Civil society

How to build power

Community work can contribute to the process of strengthening civil society and can lead to more active community participation and to sustainable problem-solving of public issues. It can also be the response to both, the challenges at the local level and also positively influence the global changes and respond to the global challenges.

Some practitioners of community work used to evaluate the community development through a particular common action that in an ideal case comes out from the people´s needs with an apparent outcome that proves their efforts.

These can be explained like a power-building process where citizens through their own engagement and effort define and solve the problem in their community. The citizens are able to identify, solve and resolve this problem in their own interest. The key principle in this case is motivation of the citizens coming from their own rights.

Questions to reflect on

• Where do you think the power in the community comes from? Why is it important to build the power of community?