I just took over an office that had overtime been unaccountable,unsure,disappointing,inefficient and grossly corrupt.This is the first time of my assumption of such office although I have been involved in community based activism and advocacy.There is great need for me to firstly address widespread unemployment,poverty and insecurity amidst hundreds of corporate organizations,multinational businesses and companies which we are HOST COMMUNITIES to.
What do you think I can do to alleviate and improve on the situation,what blueprint do I employ?
Hello,
Thank you for your question to ask and advisor. And thank you for your patience on my response. If you have not already, I encourage you to read through our documentation on the site as many of the resources we provide may be relevant to your question.
Your question is one I think many of us wish we had a clear answer to. I’ll provide some of my thoughts, but I am not confident I can fully answer your question, but I hope what I provide may be helpful.
It sounds like you are dealing with a multitude of issues in your community. It also sounds like there are some very powerful actors in your community that may oppose your agenda. From your question, to me, I would recommend thinking about building a powerful “people’s organization”, as we call it in the U.S., which it sounds like you have done much of this work already. Although this term comes out of the Saul Alinksy tradition (read “Rules for Radicals” to understand this perspective), other movements have adopted it too. In the Alinsky tradition of community organizing, it is thought that there are two forms of power – powerful money and powerful people. If a community lacks the resources of a major corporation, for example, they can build power by organizing people. If you can build a strong coalition of local leaders and residents to promote their local agenda, they will have more power than you doing it alone.
I would recommend taking a look at the Comm-Org website at the University of Wisconsin (https://comm-org.wisc.edu/). They have a ton of resources on practical ways to build such a movement.
I understand my answer is very brief and more than likely insufficient, but I hope it at the very least gives a little insight. Since there are such powerful opposing forces in your community, it seems like it is necessary to “compete” by creating a powerful opposition to those forces.
I wish you well! Good luck!
Charlie