It‘s hard to think about what people need in their lives.
For this class as we have to decide where to donate $10,000, we really need to
understand the community’s needs and how this money can help. So where do we
begin? Do we take a Maslow approach of addressing needs hierarchally? Or do we
take a Ponsioen approach and assess needs for all people? For me, I like an in
between approach. Start from the bottom and work your way up while trying to
fulfill the needs of the whole community as best as you can. It’s hard to
create a minimal threshold for all people because not everyone might have the
same need. It’s also hard to figure out
what anyone’s needs are. To address this problem I found a website online that
provides a great way to conduct a needs assessment.
If you open the link and read over the main section it
addresses what a needs assessment is, why and when we should do them, and how
to carry them out to benefit the community. The assessment guidelines provided
on the website present a great approach into getting information directly from
the people within the community. It can tell us what we need to know about the
community problems and issues. It could also lead us in a specific direction in
which we can do research in a particular area of concern. This can help us
figure out what’s causing it and how to solve this problem to meet the community’s
needs.
This video on YouTube also provided a great way to determine
what community needs are by starting with non-profit organizations. They’ll be
able to tell us what they think needs are because they work closely with
community members. Next, ask the individuals being helped by non-profit
organizations. Asking volunteers can also provide insight as to what they
believe community needs are because they work directly with people in need. Lastly
their approach is to ask teenagers what they believe community needs. I like
this because they are the future of the community and world. If they have input
on how to make their community and future better than it is something extremely
important to consider. I think a major concern about all community needs assessments
is the participation. There is no better source to find out what the community’s
needs are from the people themselves. However to get everyone involved is
extremely difficult. I think talking about it at schools would be a major help.
Kids in the school will become aware and could influence their parents to
participate. Going to non-profits and those serviced by them is also a good
idea because they are actively trying to make the community a better place.
My suggestions and examples may not be helpful in terms of
figuring out what Broome County’s needs are. However it is a place to start
thinking about how to go about this. We may not be able to conduct a survey or
go door to door but we can find this information in other ways. We can research
the philanthropies in the area to get their opinions. We can look at statistics
and media to see where the community is and feels like its struggling. Searching
google for Broome County needs assessment is another great way to start. There are
assessments already done on different issues. If we can get an idea of what the
community’s needs are then it will be easier to decide where to donate to and
what issues to focus on. It will help us make a bigger difference in this
community.
Gladys, I think your blog post did a great job of pertaining to the subject matter we are debating in class. Assessing the needs of the community is where most of us are overwhelmed because of the vast reserves of information. Since most of your post was about directly addressing the people, I want to say I agree with that completely. I believe that, in order to see where a community is lacking, you have to ask the individuals that live in it every day.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I am kind of torn on the issue of surveys. My hesitance stems from personal experience. Whenever my parents receive surveys by mail, they often say it’s a bad time and put the survey to the side. Despite the good intentions of a survey and the useful data it can collect, I often question the way in which we approach the matter. Sending out forms makes the task chore-like and time-consuming, especially when the term assessment is used.
We talked about how people don’t donate because they feel it will do little good in the grand scheme of things. That is essentially the same rationale when it comes to surveys. People want to have a voice and be involved but they are unsure if their concerns will be heard just by filling out a slip of paper. I often wonder if a large community fair where government officials and community members can talk would be better. If it becomes a reoccurring tradition and the people view it as a valuable gathering, data can be collected that way and there would be direct contact.
Also, I want to briefly touch on asking teenagers what they think community needs are. I think its great to start young and make kids aware of the world around them but it is a different ballpark to base large philanthropic donations on their opinions. It is difficult for teenagers to fully understand the issues at hand. When I was a teenager, my knowledge of community needs was limited and often stemmed from my own interests. I loved animals so I would have said a community need was to adopt the puppies at the local animal shelter.
I think these are all great things to think about to understand the tools at our disposal and to make a philanthropic decision.
http://www.extension.iastate.edu/communities/assess
ReplyDeleteThis link very briefly describes a few different needs assessment strategies.
Of the five strategies that are outlined here, I particularly enjoy the idea of a Focus Group. I strongly agree with what Kaitlin said - in order to figure out what a community is lacking, we need to talk to those that live in the community every day.
The idea of going door-to-door and speaking to people one at a time is daunting. I like the idea of a group interview, because it allows one interviewer to contact multiple people at the time and get a variety of different answers to the same questions. I also think that hearing stories from actual people about the struggles they are facing and what they need to improve their lives will paint a better picture of community needs than a set of data ever could. (This is a highly personal opinion, I'm not a numbers person.) Finally, if you bring a group of people together, I think they will be likely to respond and engage in conversation about community needs. Meeting in a conversational setting does not quite give people the ability to set the issue to the side, as a survey does.
There are some downsides to this method. People may still not being willing to participate, of course. The group interview would need to be held at a time and place that is accessible to multiple community members, which can be a struggle. Finally, many non-profit organizations operate within a realm of confidentiality and cannot simply offer up contact information for those that use the services. I imagine that if one were to spend a little time at a local non-profit agency and speak to the clients, they could recruit a few people willing to come together and talk about what they feel is needed to improve daily life.
Gladys, your blog post was incredibly useful. I've been doing a lot of thinking lately as to what the most effective approach to giving is. There are just so many options and I think that we can find needs in terms of anything. A few days ago, I tweeted about an article from Pipedream where the writer discusses the (or, really, according to him the lack of) good in donating to projects at Kickstarter and the necessity of donating to causes where real change must be made. (The link to the article is http://www.bupipedream.com/opinion/30624/donating-to-kickstarter-not-so-fast/ for those that didn't see my tweet.) This article has had me thinking a lot lately about why people choose to donate to college a cappella groups instead of charities that feed starving children (to use the article's example). Where is there greater need? For the a cappella group or for those charities? Taking this class has really shocked me in terms of seeing just how much need there is around us, and how much people need help. The article might have been a bit harsh but it does make an important point – similar to the one Peter Singer makes in The Life You Can Save. It's an argument that has stuck with me – why do we spend so much on things that aren't necessities? I am far more conscious of the spending choices I make today, always think about how I could spend the money that would go to a better place and it's been making me think about what the most effective approach to giving is. While writing my last paper, I made a list of all the needs I could think of for the community – I listed around forty things and that definitely wasn't even a microcosm of the needs of this community. It frustrated me to think that there were needs that I couldn't even think of and it made me question how much we can really help with our ten thousand dollars if there were needs we didn't even know existed. The first link you give in your blog post offers so much information on how to find community needs and how to maximize the help we give that I am far more confident that as a class, we will both find the most critical causes that we want to support and find a way to maximize the help we give to the community. In order to help, we have to start somewhere and when there are so many needs and causes to give to, we must find the one that we can do the most for.
ReplyDelete