Hello All:
(1) in response to Debbie Monkman's inquiry about the use of the term
"community capacity" in Ontario, I offer a few comments:
(a) the Ontario Ministry of Health has put
out a number of documents of potential
interest in this regard:
"Capacities for Health Promotion" (n.d.)
and "Capacity Building Resource Network -
Discussion Draft" (revised Jan.'95)
(personally, I don't find either of them
particularly inspiring - capacities are
defined mostly in 'social planning' terms
as the abilities and skills of individuals
and community groups to write grant
proposals, do needs assessments, conduct
project evaluations, etc)
(b) David McKeown (AMOH, City of Toronto Public
Department, July 1995) put out a document
entitled "Indicators and Information Sources
for Community Health Planning: A Resource
Guide" which also describes the types of
community resources one might wish to incl.
in a community project planning exercise
(c) the United Way of America last year issued
a monograph entitled "United Ways' Community
Capacity-Building Stories"
(d) much of the discussion about "community capacity"
and "community asset mapping" is directly
inspired by John McKnight's lifelong work in
this area, and in particular the book he wrote
with Kretzman entitled: "Building Communities
From the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding
and Mobilizing A Community's Assets" (Center
for Urban Affairs & Policy Research,
Neighborhood Innovations Network, Northwestern
University, Evanston IL, 1993)
(e) a group of researchers at the University of
Toronto (myself included), in collaboration
with the Toronto-based Coalition Against
Neighbourhoodism have been funded to do an
empirical qualitative community-based study
of community capacity working with a number
of neighbourhoods in Toronto that are
generally characterized as "disadvantaged".
I've included the abstract from a paper
recently delivered at a conference on
"Defining Community, Re-examining Society"
held in Flint MI 2 weeks ago.
Half Full or Half Empty?
An Empirical and Conceptual Basis for
Redefining Community Based on Capacities
Rather Than Deficits
August 27, 1996
Paper prepared for presentation at the Interdisciplinary Conference on
"Defining Community, Re-examining Society"
University of Michigan-Flint
Flint, Michigan
September 19-21, 1996
Suzanne F. Jackson, Ph.D.
North York Community Health Promotion Research Unit
Shelley Cleverly, B.Sc.N., M.Sc. Candidate
North York Community Health Promotion Research Unit
Blake Poland, Ph.D.
Department of Behavioural Science, University of Toronto
Ann Robertson, Dr.P.H.
Department of Behavioural Sciences, University of Toronto
David Burman, D.D.S., D.D.P.H., Ph.D.
Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto
Michael Goodstadt, Ph.D.
Centre for Health Promotion, University of Toronto
Lisa Salsberg, B.A.
Healthy City Office, City of Toronto
(under the auspices of the North York Community Health Promotion Research Unit)
ABSTRACT
When health and social workers come in to help communities, they have
usually focussed on the problems and difficulties that communities face.
The media also focus on problems because they are more dramatic than "good
news". The result is that communities are often labelled as "problem
communities" to the outside world. Even members of those communities think
of their own community in terms of its problems rather than thinking about
the successful ways that its people are dealing with the problems and
preventing them. In the extreme, such labelling of communities assumes the
form of "neighbourhoodism", revealing prejudices with thinly veiled racist
and classist overtones, which potentially contributes to the breakdown (as
opposed to strengthening) of community.
A group of university-based and public health researchers, as well as
community-based practitioners, have, in cooperation with the Coalition
Against Neighbourhoodism (formed in 1995 in response to repeated negative
press directed at specific neighbourhoods in Toronto, Canada), have
established a project to measure the positive actions that are being taken
in three areas of Metro Toronto so that everyone, including the people that
live there, will think of the communities in those areas in a more positive
light. We believe that these measures will be very helpful in giving
community and other agencies positive ways to see any neighborhood and
balancing the negative way neighborhoods/communities are often labelled.
Our working definition of community capacity emerges from a conceptual
model which focusses on the collective strengths and talents of people
within the community that help things work well (its capabilities) plus the
conditions outside the community, like the environment and the economy,
that influence how things work (which act as facilitating conditions or as
obstacles).
In this project we are seeking to understand community capacities and how
they might be measured by working with community members and community
workers. Our aim is to work together to:
(a) discover and describe the projects that communities are working on and
what determines their success
(b) examine the conditions in the larger context (social, political,
economic environments) that enable or thwart success
(c) understand the strengths and talents of communities
(d) develop measures of the positive capacities of communities
In this paper we present our conceptual framework, rationale, research
design, and preliminary data based on pilot work in three stigmatized
communities in Toronto, Canada.
--------ABOVE NOTE IN RESPONSE TO THE FOLLOWING POSTING (SEPT.30):
>
>Date: Tue, 1 Oct 1996 12:12:00 -0400
>From: Debbie Monkman <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: "Community capacity" in Ontario
>
>I wonder if someone might be able to comment on this. A researcher
>wants to know whether the term "community capacity" is being used in
>Ontario, and if so, how it is defined and how it is being used.
>Thank you for any help.
>
>Debbie Monkman ([log in to unmask])
>Head, Reference Services
>Addiction Research Foundation
>Toronto, ON
>
----------
Blake Poland, Ph.D.
Department of Behavioural Science
Faculty of Medicine, McMurrich Building
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5S 1A8
tel: 416-978-7542; fax: 416-978-2087
email: [log in to unmask]
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