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Treinta minutos
Traducido por Adolfo Fulco
El Colectivo de Potenciación Comunitaria es una organización mundial sin fines de lucro y que trabaja en Internet para producir, traducir, y poner a disposición material gratuito de adiestramiento para fortalecer comunidades. Tiene un presupuesto anual de cero. Está registrada en Victoria, Columbia Británica, en la Costa occidental de Canadá. La metodología de la Potenciación Comunitaria comienza con la idea de que la capacidad no puede ser creada (ingeniería social), sino que la comunidad puede ser estimulada y alentada para que se desarrolle a sí misma. En el sitio Web se pueden encontrar unos 200 documentos destinados a adiestrar activistas para trabajar en comunidades y fomentar la metodología de Potenciación Comunitaria. Son traducidos (en cierto grado) a alrededor de treinta idiomas por voluntarios no remunerados. El adiestramiento pone énfasis en “Cómo” más que en la teoría e investigación sobre la metodología de la potenciación. Apunta a un nivel de personas que han dejado la escuela secundaria, y provee una extensa lista de palabras claves para cubrir el vocabulario que tal vez aún no conocen. El sitio Web no es comercial, no tiene publicidades, y se provee gratuitamente y sin control editorial por la Red Comunitaria de Seattle (Seattle Community Network, SCN)
http://wikieducator.org/images/e/ea/St18.gif
Los siguientes son los ocho principios de potenciación:
1. El equilibrio del poder (los líderes y los formadores de opinión, no solo la mayoría demográfica) debe desear que la comunidad se vuelva autosuficiente y que esté dispuesta a esforzarse y sacrificarse a tal fin. (Los líderes y los formadores de opinión pueden ser formales o informales, reconocidos oficialmente o no). Sin esto, el activista estaría perdiendo el tiempo y estaría mejor trabajando en otra comunidad;
2. Un representante experimentado o adiestrado debe estar disponible para intervenir en la estimulación y asesoramiento de la comunidad a fin de organizar y tomar partido en sobreponerse a la pobreza y volverse autosuficiente. El activista puede tener talentos y habilidades naturales, y el adiestramiento en el sitio Web apunta a desarrollar y aguzar esas habilidades y talentos;
3. Mientras que se puede ofrecer asistencia, no debería ser asistencia caritativa que promueva la dependencia y la debilidad, sino una que promueva la colaboración y cooperación, es decir, asistencia y adiestramiento que promueva la autosuficiencia y capacidad incrementada.
4. Las organizaciones o comunidades beneficiarias no deberían ser controladas ni forzadas al cambio, sino que los profesionales adiestrados como activistas deberían intervenir con estimulación, información y asesoramiento. Se necesita persuasión y facilitación;
5. Los organismos se fortalecen ejercitando, luchando y enfrentando la adversidad. La metodología de la potenciación incorpora este principio para las organizaciones sociales. Los entrenadores usan el eslogan: “Sin dolor no hay gloria". No promovemos el dolor, pero sí la lucha y el esfuerzo;
6. Participar, en especial en la toma de decisiones hechas por los beneficiarios, es esencial para el incremento de la capacidad. Las decisiones no pueden ser tomadas por o de parte de la comunidad;
7. Una proporción sustancial (suele variar) de los recursos necesitados para el proyecto de una comunidad (es decir, la acción) debe ser provisto por los propios miembros de la comunidad;
8. Necesitamos apuntar a que los participantes desde el comienzo tomen el control total, y ejerzan ellos solos la toma de decisiones, y acepten toda la responsabilidad por las acciones que llevarán a su capacidad incrementada.
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Trabajo en proceso, espera cambios frecuentes. Tu ayuda y retroalimentación son bienvenidos.
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The web site also provides many practical descriptions of how to do things related to empowerment, ranging from gender balance, income generation, functional literacy, community mobilization, enabling environment, participatory appraisal, through planning, project design, management training, proposals, report writing, to applications in various sectors.
The following are the six cultural dimensions of communities. Changes in any one of them necessarily leads to changes in the remaining five.
1. Technology: The (1) inventing, (2) using and (3) teaching of others to invent and use tools, is the cultural dimension, not the physical tools themselves.
2. Economy: The production and distribution of wealth, which did not need money in earlier societies and in some elements of our society today, eg home and with friends. Wealth is anything that has value and it has value to the extent it is useful and scarce. It includes goods and services, but goods only in terms of the services they provide. Money is not wealth, but is a measure and a means of storing and exchanging wealth. The economic dimension of culture is not just business, buying, selling.
3. Political relates to power and influence. It includes authority and types of authority (traditional, bureaucratic or charismatic). Politics is not the same as ideology (which belongs to the values dimension) or only party politics (which are institutions that are not universal).
4. The social, Interactional or Institutional Dimension refers to patterns of interaction, social organization, meanings we attach to each other, our presentations of selves, roles. Examples include family or class.
5. Values, Ideology, Aesthetic: The shared values that we apply to judgements such as good or bad, beautiful or ugly, right or wrong.
6. Beliefs or Worldview, the ideas we have about how the universe operates. Religious beliefs . . . and more. Mobilisers are trained to expect that any changes they may make or stimulate in a community will result in changes in all six dimensions.
Here are the sixteen elements of strength in a community, organization or family:
1. Altruism: The proportion of, and degree to which, individuals are ready to sacrifice benefits to themselves for the benefit of the organization as a whole (reflected in degrees of generosity, individual humility, communal pride, mutual supportiveness, loyalty, concern, camaraderie, sister/brotherhood). (Where individuals, families or factions are allowed to be greedy and selfish at the expense of the organization, this weakens the it).
2. Common Values: The degree to which members of the organization share values, especially the idea that they belong to a common entity that supersedes the interest of members within it. Members share, understand and tolerate each others values and attitudes. (Racism, prejudice and bigotry weaken a community or organization).
3. Communal Services: An organization's facilities and services (such as office space, equipment, washrooms, tools, supplies, access to toilets and other personal staff facilities, working facilities, physical plant, potable water), their upkeep (dependable maintenance and repair), sustainability, and the degree to which all the organization's members have access to them.
4. Communications: Within an organization, and between itself and outside, communication includes speaking, electronic methods (eg telephone, radio, TV, InterNet), printed media (newspapers, magazines, books), networks, mutually understandable languages, literacy and the willingness and ability to communicate (which implies tact, diplomacy, willingness to listen as well as to talk) in general. Poor communication means a weak organization.
5. Confidence: While expressed in individuals, how much confidence is shared among the organization as a whole? eg an understanding that the organization can achieve what ever it wishes to do. Positive attitudes, willingness, self motivation, enthusiasm, optimism, self-reliant rather than dependency attitudes, willingness to fight for its rights, avoidance of apathy and fatalism, a vision of what is possible.
6. Context (Political and Administrative): An organization will be stronger, more able to get stronger and sustain its strength more, the more it exists in an environment that supports that strengthening. This environment includes (1) political (including the values and attitudes of the leaders, laws and legislation) and (2) administrative (attitudes of civil servants and technicians, as well as Governmental regulations and procedures) elements. The legal environment.
When politicians, leaders, technocrats and civil servants, as well as their laws and regulations, take a patronizing approach, the organization is weak, while if they take an enabling approach, the organization will be stronger.
7. Information: More than just having or receiving unprocessed information, the strength of the organization depends upon the ability to process and analyse that information, the level of awareness, knowledge and wisdom found among key individuals and within the group as a whole. Information is more effective and more useful, not just more in volume. (Related to, but differs from, the communication element).
8. Intervention: The extent and effectiveness of animation (management training, awareness raising, stimulation) aimed at strengthening the organization. Do outside or internal powers increase the level of dependency and weaken the organization, or do they challenge the organization's members to act and therefore become stronger? Is the intervention sustainable or does it depend upon decisions by outside donors who have different goals and agendas than the organization itself?
9. Leadership: Leaders have power, influence, and the ability to move the organization. The more effective its leadership, the more stronger is an organization. The most effective and sustainable leadership (for strengthening the organization, not just strengthening the leaders) is one that operates so as to follow the decisions and desires of the organization as a whole, to take an enabling and facilitating role. Leaders must possess skills, willingness, and some charisma.
10 Networking: It is not just "what you know," but also "who you know" that can be a source of strength. (Not only "know-how," but also "know-who" gets jobs). Extent to which the organization's members, especially leaders, know persons (and their agencies or organizations) who can provide useful resources that will strengthen the organization as a whole?
The useful linkages, potential and realized, that exist within the organization and with others outside it.
11. Organization: The degree to which different members of the organization see themselves as each having a role in supporting the whole (in contrast to being a mere collection of separate individuals), including (in the sociological sense) organizational integrity, structure, procedures, decision making processes, effectiveness, division of labour and complementarity of roles and functions.
12. Political Power: The degree to which the organization can participate in national and district decision making.Communities have varying power and influence within the district and nation.
13. Skills: The ability, manifested in individuals, that will contribute to the organization and the ability of it to get things done that it wants to get done, technical skills, management skills, organizational skills, mobilization skills.
14. Trust: The degree to which members of the organization trust each other, especially their leaders, which in turn is a reflection of the degree of integrity (honesty, dependability, openness, transparency, trustworthiness) within the organization. More trust and dependability reflects increased capacity. (Dishonesty, corruption, embezzlement and diversion of organizational resources all contribute to organizational weakness).
15. Unity: Unity means a shared sense of belonging to a known entity (ie the group composing the cpmmunity). Although every community has divisions or schisms (religious, class, status, income, age, gender, ethnicity, clans), the degree to which its members are willing to tolerate the differences and variations among each other and are willing to cooperate and work together, a sense of a common purpose or vision, shared values. (Unity does not mean that everyone is the same, but that everyone tolerates, even celebrates, each others' differences, and works for the common good).
16. Wealth: The degree to which the organization as a whole (in contrast to individuals within it) has control over actual and potential resources, and the production and distribution of scarce and useful goods and services, monetary and non monetary (including labour, land, equipment, supplies, knowledge, skills), (When greedy individuals, families or factions accrue wealth at the expense of the community as a whole, that weakens the organization).
The more any organization (or community) has of each of the above elements, the stronger it is, the more capacity it has, and the more empowered it is.
An organization does not become stronger simply by adding a few more facilities. Strengthening or capacity development involves social change – development – and that, in turn, involves all sixteen of the above elements of strength.
The web site also provides many practical descriptions of how to do things related to empowerment, ranging from gender balance, income generation, water supply, functional literacy, advocacy, community mobilization, HIV/AIDS mitigation, enabling environment, community based social work, participatory appraisal, through planning, community member skill training, project design, guidelines for training mobilizers, management training, proposals, monitoring, report writing, to applications in various sectors.
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