WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO ORGANIZE FOR COMMUNITY CHANGE?

WHY SHOULD YOU ENGAGE IN COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION?

WHAT ARE EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES IN COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION?

HOW DO YOU BRING ABOUT CHANGE THROUGH COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION?

Throughout the Community Tool Box, our authors talk about different ways to improve our communities, and how to do all of the tasks, small and large, that make an organization work and work well. But broadly speaking -- how does all of this work? What are the overarching strategies that work to improve our communities? Why do some grassroots organizations fail, while others do great things and flourish?

Throughout the Tool Box, we offer many suggestions of what we feel are "right" ways to approach community work, such as Our Model of Practice: Building Capacity for Community and System Change. Our belief in the equality of all people, for instance, or in the importance of individuals' efforts to improve their communities -- are not topics of specific sections, but make up the foundation of what we do. These beliefs and ideas are at the base of all of our work at the Community Tool Box.

One such idea is that of community organization -- the idea that people can and should come together to talk about what matters to them, and then work together to successfully change their communities. As this idea is a common thread woven throughout our work, we'd like to use this chapter to make it explicit, and try to explore it more fully.

So, then, on the following few screens (and in the next few sections) we'll do just that. In the remainder of this section, we'll give a general overview of community organization -- what it is and how you do it. We'll also give brief explanations of different ways of looking at community organization. Although all of the strategies we will discuss have quite a bit in common, it may be helpful to separate out and compare different approaches in order for us to look more clearly at our work.