COMMUNITY IMMERSION

Learning Objectives
At the end of this chapter, the students would be able to:
1. Enumerate the different steps involved in community immersion;
2. Explain the nature of and approaches in community development works; and
3. Design a community immersion program with activities compliant with the protocols of
intervention.

OVERVIEW
This chapter deals with the importance of community immersion in the holistic
development of students. It also presents the aspects of community development that are
integrated in students’ immersion in communities.

LECTURE
“Experience is the best teacher”. It is the simplest way to describe the necessity of
community immersion among college students today, particularly for NSTP-CWTS 2
students who study how community, in different aspects, functions and develops.
Community immersion inculcates civic consciousness and defense-preparedness in
the youth. They should be ready to engage in different community activities in order to be
aware of community concerns, dynamics, and lifestyles. It is only through immersion in
an actual community that one gets to know the social, political, and economic situation of
people belonging to the community. When students go to a community, they associate
with the people whom they intend to work with as their partners or allies in the community.
Forms of community immersion include home visits, living with selected families, informal
discussions with individuals or groups, sharing in household and community activities,
attendance in social gatherings, and assistance in production work.
Community immersion is a strategy that goes beyond acquainting students with
community concerns but makes possible their participation in their resolution. It is also
devised as a strategy in molding students to become socially aware and responsible
citizens. This type of activity transforms the lives not only of the students but also of the
member of the community. As students aid in providing solutions to problems
encountered by the community, the community also shows and shares its way of living
that allows students to see the world from a different perspective.
 Students gain benefits from their participation in community immersion. They are
given an opportunity to comprehend people’s lives as they see real-life situations; gain
social acceptance derived from community relations; develop skills in conducting asset
mapping and other life skills; and imbibe social awareness and consciousness of the
pressing conditions faced by certain communities. Community immersion offers students
an avenue to identify and understand issues that will help solve problems in the
communities affecting the entire nation as a whole.

Community Immersion
One of the strategies of community organizing is community immersion. It involves
extensive exposure of the students to various community activities so that they may
become responsible members of the society where they belong. Students are also trained
to becoming socially, morally, and civic conscious individuals on the areas of sports,
literacy, health, livelihood, environmental services, values, and other social welfare
services.
Community immersion as a voluntary and participatory approach in developing a
wholesome and ideal society, is reflected on the following student learning activities:
1. Determining the economic, psychosocial, and political status of the people as
students immerse in actual community life
2. Identifying the community need, interests, and other concerns
3. Gaining personal development through acquiring additional knowledge on real-
life situation and giving importance to good values and life skills
4. Recognizing people’s dignity by letting students participate in community
programs and help in determining appropriate course of action for community problems
5. Realizing that student participation yields contribution to the welfare of the
community, and that community, in turn gives meaning to the holistic development of
students.

Service-Learning from Community Immersion

Labugen et al. (2009) describe how the community immersion aspect of NSTP-
CWTS 2 benefits not only the communities served but also the students who are accorded
the following advantages:
1. Have the opportunity for the students to appreciate other people’s lives through living,
identifying, and associating with the people
2. Gain social acceptance derived from community relations coupled with the appropriate
community services and activities
3. Enhance experience in conducting resource and community inventory mapping such
as identifying geographic coverage, pointing out resources and their uses, and
determining relationships of people with the existing resources
4. Establish rapport and relationship with different people who may be of help to them at
some future time
5. Develop conscience that makes them realize how their ability to help solves problems
in the community and how indifference of people affects communities
6. Acquire first-hand experience in dealing with community intervention and services
7. Have the chance to learn life skills that will enrich and better them as persons

Community Development Work

One might think that the community is something external to life, something extra
like that of having a car, owning a home, having a stable job, working with supportive
coworkers, or having thoughtful neighbors. Community is every connection one has with
the world around that sustains the way of life. A community does not include only those
people who live next door or who work in the same office, but also those people who
constructed the roads, who work at markets, factories and malls, and even those who
plant wheat, grow crops, and raise livestock. The people upon whom we rely on for our
living are often invisible or sometimes living thousands of miles away. These people
constitute the work of the community.
Community development work is the process by which efforts of the people at
the grassroots level are united with those of the government to improve the
socioeconomic and cultural conditions of the community. Community development works
can be referred to as efforts to improve the economic or structural conditions of a
community. Such efforts may focus on business or job creation and physical or
infrastructure development. It must be emphasized that community development work in
general is a social learning process that serves to empower individuals and involve them
in collective activities aimed at socioeconomic development.
Moreover, community development works are actions that seek to build social
capital, promote interaction, and empower community residents to alleviate their living
conditions. The building of social capital is important in solving community problems, as
the people who live, work, and interact in particular community enable their own
community to function effectively.
Community development works operate on two models. The first model refers to
effort that develop from within the community and are led by community members. The
second model refers to efforts that are instigated and run by professionals from outside
the community.
Approaches in Community Development Work
Community works are often confused with community-based work. The similarity
is that they fall under the discipline of community development approaches. To
differentiate, community work requires the effort of the people in greater or larger degree
whereas community-based work involves the community but in a smaller scale from
what is essential in community work.
For instance, a group of young students selling homemade cookies to families in
the neighborhood and using the profit to fund for extra books to donate to their school
library is likely to be typed as community-based work. A whole community of parents
aimed to provide donations to local orphanages and thus held a local garage sale to earn
extra funds is considered community work.
Community development approaches are defined by the following:
1. Sustainability (long or short-term)
2. Area of concentration (local, national, global, and overseas)
3. Field or specialization (e.g., education advancement or religion affairs)
4. Objectives, vision, and mission (e.g., social security or rural domination
with the use of kindness)
The categories listed are not guaranteed absolute, for community development
works itself is still broad. So are lists that will be specifies below as the different
approaches to community development work, nonetheless, these are the random, more
specific lists of approaches.
1. Technical assistance approach is involved in the efficient delivery of improving
programs or services that allow communities to access outside experts in areas that may
be highly technical or that may demand credentials for further funding or implementation.
2. Self-help approach encourages people within the community to work together
empowering communal independence. Individual who are vulnerable, voiceless, and
powerless, can develop enormous strength in self-help groups. This approach may be
demonstrated through activities that involve a visioning and goal setting process.
3. Con approach deals with confronting the forces that are blocking efforts to
solve problems by building human capacity to address local issues and concerns and
altering the structure of the community in terms of engagement. The practices under this
approach value confrontations in a sense that conflicts provide impetus for improvement
and encourages critical thinking and the individual thought.
4. Structural or brick-and-mortar approach is more concerned with the
foundation of the community members in terms of constitution. It may involve the process
of constructing infrastructure that meet human and intersecting forms of oppression that
occur at personal, cultural, and structural level, with each level influencing oppression on
the others.
5. Social justice and human rights approach focuses on the behavioral, cultural,
ethnical, and social affairs as a leading target for communal development in or outside
the community. The concept of social justice involves finding the optimum balance
between people’s joint responsibilities as a society and people’s responsibilities as
individuals to contribute to a just society. Human rights provide an internationally agreed
set of principles and standards by which to assess inequality. The two concepts are
correlated in a sense that human rights clearly define and authorize what is globally and
legally accepted from the various contexts on social justice.
6. Ecological or Environmental approach targets crises as major focal point for
developmental, radical alternatives to address the natural make-up of the earth. The
approach focuses on the ecological or environmental protection and advancement.
7. Multi-method approach combines methods that will most likely ensure the
progress and success of communal work goals that are inherently unheard of. A multi-
method approach crams more than one kind of approaches into one-of-a-kind, hybrid-like
approach, which has been unconsciously practiced today by many organizations.

Approaches in community work are vast and still growing. How the communities
interpret the meaning of these approaches is up to them. What is more important is how
they express those interpretations into values that will lead to outcome to better the
community and society.

Community Development Project

Community development project is the term applied to any community-based
project that covers a wide variety of different areas within a community or a group of
networking entities. Projects can covers almost anything, including the most obvious
section of concern to any community, the welfare element. Welfare community projects
cover locally run and locally funded orphanages or even a Christmas dinner kitchen for
the homeless. Charitable projects in the community may include, but are not limited to,
ecological charities concerned with either the maintenance of green spaces, for example,
or in some cases, the prevention of the reduction or removal of green spaces. Old clothes
collection service can also be a community-based charity project. One important
subdivision of community projects, which at times overlooked, is that of an economic
nature. Economic community projects are designed to create some sort of economic
autonomy.
All community projects are different in some way; the size and scope of these
projects is determined firstly by the community they cater to. The historical documentation
of community problems and the project designed to address those problems should be
supplemented by community assessment that determines current conditions and
concerns. The assessment of current conditions may include focus groups, nominal group
process, and survey research.

Community Building
Community Building is directed towards the creation of community composed of
individuals within an area or with a common interest. The building of social networks within
a community fosters collaborative work and hones problem-solving skills.
A wide variety of practices can be utilized for community building, ranging from
simple events like potlucks and food bazaar, to larger-scale efforts such as barangay in
city festivals and construction projects that involve local participants rather than outside
contractors.

Community Building Practices

1. Community gardening helps improve neighborhood, build a sense of community, and
connect to the environment by planting and harvesting fresh produce and plants.
2. Community technology centers may help bridge the digital divide among generations.
They may also help foster connections to the environment through the re-use of
technology and proper electronic waste stewardship.
3. Sharing of skills or knowledge in music, dance, craftsmanship, mechanic, and the likes
provides excellent opportunities for community-building. Service-oriented activities invite
people to strengthen relationships and build camaraderie as they help one another. This
lays a foundation for future success in the community’s endeavor due to the overall well-
being and unity produced.
4. Social activism involves the banding of communities taking action to produce social
change.
5. Community organizing refers to the gathering of people to solve a problem. Unlike
activism, it does not involve a strategy for building power or for making specific social
changes. Community immersion is one of the strategies under community organizing.

CONCLUSION
Students are advised to inform the faculty-in-charge of the status of their
community project, as well as of other pertinent details when necessary. If the proponents
and implementers have decided to continue the activity even after the semester has
ended, they can seek the assistance and support of the school’s extension services unit
to sustain the project. Nonetheless, students must learn how to work within the given time
frame for their convenience and for the sake of the community.