Community Engagement and Participation
| Course Code | CDEV-216 |
|---|---|
| Lecture hours per week | 3 |
| Lab hours per week | |
| Course Availability | Open |
| Description | Students will examine how CD practitioners strive to engage and mobilize community members to voice individual and collective concerns and to become willing participants in CD initiatives. The process of collective action, building productive teams, networking with others, the use of outreach strategies and facilitating advocacy efforts within the community, will be a major focus of the course. The use of volunteer banks, voluntary associations, and self-help support organizations to further CD projects will be reviewed. Characteristics of community engagement will be examined to reveal ways to efficiently promote participation in unique contexts and settings. Discussing “ladders of public participation” as frameworks to understanding why individuals volunteer and how they can be effectively recruited, utilized and retained will be addressed. Identifying why people do and do not participate in a community development process is key in helping students to understand various techniques of public participation. Ways to utilize, monitor, evaluate and revise the many strategies for community engagement will be carefully examined through the use of community organizing models. Involving the community in the process of grant proposal writing to secure funding for community initiatives and promote social change will be discussed. Course Learning Outcomes
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