For example, check out our article about how to get the attention of local news media and how to organise a protest action . If you need inspiration how to draw attention to your cause, check out our list of tactics for activists .

What are some examples of community activism? #

Examples of community activism include fighting for better schools, working to get more stop signs or crossing guards in a neighborhood, or working to clean up a local park.

Community activists fight for a variety of issues, including social justice, environmental protection , and civil rights.

How can I get involved in community activism? #

There are many ways to get involved in community activism, depending on the issue or cause you are passionate about. Some ways to get involved include attending community meetings, joining a local activist organization, or starting your own initiative.

How can I improve my community activism skills? #

The best place to learn about community activism is by talking to people who are already involved in activism in your community. You can also look for books, websites, and articles about community activism and social change.

Nobody is born an activist, so we recommend you train yourself . Also make sure to check out all our resources about activism .

⚠️ Urgent request: Please don't scroll away

We ask you, humbly, to help. We depend on donations to stay free and independent. But very few people decide to donate.

Activist Handbook trains 6000 new activists every month. We are a nonprofit and we have published over 450+ guides for change-makers.

We appreciate any donation, no matter how small. Give whatever you can afford this month:

Improve this page #

You can improve our page about community activism. Lots of people are looking up information about community activism, but not a lot of high quality resources exist yet on the internet.

Search keywords #

People look up the following search keywords related to community activism:

External resources #

What is community work by Infed

What is a community activist? by IDevelop

Who Are the Activists in My Community? by Learning for Justice

Encouraging Involvement in Community Work by Community Tool Box

We're building the Wikipedia for activists

And you can help us. Join our our international team, or start a local group of writers.

Creativity and Community Action

In a new essay and workbook from David M. Greenberg, LISC's vice president for Knowledge Management and Strategy, practitioners are posed with two parallel questions: how can community development and activism enhance artistic and cultural work? And how can cultural practice community development and activism? Using paintings, poetry, and the work of artist-activists in Logan Square, Chicago, as “cases,” the resource helps enhance the reach, ambition, and impact of collaborations between artists and community organizations.

Download Workbook

Introduction

It is widely observed that creative placemaking has a measurement problem, 1  but it is important to identify that the problem stems from fundamental questions about what art and community development can accomplish together. Some methodologically rigorous studies have examined art’s role in catalyzing community change, but they may conceptualize art as a cultural amenity that can lead to gentrification, because the impact that is captured is more likely driven by population change than by the redistribution of resources. 2  Others view it as self-evident that art promotes equity, by measuring creative expression as a good in itself, separate from real-world action and change. 3

The purpose of this essay is to provide a conceptual and practical framework for artists, activists, and community developers interested in collaborating to achieve more equitable and inclusive community outcomes. While many research studies have asked how art can enhance community development’s reach, ambition, and impact, 4  it is also important to ask the opposite question—how can community development and community activism enhance the reach, ambition, and impact of artistic and cultural practices? How can collaborations between artists and activists result in more creative community development, and also in more powerful art?

Culture-makers who collaborate with activists and community developers can create art that is better poised to illuminate social problems through the eyes of those who seek to change them— art, in other words, that communicates more powerfully a sense of care and agency. These collaborations can spark work that resists harmful narratives about communities, embraces their complexity, and develops a more grounded sense of their possibility. This happens through increasing the reach of culture work, the power of its reception, and through these means, its impact in contributing to cultural change 

In turn, activists and community developers who collaborate with artists can expand their reach—expanding the number of residents and organizations with which they are in more authentic relation. Collaborations can expand the power of these relationships by deepening commitments of organizations and individuals to each other. And through these means, they can enhance the impact of activism and community development.

This essay first imagines the contributions of community action to art through two parables—close readings of a poem and a painting that represent public housing transformation in Chicago. It “reads” Ed Roberson’s poetry and Kerry James Marshall’s paintings to understand how their art is more agentic and more powerful because it genuinely engages history and community. The essay then explores a case study of the contributions of art to community action, examining the artistic and activist practices of Chicago’s Logan Square Neighborhood Association (LSNA)—how LSNA leaders enhanced their impact by integrating creative and cultural activities with their immigrant defense and economic justice work.

It then ends with a series of simple questions that artists and community developers may ask of each other as they collaborate. These questions are meant to measure the “value-add” (to use a not very artistic term) that artists and community developers offer to each other.

Download the full white paper [+]...

[1] Jackson, M. R., Herranz, J., & Kabwasa-Green, F. (2003). Art and culture in communities: a framework for measurement. Washington, DC: Urban Institute. [2] Early in the field’s development, the National Endowment for the Arts launched efforts to create indicators from secondary data sources such as the American Community Survey, using the Urban Institute’s Validating Arts and Livability Indicators (VALI) Study. Other examples include Stern, M.J. (2014). Measuring the outcomes of creative placemaking. In The role of artists & the arts in creative placemaking, May 30-31, 2014, Baltimore, MD—symposium report (pp. 84-97). Washington, DC: Goethe-Institut and EUNIC. That study looked at the correlations between community change in Philadelphia and the presence of cultural assets. [3] For example, some prominent funders emphasized early in the development of the field that the impact of creative placemaking or placekeeping was to “connect, engage, and listen,” or to allow the community to “narrate itself.” [4] See for example the framing of the 2019 issue of Community Development Innovation Review

Blog:  More Creative Community Development. More Powerful Art.

David Greenberg, LISC’s VP for Knowledge Management and Strategy, and author of a new essay and workbook exploring the relationships between art and community development, poses a question to our field: what happens when we dispense with our outmoded silos and allow culture-making and social activism to graft? The possibilities are limitless and liberating.

Home — Essay Samples — Life — Community Service — How I Will Contribute To The Community

How I Will Contribute to The Community

• Categories: Community Community Service

About this sample

Words: 575 |

Published: Sep 5, 2023

Words: 575 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Table of contents

Education as a catalyst for change, creating social impact through engagement, fostering inclusivity and diversity, conclusion: empowering change together.

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Verified writer

• Expert in: Sociology Life

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

4 pages / 1726 words

2 pages / 739 words

1 pages / 515 words

2 pages / 1046 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Community Service

In every community service and service learning there are hundreds human being more just like it’s filled with kind-hearted individuals volunteering their time to better our communities. Individual participation represent the [...]

Americorps, often referred to as the "domestic Peace Corps," is a national service program dedicated to addressing critical community needs in the United States. Established in 1993, Americorps engages thousands of Americans in [...]

Community service, the act of volunteering one's time and skills to support and improve the well-being of a community, is a powerful force for personal and social development. This essay explores the significance of community [...]

In conclusion, community service has been a transformative experience for me. It has allowed me to grow personally, enhance my academic journey, develop a sense of social responsibility, and overcome challenges. Through [...]

Americorps is a federally-funded national service program in the United States that aims to address critical community needs through direct service. Established in 1994, Americorps has become an integral part of America's [...]

Nowadays, many people have to learn as many skills as they can, so that they can get the jobs that they find interesting. The government requires students to perform minimum of 15 hours community service to graduate from high [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

This I Believe

Community in action.

Studs Terkel

My own beliefs, my personal beliefs, came into being during the most traumatic moment in American history: the Great American Depression of the 1930s. I was 17 at the time, and I saw on the sidewalks pots and pans and bedsteads and mattresses. A family had just been evicted and there was an individual cry of despair, multiplied by millions. But that community had a number of people on that very block who were electricians and plumbers and carpenters and they appeared that same evening, the evening of the eviction, and moved these household goods back into the flat where they had been. They turned on the gas; they fixed the plumbing. It was a community in action accomplishing something.

And this is my belief, too: that it's the community in action that accomplishes more than any individual does, no matter how strong he may be.

Born in 1912, Pulitzer Prize-winning oral historian Studs Terkel moved to Chicago shortly before the Great Depression. Although trained as a lawyer, he worked as an actor, sportscaster, disc jockey, writer and interviewer. Terkel hosted a Chicago radio program for 45 years and has authored 12 oral histories about 20th-century America.

Einstein once observed that Westerners have a feeling the individual loses his freedom if he joins, say, a union or any group. Precisely the opposite's the case. The individual discovers his strength as an individual because he has, along the way, discovered others share his feelings -- he is not alone, and thus a community is formed. You might call it the prescient community or the prophetic community. It's always been there.

And I must say, it has always paid its dues, too. The community of the '30s and '40s and the Depression, fighting for rights of laborers and the rights of women and the rights of all people who are different from the majority, always paid their dues. But it was their presence as well as their prescience that made for whatever progress we have made.

And that's what Tom Paine meant when he said: "Freedom has been hunted around the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth that all it asks, all it wants, is the liberty of appearing. In such a situation, man becomes what he ought to be."

Still quoting Tom Paine: "He sees his species not with the inhuman idea of a natural enemy" -- you're either with us or against us, no. "He sees his species as kindred."

And that happens to be my belief, and I'll put it into three words: community in action.

More 'This I Believe' Essays

Norman corwin: good can be as communicable as evil, cecilia munoz: getting angry can be a good thing, azar nafisi: mysterious connections that link us together, related npr stories, author interviews, studs terkel, adventures of an eclectic disc jockey, revisiting studs terkel's 'working', morning edition, studs terkel: 'will the circle be unbroken'.

What are your chances of acceptance?

Calculate for all schools, your chance of acceptance.

Your chancing factors

Extracurriculars.

How to Write the MIT “Community” Essay

This article was written based on the information and opinions presented by Hale Jaeger in a CollegeVine livestream. You can watch the full livestream for more info.

What’s Covered

What is a community.

• Impact and Personal Significance

Example #1: Tutoring a Friend

Example #2: managing food waste.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is consistently ranked as one of the top five universities in the nation, according to US News and World Report. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT is known for its rigorous STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), business, and entrepreneurship programs. It uses its own application system called MyMIT instead of Common Application, and applicants are required to submit five essays. The third essay prompt reads:

“At MIT, we bring people together to better the lives of others. MIT students work to improve their communities in different ways, from tackling the world’s biggest challenges to being a good friend. Describe one way in which you have contributed to your community, whether in your family, the classroom, your neighborhood, etc. (225 words)”

In this article, we discuss how to approach the prompt and provide tips for writing your essay. For an overview of the five essay prompts and guidance on how to approach them, check out our post on how to write the MIT application essays .

This prompt asks you to reflect on the impact that you have had on your community and the specific ways that you have worked to improve the lives of others within it. A community is defined broadly and includes, but is not limited to, one or more of the following: 

• Your nuclear or extended family
• Clubs and teams that you are a member of
• The street or neighborhood where you live
• A place where you work
• A religious community or house of worship
• A racial or ethnic group

Impact and Personal Significance

The specific way that you have contributed to the community you choose to write about doesn’t need to be award winning or impressive. You could write about being a good friend, taking care of your neighbor’s pets, or hosting a weekly coffee hour for members of your church. Anything from your life is worth writing about as long as you have made a positive, measurable, and clear impact on the lives of others.

Beyond having concrete outcomes, you should also have gained something from this experience, such as a new perspective or understanding of yourself and the world around you. It’s important that you communicate how you have changed and grown as a result of this experience. By weaving together the impact of your contribution to others with its significance to you personally, you demonstrate that you not only know how to give of yourself but also that the act of giving is something from which you derive meaning.

Ultimately, this essay is used by MIT admissions officers to predict who you will be in the MIT community based on how you interact with and care for others and your ability to turn empathy into action and direct service. Admissions officers want to see that you are generous in spirit, eager to make a difference, and care deeply about adding value to your community.

For example, suppose an applicant writes about tutoring a friend on their varsity soccer team in mathematics. The person was struggling in math class, worried about failing, and feeling really demoralized. The applicant writes about offering to tutor that friend pro bono because they know that money is tight for the friend’s family. After working together five days a week for two months, the friend’s math test scores start improving, and they finally get their first A on a test. Beyond the improved test scores, the friend starts to really understand and internalize various mathematical concepts and problem-solving techniques to the point where math starts to become fun and interesting. 

The applicant should write not only about the positive impact (improved grades and outlook) on their friend but also how the experience was personally significant and illuminating. Perhaps this experience has inspired them to seriously consider a career in teaching because helping others understand difficult concepts is meaningful work to them.

Consider another example. An applicant is shocked to find out that their school generates a sizable amount of food waste. Instead of dumping the waste into the landfill, the applicant decides to use their position on the student council to liaise with a sustainability group to develop a two-pronged system of composting and donating leftover food. After this system is successful within the applicant’s school, the applicant works with administrators and students at schools across the school district to implement a similar system. 

The applicant could write about the experience of developing the food waste management system, the quantitative and qualitative benefits of such a program to the community and the environment, and the personal satisfaction that they derived from implementing such a program. Additionally, they may discuss their newfound interest in pursuing an academic and professional career at the intersection of agriculture, public policy, and environmental studies.

Related CollegeVine Blog Posts

• User Registration

Disability Action Center NW, Inc. - Independent Living Center

Nearby Assistance Programs

Latest reviews, comments, questions for disability action center nw, inc..

Write a review/review about Disability Action Center Nw, Inc..

RentAssistance.org ©2024

Share This Article

Leave a comment cancel reply.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

One comment on “Political Art Action in Moscow”

Dear Sir, I would like to draw your attention to an international art prize – the 2009 Orient Global Freedom to Create Prize – http://www.freedomtocreateprize.com . This US$ 125,000 Prize is designed to honour those artists who use their talent to promote social justice, build the foundations for an open society and inspire the human spirit. There are three categories – Main, Youth and Imprisoned Artist. Entries close on August 14. In terms of registering – either the artists themselves or others can nominate them on the website by filling in the information at http://www.freedomtocreateprize.com/Apply.asp . Once this is done, an email will be sent out with the application form. I wondered if I am able to download the information on to your website? If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me. Best wishes, Alice

More from the Blog

Art for the People

…Our panel on Saturday morning “Art for the People: Sustaining Community Practices from the 60s to the Future,” was composed of Diane Fujino, a. e. hunt, Justseeds artists: Kill Joy, Jess X. Snow, and (myself) Saiyare Refaei, and moderated by Chad Shomura. We wanted to share living proof of how radical collective imagination shows up in the art and cinema within social movements…

Gambling with Palestinian Lives

EL Machete Illustrated

Signal:09 Editors’ Round Up

An overview of the lates issue of Signal: A Journal of International Political Graphics & Culture.

Justseeds Open Type Project Update

This is an update on changes with the Justseeds Open Type Project and news on a couple of related projects.

More from the Shop

The River Ran Black with Ink

Le fond de l’air est rouge

Sunflowers Sticker

Unity of the Poor and Dispossessed

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

ESSAY; Moscow's China Card

By William Safire

• Sept. 8, 1986

Every decade or so, China undergoes a political convulsion. In 1948-49, the Communists threw out the Kuomintang; in 1956, Mao's ''Great Leap Forward'' plunged the country into a depression; in 1966, the Cultural Revolution to purify the party brought on a new Dark Ages; in 1976-78, we saw Mao's would-be radical successors, the ''Gang of Four,'' replaced by pragmatic Deng Xiaoping.

Now we are celebrating the 10th anniversary of the death of Mao, and some Pekingologists would have us believe that this decade's upheaval will not come.

Mr. Deng, at 82, has provided for his succession, we are assured: it's all set for Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang to succeed him, with Hu Qili of the next generation right behind. Not to worry, goes the current Edgar Snow-job: China's new era of ''commutalism,'' communism with a capitalist face, will march undisturbed into the next millennium.

I wonder. Maybe the conventional wisdom will prove right for once. But for argument's sake, let's look at what is happening in China through a different set of glasses, seeking truth from facts.

Fact number one is that a wave of materialism is sweeping across the billion people of China. After a generation of repression, good ol' greed is back in the saddle, and an I'm-all right-Deng attitude permeates the new entrepreneurs.

As a longtime expositor of the virtue of greed in powering the engine of social progress, I cannot cluck-cluck at this. But there is a difference between the materialism of the Chinese on Taiwan, who are accustomed to free enterprise, and the lust for the good life of available goods on the mainland, where a terrible thirst has been a-building.

Let us assume that the outburst of materialism in China leads to some reaction: that some spoilsport faction emerges to summon up the ghost of Mao's ideological purity, and that this new gang of fortyish Outs finds its way back in. It is at least a possibility.

I think that shrewd old Deng is well aware of this possibility. That is why, despite his ostentatious rejection of personal cultdom, he is preparing his most dramatic assault on the memory of Mao. That father of the revolution startled the world by breaking with the Soviet Union; Mr. Deng, playing a revisionist Lenin to Mao's Marx, wants to startle the world and overwhelm internal opposition by a rapprochement with Moscow.

Accordingly, fact two: He has abandoned his demand that Russia move back its huge army from the Chinese border, thereby double-crossing his own Army leaders. He has forgotten his requirement that Soviet forces be withdrawn from Afghanistan, thereby double-crossing his Westernish ally, Pakistan.

All Mr. Deng now asks of the Russians is that they try to squeeze their Vietnamese clients to pull out of Cambodia. Of course they'll try - ''best efforts'' is an easy promise - and since the Vietnamese are notoriously independent, Moscow cannot be blamed for not succeeding. Result: Mr. Deng takes the salute from atop the wall in Red Square.

That reestablishes his Communist credentials, defanging hard-left opposition at home. And it is Middle Kingdom orthodoxy; I suspect Chinese agents in the U.S. supply the K.G.B. with intelligence, just as Peking permits our Big Ears on its soil to overhear Kremlin transmissions. Chinese policy has always been to play the barbarians against each other.

This theory would also explain fact three: Mr. Gorbachev's seizure of a U.S. newsman as hostage. It is no coincidence that this particular hostage selection follows China's arrest and expulsion of a reporter for a U.S. newspaper. The Soviet leader, advised by Anatoly Dobrynin, must have known that this slap in the face would jeopardize a summit - and went ahead with his calculated humiliation, similar to Mr. Nixon's mining of Haiphong harbor before his Moscow summit in 1972.

Because the Russians now have the prospect of a pilgrimage to Moscow by Mr. Deng, they can taunt the U.S. President with impunity. As Mr. Dobrynin probably predicted, Mr. Reagan is reduced to begging for the hostage's release, in effect volunteering testimony to a Soviet court, in his eagerness to crown his Presidency with a peacemaking summit.

Now Mr. Gorbachev can hang tough, holding a show trial and thereby delaying negotiations with the U.S. until the Deng visit - or can graciously accede to the Reagan plea, thereby establishing his dominance. And the overconfident Mr. Reagan never suspected, as he sat down to summit poker, that this time the China card was in his opponent's hand.