?? How can you build capacity among community members to sustain a community outreach project?

There are seven essential elements and three forms of commonality, all of which are classified with the status of sine qua non, meaning we can not do without them.

1.? A core group

There must be a core of people who will undertake shouldering the responsibility for collectively coordinating all the various branches and activities of the project. It must consist of individuals who are accepted in this role by the rest of the people who are working on the project.

The need for such core groups is inverse to the degree that the wider grouping of the people who are working on the project are willing and capable of self-coordination, self-organization, and democratic functioning on their own. If such self-regulation exists and functions well, the need for a coordinating core group is less, and its duties will be less.

2.? Elements of Unity

The members of the core group must be united among themselves and with the rest of the people who are working on the project by the following:

a. Commonality of? goals

The goals must be well specified and articulated to as much detail as possible. Sometimes it's also useful to articulate what is not a goal.

b. Commonality of methods?

All must agree on what methods are to be used to achieve the goals. The methods must be as well articulated as possible. If some of the people want to achieve the goal through direct action, others via an employee strike, others by armed struggle or a market boycott,? and others via elections… there won't be enough of a commonality of methods by which to cooperate, struggle together, and achieve the goals. Sometimes it's useful to also articulate which are not methods embraced by the project.

c. Commonality of values and principles?

There must be a well articulated set of principles and values that unite all the people who are working and struggling together on the project. Those values and principles might be moral and political, spiritual, or relating to behavior, or other parameters determined according to ethnic, religious, linguistic, identities, sexual identities, gender, perceptions of ableness, etc. Determining these will enhance unity, points the direction toward which people can strive for, and also helps to determine the kind of person or behavior which does not belong there.?

3. Membership status

There must be a determination of how membership status is determined, at least for the core group, but - depending on what the project is - there might be a need to do this for the extended group (the totality of all people involved in the project), as well. The more specific the duties are for each person, the more a need there is for membership status to be clearly determined and understood by all. If the project involves group construction of a vacation home by a number of volunteers, the degree of need to determine membership status might not be very pressing. But if the project involves life or death issues (for example organizing a community-operated ambulance service; or a humanitarian supply operation; or a people's militia), membership status, both within the coordinating core group and the members at large, is one of the factors that will determine whether someone lives or dies.?

All formations belonging to the project (e.g. work committees on finance, press and media, outreach, negotiations team, etc.) will probably need to determine what precise parameters define a member.

4. Dialogue process and procedures during meetings

There must be a clear understanding among all members of how exactly a group dialogue is conducted, how it is coordinated. Also each grouping (whether a core group, or work group, committee, etc.) must know what the scope of its mandate is, and what the limits of its jurisdiction might be.

These things must be decided ahead of time: whether there'll be a dialogue or meeting coordinator and how one is chosen; whether there's a time limit on speaking; whether participants will speak in sequence in a circle or ask for the right to speak by raising their hand (or some other method), etc. Members of the groups and participants in the project must be well informed of these. These procedures might be chosen depending on what the broader community values are; its perceptions of what democracy is; what efficiency is; or according to any other values.

5.?Decision making process

There must be a well determined, well articulated method of reaching decisions - and also a "plan B" in case some decisions are impossible to agree on. Some groups like to vote and decide by absolute majority (50% plus one vote) ; others by 100% unanimity; others prefer to achieve decisions by a very high consensus on most items (for example either by 100% unanimity or a 90% consensus), but also recognize that sometimes, on very important highly-charged issues a lower consensus might be necessary to arrive at some decision (for example a 75% consensus).?

Most often, groups that take care to articulate well and to a high degree the unifying goals, methods, values and principles end up experiencing a very high degree of consensus on most issues.

6. Relations within the project?

Sometimes the needs of a project will require a person (or a number of persons) to take on "official" roles such as treasurer, spokesperson, manager, administrator, coordinator, chairperson, etc. There needs to be a clear understanding among all participants of the scope of each appointee to these tasks, ie. the extent and the limit of their jurisdiction or authority. Also, there needs to be a clear understanding among all of how each person is appointed to each position (might be by election, or selection by a specially appointed committee, or some other method). There needs to be a clear understanding of who, precisely each appointee reports to - and how! There needs to be a clear understanding of how, precisely each appointee is relieved of their duties, when, and under which conditions. All these will provide a smoothness and absence of friction among participants, members, volunteers, and the extended community at large.

7. Relations alongside the project

Each community project formation (organization, movement entity, union, co-op, association, however it may see itself), needs to have a clear policy on how to relate to other formations, especially to those who may appear as allies. Relating to the opposition might be easier - and much of it will be predetermined by the shared goals, methods, values and principles. But handling relations with allies, or forces pretending to be allies, is a lot more difficult - especially if they have access to much larger venues or assets such as money, votes, membership, public sway, publicity, popularity, assistance by authorities, etc.?

The participants and members of the community project will need to have a policy in place that will enable fruitful alliances to be built and at the same time prevent being absorbed, taken over, co-opted, manipulated or dominated by other "allied" organizations or formations. Sometimes this dance requires delicate maneuvers; sometimes only a full-on conflict can resolve it. Having an agreed-upon policy ahead of time, and members who are experienced enough to walk this path delicately and forcefully if need be, can help the project maintain its independence and autonomy, serving the community instead of the larger "powers that be".

Any community project that incorporates the above considerations within its foundations, within its methods and activities, is destined to do well. Its capacities will be extended to the maximum possible degree. Especially if the goals, methods, values and principles driving it are such that the wider community at large will not only "tolerate" them but actively embrace them.?

In order for that to happen, every single participant and member, and the entire grouping as a whole, as a collective entity, must be totally dedicated to community service. In such a case, the process will be unbeatable, no matter how powerful the opposing forces might be.

* * *?

?? Some bizarre combination of Artificial Intelligence and LinkedIn's own algorithm (plus, perhaps, some actual person "deep inside the machine") seem to be actively pushing questions at me, saying I've been "selected" to answer them "as an expert". Or something like that.

It served me up with the question that serves as the title of this article. I think the phrasing of the question is not very elegant, and was probably generated by a machine.

The response I provided is the body of the article above.

Every community is by its very nature, thrown constantly into a need to self-organize in order to pursue matters of justice, equality, freedom, survival. And for whoever is staying up at night (like me) burning up with questions related to the "how do we organize" meta-question… the subject is significant. If you're interested in this theme, please have a look at the material compiled by LinkedIn's process [1].?

(Please find the Notes in the Comments section, below this article.)

Petros Evdokas

petros[at]cyprus-org?net