COMMUNITY MOBILAZATION SKILLS

NTA LEVEL5 FIRST SEMESTER

Definition of the terms

Mobilization-The action of organizing and encouraging a group of people to take collective

action in pursuit of a particular objective OR The action of bringing resources into use for a
particular purpose(Business dictionary, 2006).
Community– Is a group of people with a shared identity. Hence, community development relies
on interaction between people and joint action, rather than individual activity – what some
sociologists call “collective agency” (Flora and Flora, 1993).

Social mobilization is the process of bringing together all feasible and practical intersect oral
allies to raise awareness

What is Community Mobilization?

Is the process of engaging communities to identify community priorities, resources,

needs and solutions in such a way as to promote representative participation, good
governance, accountability and peaceful change ,Or Community mobilization is an
attempt to bring both human and non-human resources together to undertake developmental
activities in order to achieve sustainable development.

Also Community mobilization can be defined as the act of encouraging and engaging the
community to participate in the creation of safe cities and communities for women and girls.
This process must involve the whole community, not just the specific actors who are directly
involved in a safe cities for women programme. A community could be considered “mobilized”
when all members feel as though the issue of women’s and girls’ safety is important to them and
worthy of action and support.

1.1.2Explain techniques for community mobilization

 Secure strong leadership Engage strong leadership with community member support to
drive the community-wide efforts. Strong leaders can include both individuals who take
on the work and the organization(s) that spearhead collaborative efforts. Lead
organizations should possess a number of key characteristics including: the will to serve
as the leader of the community mobilization effort over a significant period of time; the
capacity to provide both infrastructure and human resources; financial stability; the
 ability to garner and manage financial resources, and the respect and support of the
community. 
 Ensure that individuals and organizations in leadership positions have adequate support
and resources.

 Establish a formal structure

 Develop a formal structure that can effectively lead community change efforts. This
structure serves six essential functions: providing overall strategic direction, facilitating
dialogue between partners, managing data collection and analysis, handling
communication, coordinating community outreach, and mobilizing funding.
 Establish key structures and develop guiding documents to help facilitate the
coordination of community-wide efforts. These may include specific committees (such as
steering committees and subcommittees dedicated to a certain issue or strategy),
organizational charts, codified rules of operation (such as bylaws), policy statements
adopted by the partnership, and formal letters of agreement for those who lead, organize,
and participate in the community-wide effort.

 Engage diverse organization community leaders and residents

Engage stakeholders who are most likely to support evidence-based teen pregnancy
prevention efforts. Engage young people, parents, educators, health care providers, and
community-based organizations. Reach out to organizations and key players that are outside
of the “usual suspects” (such as sexuality educators or family planning centers). This
includes religious leaders, businesses, policy makers, media personalities, and others who
have significant influence in the community.

 Ensure authentic participation and shared decision making

Support a sense of commitment and ownership of the vision and plan for the community-wide
effort by establishing clear roles and responsibilities for all group members, developing shared
decision making processes, and ensuring that community members are in key decision-making
roles.
  Ensure Authentic and Productive Roles for Young People

 Engage young people in all aspects of program planning, development, implementation,

and evaluation. Provide training on how to effectively develop youth-adult partnerships.
Create opportunities for both youth and adults to share decision making. Be sure to carve
out specific roles for both groups based in part on their age and prior experiences.
 Remember to consider the practical challenges of involving young people such as
scheduling meetings after school and on weekends, providing transportation, and offering
meals as incentives for attendance.

 Develop a Shared Vision

 Create a shared understanding of the goals of the community partnership by drafting a

written mission statement specific to the collaboration. Though this statement may share
aspects with the mission guiding the lead organization and/or its partners, making it
distinct and different can help unify a vision. Once the mission statement has been agreed
upon, be sure to make all partners aware of it so that everyone is working toward the
same goal.

7. Conduct a Needs Assessment

 The needs assessment research will inform the direction of the mobilization effort by
serving as the basis for creating a strategic plan, program activities, internal
communication plans, and public education campaigns. Be sure to clearly define the
community that the partnership is designed to serve whether it is by geographic location
or other population characteristics.

8. Create a Strategic Plan

 Draft a strategic plan that lays out the partnership’s goals (the explicit ways that
community partners are going to address the problems identified in the needs assessment)
and objectives (the activities that will be carried out in pursuit of the goal). The strategic
plan should identify the social, structural, and individual changes that will lead to
reductions in teen pregnancy and birth rates.
 o Social changes include increased public will; greater community leadership
capacity; increased and high quality community participation, and supportive
community norms.
o Structural changes include changes made by institutions such as schools, health
departments, and family planning centers and/or changes in policies and practices
that support individual behavior change.
o Individual changes include shifts in knowledge, skills, and behaviors among both
youth and adults.
 Ensure that goals and objectives are SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic,
and time-framed).

9. Implement Mutually Reinforcing Strategies

 Decide on the activities that participants—whether individuals or organizations—will

undertake to support the goals and objectives enumerated in the strategic plan. Identify a
range of key strategies aimed toward youth – such as implementing evidence-based
sexuality education programs in schools or improving access to youth friendly family
planning services – as well as key strategies that support the overall mobilization effort.
For example, develop strategies that will improve stakeholder participation, develop local
leadership, and improve resource mobilization.
 Remember to reevaluate these activities as conditions in the community change or new
funding becomes available.

10. Create a Fundraising Strategy

 Explore a wide range of funding opportunities to ensure that the strategies and activities
can continue beyond the life of the original funding cycle. Consider diverse funding
sources including foundation grants, gifts from individual donors, and in-kind donations
from organizations and business in the area. Focus on local resources whenever possible.
 Consider drafting standard fundraising language that can be used for a variety of “asks.”
Make sure to include the best argument for why the community partnership is important
 as well as your mission, goals, objectives, strategies, and plans for evaluation. Don’t
forget to add specific information about the community from the needs assessment.

11. Establish Effective Channels for Internal Communication

 Ensure a constant flow of information by adopting formal communication strategies that

allow for frequent, deliberate, and productive exchanges between partners.
 Consider appointing a skilled communicator to the role of “relationship manager” and
putting this person in charge of continually informing members about what the
partnership, the committees, the subcommittees, and even individual members are doing
to advance the mission and strategic plan.

12. Educate the Community

 Educate and inspire the community by holding forums, engaging local media, designing
public service announcements, creating billboard campaigns, drafting letters to the editor,
launching web-based and social media campaigns, or holding home health parties, parent
meetings, roundtables, and conferences. The goal of public education campaigns is to
generate awareness, motivate action, encourage funding, and keep the community
focused on the issue at hand.
 Remember to tailor the messages to the community, incorporate data from the needs
assessment, and chose spokespeople who resonate with the intended audience.

13. Conduct Process and Outcome Evaluations

 Decide in advance how the partnerships are going to define success and remember that
there is often a long delay between when a partnership begins its activities and when
there is a measurable impact on youth in the community (such as a reduction in teen birth
rates). Set key benchmarks and progress points along the way.
 Design both process and outcome evaluations and decide on the intervals at which each
will be conducted. Process evaluations will help determine, for example, how many
community members have participated in each activity and whether the activity was
 carried out as originally planned. Outcome evaluations will assess whether the
partnership resulted in expected changes in the community.

14. Evaluate the Community Mobilization Effort Separately

 Conduct an evaluation to help determine the impact of the mobilization effort – that is,
whether the partnership was successful in building leadership, shifting norms in the
community, harnessing community buy-in, and mobilizing financial resources. Evaluate
the partnership by looking at the quality of the strategic plan, level of member
participation, total number of actions implemented, satisfaction of members and staff,
collaboration of members and member agencies, members’ knowledge of the problem at
hand, perceived ownership and empowerment of members, partner mobilization and
maintenance, and team functioning.

References

Chervin, D.D., Philliber, S., Brindis, C., Chadwick, A.E., Revels, M.L., Kamin, S. L., Wike,
R.S., Kramer, J.S., Bartelli, D., Schmidt, C.K., Peterson, S.A., Valderrama, L.T. (2005).
Community capacity building in CDC’s Community Coalition Partnership Programs for the
Prevention of Teen Pregnancy.

Jolin, M, Schmitz, P. & Seldon, W. (2012), Needle-Moving Community Collaboratives; A

Promising Approach to Addressing America’s Biggest Challenges, New York: Bridgespan
Group. (Model)

Butterfoss, F.D., Lachance, L., & Orians, C.E. (2006). Building Allies Coalitions: Why
Formation Matters. Health Promotion Practice, 7 (2), 23S-33S.(Guidance Document)

Zakocs, R. C., & Edwards, E. M. (2006). What explains community coalition effectiveness?: a
review of the literature. American journal of preventive medicine, 30(4), 351.(Review)

Lasker, R. & Weiss, E. (2003).Broadening Participation in Community Problem Solving: a

Multidisciplinary Model to Support Collaborative Practice and Research. Journal of Urban
Health, Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, 80 (1), 14-47. (Model)

Foster-Fishman, P. G., Berkowitz, S. L., Lounsbury, D. W., Jacobson, S., & Allen, N. A. (2001).
Building collaborative capacity in community coalitions: A review and integrative framework.
American journal of community psychology, 29(2), 241-261.(Review)
Objectives of community Mobilization:

 Help stakeholders to form a group and establish the self-reliant organization that can
plan, design, construct, operate, maintain, manage, govern and finance their water
delivery and disposal systems optimizing various interests of stakeholders
 Facilitate assessment and prioritization of needs and resources mobilization
 Promote communication and train stakeholders in problem - solving, decision making,
and conflict resolution
 Built community's capabilities in organization and system management
 Smooth relationships between community and service! water providing agency
 Coordinate with technical staff to facilitate community participation in the project
 Process documentation, evaluation, and development.

2.1Explain importance of social mobilization

Why is Community Mobilization Important?

Every person has the right to feel and be safe in their community and when all members
understand and support this sentiment, they can work together to make positive changes in the
physical structure, the policies, and the attitudes that shape their city. Thus, community
mobilization is important because the community itself is ultimately responsible for and affected
by situations of safety or insecurity. Conversely, if the community is not mobilized in creating
safe cities for women and girls, the ideas and initiatives put forward by safe cities for women
programme will not be supported and will not be put into practice in the day-to-day interactions
of people in the city or community.

2.3 DESCRIPTION OF THE LEARNING SESSION 3: Applying knowledge of leadership

principles, ethics and qualities to coordinate community development interventions
understanding of the relationship management practices
2.3.1 Purpose of the learning session
To enhance learners have the ability of Applying knowledge of leadership principles,
ethics and qualities to coordinate community development interventions understanding of
the relationship management practices
2.1.1Explain channels for social mobilization
Social mobilization is the process of bringing together all feasible and practical intersectoral
allies to raise awareness of and demand for a particular programme, to assist in the delivery of
resources and services and to strengthen com-munity participation for sustainability and self-
reliance (10)“Allies” include decision - and policy - makers, opinion leaders, nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) such as professionals and religious groups, the media, the private sector,
communities and individuals.

Channels for Community Mobilization

Social mobilization is the task of mobilizing all societal and personal influences on an individual
and family to prompt individual and family action with respect to specific healthy behaviors.

- Radio is a type of mass media that can reach wide audiences.

-Interpersonal communication (IPC)

-Community based surveillance
-Mobile phone technology

IDENTIFY STAKEHOLDERS FOR SOCIAL MOBILIZATION

Define stakeholder
A stakeholder as an individual group, institution, organization (government or non-government)
or business, amongst others, that could affect, or be affected by the outcome of a particular
activity, process or project – either positively or negatively.

There are two types of stakeholders, namely primary stakeholders, d secondary

stakeholders.

Primary Stakeholder
Primary stakeholders are persons, groups, organizations or other entities that are actively
involved in forest–related activities and are directly affected by the participatory approach and
can thus significantly influence the process or project. In many cases, primary stakeholders can
be viewed as those stakeholders that need to be included if objectives of forest management in
the area are to be met.
Secondary Stakeholder
Secondary stakeholders are not directly involved in, or affected by, forest – related activities or
the participatory approach. They may, however, be indirectly affected (for example a local shop
owner indirectly benefiting from a tourist venture in the nearby forest due to an increased
number of customers), or are interested and willing to participate in the process in different ways
and stages.

Identify stake holders for social mobilization

The following are the stakeholders in social mobilization
i. National policy makers: Those who can make policy and program decision, as well as
allocated needed resources for services
ii. Media: Those which can help create and sustain public support for social and also can
create public vigilance
iii. Religious leaders: Those who can set up information exchange systems within the
community and can also play important roles in ensuring cooperation among members in
the community.
iv. Local leaders: Those who can push the concerns of social development through
allocation of local funding in support of the programs and can also came up with policy
and program decisions in favor of social mobilization objective.
v. Service providers: Those who have directed access to the intended beneficiaries and are
often credible source of information on the program.
vi. Program Administrators: Those who can chart the course of action of programme and
can put in more resources such as additional funding an increased manpower.
vii. Program planners: Those who can influence program directions and can integrate
various services in existing programs, which explains their being key actors in the
process.
viii. Parents/family members: The critical participants in the program since they are the
ultimate users/buyers of social product.
(In summary)
• NGO/CBO partners
• Health Facility ( service providers, support staff, outreach workers)
• Community (chiefs, religious leaders, women leaders, community group leaders,
community resource persons and traditional health workers)
QN: Explain responsibility of each stake holder in social mobilization
QN: Demonstrate the steps for community mobilization
THERE ARE FIVE STEPS IN COMMUNITY MOBILIZATION AND ENGAGEMENT
1. Start off with a transparent community selection process and share result; In this
first step the change agent/ expert is supposed to share with stake holders including
community members those results.
2. Map community priority and identify community leaders; At this stage through
community assessments; identify potential community leaders as well as what
community members saw as their most pressing priorities-their perceptions of who
“go to” people were within mean the leader who can help when there is community
issue.
3. Hold preliminary meetings with community leaders; In this stage during the
meeting with community leaders just enlist their support to mobilize community
participation. Trying to engage community directly through public calls for meetings
without establishing community channels and trusted intermediaries may limit or
delay the success in mobilizing community to participate early in the programme.
NB: Meeting with community leaders to plan first community assembly meeting.
4. Hold community assembly meeting to elect local representation; In this step the
major aim is to enable the community members to coordinate programme activities
and to build a critical mass capacity to enable community to take ownership and put
them in the driver’s seat.
5. Allow community to priotise and select quick impact projects; In this step solidify
and galvanize local participation, allow community member to add additional
priorities and discuss reprioritize amongst them. On other hand community vote and
select a first community project/activity that would help contribute to achieving the
prioritized community objective.
QN: Explain the importance of community mobilization in community development
practices
 Awareness creation
 Enhance sustainability
 Effective utilization of resources
  Enhance sharing responsibilities
 Ensure effective community participation
 Facilitate communication network

2.2 DESCRIPTION OF THE LEARNING SESSION 2: Understanding of the role of

mobilization in managing social practices
2.2.1 Purpose of the learning session
To enhance learners have the ability of Demonstrating understanding of the role of
mobilization in managing social practices in community development activities
2.1.3Explain strategies for social mobilization
- advocacy
- information, education and Communication
- community organizing
- training capability building
- network and alliance building monitoring and evaluation

Suggested materials/references
1. Abbott, Lewis F. (2007) Theories of Industrial Modernization and Enterprise
Development: A Review, 2nd Revised edition, Industrial Systems Research, Michigan
2. Abraham, Anita and Jean-Phillippe Platteau, (2001), Participatory Development in the
Presence of Endogenous Community Imperfections’ University of Namur, Belgium
3. Adam Fforde (2013), Understanding Development Economics: Its Challenge to
Development Studies As Social Theory, Routledge, London
4. Alison Gilchrist, Marilyn Taylor (2011), The Short Guide to Community Development,
Policy Press, Bristol
5. Brocklesby M. A and Fisher E. (2003), Community Development in Sustainable
Livelihoods. Approach, An Introduction, Community Development Journal 38(3), 185-98
6. Bryant Myers (2011), Walking with the Poor: Principles and Practices of
Transformational Development, Revised, Expanded ed., Orbis Books (USA), Maryknoll
7. Caroline Harper, Nicola Jones, Rachel Marcus, Sophie Laws (2013), Research for
Development: A Practical Guide, 2nd Revised edition, Sage Publications Ltd, London
8. Chitere, O. (1994), Community Development: Its conceptions and Practice with
Emphasis on Africa. Nairobi: Gideon S. Were Press
9. Jolin M, Schmitz P, & seldon W. (2012) needle-moving community collaborative: a
promising approach to address America’s biggest challenges. New York bridgespan
group ( model)
10. Jolin M, Schmitz P, & seldon W. (2012) needle-moving community collaborative: a
promising approach to address America’s biggest challenges. New York bridgespan
group ( model)