Inside Experiences of Community Organizing: A Case Study

Abstract

<p>This paper is an exploratory case study on the inside experiences of community organizing. A case study was conducted on a successful community campaign, People Against Radioactive Contamination (PARC), consisting of 10 participants who attended a focus group to talk about their experiences in a successful campaign. This paper explores some inside experiences and issues associated with community organizing which were identified as important to the research participants. The paper examines three major themes: group building, campaigning and understanding success, and addresses how these issues are seen in other community work literature. As indicated in the paper, community practice generally is an under-researched area of social work in Canada; especially lacking in community work research is the inside experiences and human element associated with the practice. This paper provides some impetus for social work to attend better to all forms of community practice in both undergraduate and undergraduate programs.</p>