My article reproduced from C-LOG of Meri News Portal which has closed down
Reference: Importance of community mobilization for making social sector projects effective and sustainable - Dr. Lalit Kishore | 07 Dec 2017
Of late, it has been found that both the government sector and corporate sector projects are turning out be unsustainable because of lack of efforts for community mobilization and ownership of the projects.
In the corporate sector projects, the NGOs are involved but a provider-recipient relationship to create good image and brand name for the corporate sector is lacking.
There is a need to revive community mobilisation and empowerment as an essential component of any social sector project or initiative.
Community mobilization is essentially a process for reaching out to different sections of a community and creating partnerships between various stakeholders to address a pressing social or development issue. It requires well planned efforts by empowering community members and groups through motivation, induction and skill trainings to take action to facilitate change or solving the problem.
It is the process of integrating interventions, initiatives, services, projects, programmes and strategies through community-wide participation requires mobilizing the community, educating the stakeholders, implementing evidence-based practices for their increased access, effective implementation and sustainability.
It has been found that training and follow-up in coordination, leadership and support practices or processes on the community mobilization for a core group of field workers or functionaries along with a follow-up is required for effectiveness and sustainability components of an initiative or intervention.
Community and social mobilization include sharing vision, creating a core group of stakeholders, creating partnerships, mobilizing necessary resources, awareness creation, disseminating basic intent and information, generating support, and cooperation across social, government and private sectors units in the community.
The core group creates community action plan for accessing or creating resources to enhance the ability of the community to address a pressing problem or issue.
The plan should define the partnership's goals, state the problems identified through needs assessment, define precisely 5-7 main objectives, list out activities that will be carried out to meet the objectives.
Create a review and mid-course correction mechanism and shared decision making processes with community members in decision-making roles.
ABC of community mobilization:
A: Alliances that are strategically planned with stakeholders in the community
B: Broadening participation in community for problem solving by mobilizing support
C: Creating community coalition partnership for a cause
D: Developing strategic plan with shared vision of the community
E: Evaluating community mobilization, partnerships and support mechanisms
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