Community

Community

[Name of the Writer]

[Name of the Institution]

Community

Community assessment have many benefits, and the process starts by working with the partner to build consensus. For defining the scope of the evaluation, it is essential to identify the issues, Geographical areas and impact on community members. There are several things to understand before starting the project of community assessment like community demographics, getting all information of organizations working in the community, existing gaps of services provided and Interest for community members.

For conducting a community assessment, all the available choices should be highlighted. The assessment can be completed by collaborating with corporation or organizations. The other option is taking sole responsibility for all activities1. Examining all the resources and all the time and effort, it requires for completing project assessment. There are several benefits of collaboration like they engage more members of community, and More resources are available, establish relationships and increase access to data.

In the third step, one must find all credible resources for data collection and also set a time limit for it. All the essential steps should be prioritized for data collection. It should be properly documented in worksheets and can be collected from primary and secondary sources. In secondary sources, all the data is collected by other members and is readily available. For primary data collection, all the information is received by a group or a single person from open sources in the form of a questionnaire, case studies, interviews, and observations.

The results of the data collection step would highlight all the information about community needs and assets. So in this step, all the significant trends are highlighted, differences are revealed across the community, and critical questions are answered. But first, the issues should be organized in different categories like strength, opportunities, challenges, and gaps. It would help to summarize the data with key findings.

In the last step, the priorities are set with an action plan. Priority setting is a difficult step because it has four barriers like Institutional problems, human problem, structural, and process problem. Human problems can be solved by allowing people to reflect on the information about the project. If there are any different viewpoints, it will help to modify decisions. The suggestions for solving process problem would be specifically defining priorities, setting a period for collecting information and collecting all the critical information. It is necessary to build a relationship with the proper planning process and to make a clear plan projectTo solve structural and institutional problems.

In the last step, individual or group can share all the information with community members. It would help be beneficial for community members to fulfill their needs. The meeting can be arranged to share a report with members, or different media outlets can publish it.

End Notes

(2019). Strengtheningnonprofits.org. Retrieved 20 January 2019, from http://strengtheningnonprofits.org/resources/guidebooks/Community_Assessment.pdf