Module 3

Group 9 - Anna Palva (SF), Bart Ketelslegers (B), Melissa Verkley (NL), Mira Van Olmen (B)

Group 1

Paper for the module on Community Education

Outi Aitio

Lies Wouters

1. Introduction

In our lectures we discussed about individualism and collectivism. According to Beck we are now in a reflexive modernisation. It means that the development of industrial society has become problematic in itself. That’s what Beck calls a risk society. The fundamental question in reflexive modernisation is individualisation. This process of individualism may seem to be a great opportunity to finally be free and to plan your own biography. But it’s also a huge challenge to mankind, because it has many pitfalls in it. One of the fundamental concerns values; traditional social relations and values disappear, but they will probably be replaced for another kind of values. In opinion of individualistic persons, being individualised means freedom and liberty. But when an individual person is only responsible for him- or herself, no matter what is going on, don’t there exist situations which you didn’t expect and for which you are not prepared? According to Jansen, individualism then doesn’t mean liberation at all, but humiliation. Thinking positively, those humiliating situations could be seen as a learning situation. The fact is to have a rich and valuable life, people have to give meaning to it. When this because more private, doubts about the right direction arise. Individualisation means that there are less given solutions for daily problems and life choices become more troublesome and long-term. The last problems mentioned here refer to the question of social equality. Doesn’t the quality for example in labour market mean an equal opportunity for everyone without regard to for example sex, race, age,… ? Individualisation means a much harder competition between people and it emphasises the intellectual skills, training, etc. It classifies people to different classes based on their capacity to compete.

Another thing we want to make clear before talking about our case, is that it’s very important to define the kind of community we are talking about. The five perspectives proposed by Clark indeed form a way out of this problem. Nevertheless it’s important to state that the significance of communities and the sort of community someone is talking about, can only be defined by the individual itself. The way a person experiences the community can be very different in comparison with another member of the same community. Communities are indeed experienced realities. The same argument can be used when you make a difference between communities. You will act and feel differently in the community of your family, than in your neighbourhood. This refers to the experiential context, seen in class.

We also think it’s important to make clear a distinction between existing communities as groups of people, which can be defined by the five perspectives, and the sense of solidarity that people have for people all over the world, which we find difficult to define by these perspectives. We can’t find a clear English word for it, so we want to describe it. This is the kind of feeling you have for example when you hold the door open while unknown others are passing through. We see another kind of community feeling towards people you don’t have a connection with, but who you nevertheless respect and whom you want to give the same basic human rights as everyone else. It’s not because they belong to a certain common community, unless the community of the human kind who lives on the territory of the world. We weren’t comfortable defining this broad sense by the five perspectives.

We all agreed that education should also pay attention to this broad feeling. In community education the stress is often put on neighbourhoods with problems, on disadvantaged people. Instead of pointing them again with the finger, maybe the focus should first of all be on the insufficient social feeling, the insufficient justice with the other habitants, for example the other people in Princeton. How can the council neglect River Side District and let the streets be dirty there? Shouldn’t they be made aware of their selective community feeling and the consequences of that? Couldn’t it be true that there’s not more sense of community in ‘normal’ neighbourhoods without any problems? Maybe problems don’t arise there because people can save themselves, because they are individualised very well. Maybe especially these areas should be focused, because there you have the persons who have the power to change something. If they realise and if they are aware of the wrong situation, if they grow a stronger feeling of community, maybe they can make sure they are no longer neighbourhoods with problems. A mirror might not be so bad, instead of always working with the problem groups, which is implicitly blaming them, because they don’t have enough skills to defend themselves etc. The concern for the ‘Other’ which you don’t personally know, should be improved by community education, especially with the people who are doing well on their own. Make them realise the importance of the ‘Other’ for themselves, as explained by Schäffter. Not everybody takes into account the consequences of his actions for others.

2. Case-study

We want to take the students of our countries as a community. The lectures made us start thinking about ourselves. We have been raised in this risk society, so probably we are individualistic. We wanted to examine how individualistic we are, if it’s a problem, and what we can do about it. We didn’t want to focus on an area with problems. At the same time, we thought it would be more interesting to take ourselves as the subject. This way we thought it wouldn’t be so difficult neither to find the problems we have, nor to find goals for it. We see all people who study at a university as members of this community. We discussed about the students in general, but also about differences between the three countries.

Our fundamental question we started with: "Are we individualistic persons?" We realise we have a lot of freedom to make choices. We can decide who we want to be, what we want to do and how we want to do it. This is very normal to us, but it doesn’t mean that we are selfish. At the same time we feel the consequences of globalisation. At home we can try to recycle as much as possible, but we know that it’s only a little part of the ecological problem. We can say the same thing about politics. Students feel the ability to change something locally, but we know we can’t change the real problems that are on a higher level. This makes us feel powerless and discourages us. We can refer to Bauman, who also talks about this negative side of individualisation. We realise we are not totally free at all. But we almost feel almost used to it. We accept it, conform to it. Next to globalisation, we also realise that there are still a lot of people who haven’t got as many chances as we do. In most countries almost everybody can continue studying, because the government helps them financially. Still there are youngsters with a difficult background, for instance coming from a family with problems, who can’t go to university. They don’t experience the positive side of individualisation yet.

Getting to the negative side of individualisation, we want to make a difference between this broad sense of community and the kind of feeling we explained before and social cohesion. We see this last term as a combination of feeling and action. Sometimes we feel solidarity towards others, but we don’t react. We can feel sorry for example for a poor man going through the rubbish to find something to eat, but we don’t give him something to eat. We think that the community of students has this broad feeling, but in most cases they don’t act to improve social cohesion. It’s important though to make clear that being individualistic is not the same as being selfish, as we said before.

The next important question that has to be answered, if is we as students feel like a community. We do feel that we are a community. Our common characteristic is that we study, so education is very important in this community. In our three countries it seems to be that we still have a lot of reguired subjects that everybody has to follow. So it is more easily to feel connected with your fellow students. We don’t know if it’s different for students in for example Germany, where they have more freedom to choose subjects. We can ask ourselves if it would be the same in individualised learning? The positive point is the fact that makes it possible for students to be self-reflective. You are free to make decisions about the organisation of your education, you develop skills to think about your life and what you want to do and you gain confidence in yourself by doing this. So individualised learning helps people to cope in general with the self-reflexive society of today. The kinds of communities students are living in are changing right now. With new technology, it’s not important to be in the same classroom or meet the teacher personally. Another sort of community still remains important though, namely the community based on shared activities and the community based on a common characteristic, studying. We think students will also feel as a community based on sentiments.

After identifying our community and our feelings of individualism, the time is right to talk about the problems and needs, felt in our community of students. We are all afraid to find a decent job, according to our diploma. There’s a lot of competition going on. As we saw in the field visit with Anne Bernard, the employers always ask more qualifications and more skills in order to get a job. There are more candidates than jobs, which makes it very hard. Adult education has an important role to play, because it’s the only one who can help adults with it. We also feel threatened because we have too many choices to make. As a student, we have to decide what we will study, which isn’t easy. The university and the high school sometimes don’t provide enough information. But also in your own life, choices have to be made. Where will I live, what do I want from my life,…? In this self-reflective society youngsters get rather early independent from their parents on a personal level. But on an economic level, it is much harder to leave the house. In Finland the situation is a bit different. Students receive help from the government to live on their own and it’s for them possible to combine a part-time job with their studies. This has as a consequence that they study much longer than average. Another problem we recognised, was the lack of interest in policymaking and politics, although this only is the case in Belgium and Spain. In Finland most of the students are interested and are also active, mostly in student organisations. They are also existing in the other two countries, but they only reach few people. We think, as we said before, that you don’t feel that you can change anything. You feel powerless and discouraged. Furthermore we thought about the future of civil society. Are a lot of youngsters still organised? We follow the definition of a given society by Eyerman and Gameson : «Temporally public spaces and moments of collective creation that provide society with new ideas, new identities and new ideals.» Furthermore they stress the necessity of appearance of three dimensions before one can speak of a social movement namely the cosmological, the organisational and the technical dimension. There used to be a great impact of and involvement in social movements, nowadays we see, after a diminished interest in it, a stabilising situation. We think this is an overall feature of our society and that this counts for youngsters and others. We want to specify this though for the different countries of our intercultural group. We think that in Finland and Spain the participation in these movements is again increasing. The situation in Belgium doesn’t seem to be the same. All the four of us don’t feel like being a member of a group, to feel identified with one organisation or something. We don’t want to be involved during a long time in one organisation. So we agree that the future may lie in the hands of action groups. They are based on one topic and they work on a freer basis: people can participate in just one activity organised by an association and leave it at that. They don’t ask a long and intensive engagement. The last problem we found is that we see the world from the point of view of a consumer. We take in for example religion, values,… only the things we agree with, and leave out the rest. We have so many choices and so much knowledge about alternatives nowadays, that we mix the best of all of them. We have basic rights, but people don’t have clear values anymore. Everybody chooses their own values, depending on their own thinking.

After identifying the problems, we started thinking about possible strategies. We thought about a centre for students where they can meet and find information, about organisations for students,… But in the end, we concluded all our proposals already existed. We realised that we don’t use them. Why? We see the problems, we know that we have to do something. But we feel powerless, we are sceptic about the possibility to change the society. We think that we are, as students, being aware of these problems and that we are taught to be open-minded, but we have doubts if this can be said for the other people. Some of us are a bit sceptical about the possibility to change attitudes. Others were still optimistic. Making this paper, we held a mirror in front of us. This made us realise how difficult it is to get people participating and believing that something can change. It’s not easy to change the attitudes, but we still believe it is possible.

3. Conclusion

We realise it’s very difficult to get people active. How do you get people interested and motivated in participating? Are there too many conformists? Or do people feel too small, too weak to influence something? Or don’t we believe in the power of organisations?

Maybe the problems mentioned are being seen as being at a too high level? Students have to realise that they can actually do something. Working from the bottom, you can change something on a higher level. But is it always possible to change those global problems working from the bottom?

We ended up with more questions than we started with. Questions that we can’t answer right now. They need time and thinking.

Group 2

Group members :Blanco Noe, Camertijn Cathy, Engling Anke, Osterlund-Oller Inger

1. Introduction

Our western societies tend everyday more to the individualist philosophy. That means that the individuals have more importance than the community. This process is going contradictorily beside the globalization process of the culture provoked by the NNTT effects; and the international organisms.

In this situation, however, is evident the need of the people to belong to a community for their own identity development. Because this globalization process, where people feel they have a lot of common aspects with others in far countries, and the individualism, are making feelings of insecurity, don't know strongly their own bases and differences between other cultures, and in fact don't have a strong identity to deal with others without problems.

There is an evident example in Europe where we are trying to make a big community, but there are a lot of nationalistic political parties in defense of the regional communities cultures.

For example in Spain there are a lot of nationalists parties (in each autonomic community) defending their cultural characteristics that are different from the rest of the country, although they (some) agree with the European Unification. But it is a process that is happening in other countries in Europe.

Make a strong identity taking into account the community level is very important to deal with other cultures, but also to make the population strong in front of the government, because if it doesn't exist Democracy is not real. The individualism and mass media are taking people into the anonymity, and the only action that citizen does (and not always) is vote. But it isn't a real social participation. We can link it to the risk society where the institutions that are created to make people participate in social and political affairs are doing totally the contrary. That's why is important a strong and active Civil Society and for that is needed the community feeling and development.

In what follows we will first reflect on the relation between the individual and the community. In the following part we will start with an example and link this with the theory we have seen.

2. Individuals in a community

We started with a theoretical reflection on the identification proces to explain the link between the individual and a community.

2.1. Identification process ?

As a person we have to develop our own identity, our 'I' (cfr. the theory of Schäffter). To do that we need others. The contact point between 'I' and the 'others' is 'Me'. And I will incorporate the way others see me. In addition to the others where Schäffter refers to, namely all the different levels such as Culture, environment, social group, family end so one, Maffesoli introduced us a new concept namely that of 'Neo-tribalism'. If we now adapt this concept to our identification process we see that 'the others' can be divided in two concepts namely a 'we' and a 'them'. The 'we' refers to whom we can identify ourselves with and the 'them' refers to whom we can not identify ourselves with. Both kinds of identification are necessary to develop the 'I' aspect of the person.

To make this abstract thinking a bit more concrete we made a scheme that visualises it :

(inclusion) (exclusion)

OTHERS

I / ME

For example people can identify themselves with a (social) movement because of the same moral, political and in time maybe also an emotional connection.

Or they can identify themselves with a certain neighbourhood which refers to a same consciousness of space namely all of us are living in the same neighbourhood. In a more general way we can identify ourselves with different communities.

In this paper now we will concentrate us on the community level. Inherent to this level is also the element of group and culture.

This scheme shows us that community has everything to do with identification. There can be certain mutual contact points, which enrich the individual identity. This insight is really important for the adult educator namely he has not only to work on the individual level but also on the community level. In what follows we will further explain this.

2.2.1. What ?

cfr introduction

2.2.2. Cause ?

Individualism is created not by individual person but by the state. Because of some major changes in the past like the growing economies, the globalization, new technologies, depolarization et cetera.

Dominique Wolton (La Croix, 19 March 1999, p.1,5), a French sociologist, says that the new technologies creates "des êtres solitudes interactives". Because Internet valorize the individual freedom and research and by that Internet reinforce the individual dimension in the communication.

2.2.3. Consequence(s) ?

1) Al of this has made people has become more self-reliable and -responsible. But people who have troubles in organising their lives for example they don't know what they want to study or by circumstances the can not study. At the end they haven't got any diploma. They come on the labour market and they can't find a job, if there even is a job ? They are unemployed. At that time they are feeling ashamed and guilty. They see it as a personal failure. This also makes it that people in this kind of situation normally don't protest. Maybe that is why we haven't seen any protest in our countries of the unemployed people? Although they have a right to do that.

2) Everybody nowadays is so busy with organizing their own life that they don't see the others anymore. By this there has become a split between the individual and the collective. Although the individual gets more attention, we can not underestimate the feeling concerning the collective. Examples of were this collective feeling suddenly arouses are for example with the death of Diana. In this case we can even speak of an arousing of a world connecting feeling. Another more nation-bounded example is the big protest in Finland caused by the killing of two policemen by a Dane. Another example is the White Mars in Belgium and so one. In daily life people are maybe not so nation-bounded or religion bounded but everybody of them still angers to belong somewhere as a part of something. The old collectives maybe have lost theirs strength but smaller and new ones have taken their place.

3) But it also has created the feeling of 'competition'. Only the best can survive in this created technological and intellectual society. It has become a 'survival of the fittest' like Darwin would say it.

4) Another consequence is that people start to envy each other. They want to have what the other has. A feeling that is link to this situation is jealousy. But in a reflexive way of thinking people must become aware that this high development of the first world (Western Society) is has reached that level because of the poor development of other regions (third world or regional poor people). But the disadvantaged people don't have to envy them. They must look to those who are like them to built their community and try to create in that way a more equal society instead of trying to be like them.

2.2.4. Individualism a bad evolution ?

In what we have just mentioned it seems that individualism has not done many good. We think that there is also a good side to this evolution. Namely the individualism creates the possibility to develop yourself as a person.

3. Community versus adult education

We can see an obvious link between community and education. But in some countries the link with adult education is not so obvious. In Belgium we have a very broad view on adult education this is not the case in Finland and Germany.

3.1. Case

We're going to base ourselves on one of the solutions that came out of the political debate concerning River Side District namely "the construction of an activity center".

Why

As we have already mentioned in our identification process it is very important for the individual to have contact with other people. People eager to be involved in something. A way of feeling involved is to participate in the society/community. People can participate in a cultural, political and/or economical way.

Forming jour identity has everything to do with learning. The individual can learn through participating, which means to dialogue, about himself, the others, the history of the community, the language, the social practices,...

So by participation the individual develops his cultural identity and social commitment and his authentic self.

Connected with this theory we have chosen to set up an "activity center" as a first priority because it gives people the opportunity to participate (Learning by doing) in social live, to get in contact with other people and in that way you can organize your own actions or activities. And we think that out of all this activities there will arouse some spontaneous networks for example between generations.

In this activity center we can work on the individual and collective level. On one hand increasing the capacity of the people for example low educated or unemployed people and on the other hand construction some structures to influence the political level.

Method

Those objectives that we have mentioned are connected with the "community development approach" and specially with "Locally development strategy". So we want to work in a bottom-up way.

How

To reach our goal we will follow three steps.

(1) Observe and diagnose the situation

We want to organize a cultural event that involves the whole community. For example the anniversary of Princeton can be an opportunity to bring people together in the preparation and action. We want to use the women's organisation to do a kind of outreaching work because they have contacts with the men and children.

The function of this action is to get to together and to create a feeling of community.

The role of the Adult Educator (AE) in this phase is that he has to observe, to listen to their problems and capacities before going to the second step.

(2)promoting activities and group forming

In setting up the activities we as AE have to take into account the collective needs and the individuals needs and interests. We can base ourselves on what we have seen in the first step. Those activities will create some grouping and organization of people because of the meetings and encounters on a regular basis. Our goal would be increasing the problem solving capacity, or formulating their needs as a group and as a person.

We though of a supposed example of an activity that maybe can be organized namely for the youngsters. If in the first step we have seen that there was a group of youngsters who were really handy with graffiti. We could organize in this second step a graffiti contest to decorate the activity center. So the first contact we have with them is informal. But then we can offer them space and material to become a group and organize their activities by themselves.

This was only a fictive example because we don't know the reality.

Our role in this second step is to be a "facilitator" because we want that the activity groups learn how to organize themselves and have their own responsibilities. We are just a support to orient them in this learning process.

(3)influencing policymakers

Our way of working is a bottom-up strategy so we don't only want to do activities on the bottom but we also have to go up because the decisions that the government takes have to be in conformity with the real community desires, needs, etc. We also need the support of that municipal government to develop those activities. To have that contact we would organize a council to meet each other on a regular basis. In this council there are the representatives of the different activity groups or associations, the AE and the representative of the municipality.

In this way we are promoting the Civil Society.

Our role in that case would be the one of the negotiator between both parts.

Models

Our way of working is based on the emancipatorical and partnership model. For the first one the educator is a facilitator and for the second one a coordinator.

We chose those models because of their strengths although we see also some weaknesses.

Strengths Weaknesses

EMANCIPATION *Personal development *Attitudes of dependency

*Empowerment of the government

*Combat deprivation

PARTNERSHIP *Network *Difficulties of coordination

*Cooperation *Less control

4. Conclusions

Long-term

In a more general way we think that the central role of adult education is to make sure that the people have the feeling of belonging somewhere. The way to do that is to make people feel "responsible" for their actions. By this we have to start with short-term activities which have an immediate effect to motivate people to engage themselves in actions with a long-term effect.

Stable collective

The collective must be strongly formed. Because an unstable collective creates also unstable individuals and visa versa.

Critical thinking

Adult education also has to develop "critical thinking" with the individual because of the raising possibilities that are in the society for example the new technologies, raising mobility of the people,...

Shared situations

Adult education can help to brake the glass of "guilt and shame", elements which are related to the individualism.

Adult educator

Due to the variable content, which is inherent to each community, the adult educator has first to be aware of this variability, see this variability and know how to deal with. So the adult educator has to obtain a great flexibility. We can not base on any certainty. We have to take problem by problem, situation by situation.

Like we already said as an adult educator you also have to take into account the collective which refers to the individual but also the economical (labour), the cultural, political and intellectual contents.

Université Paul Valéry Montpellier III

INTERCULTURAL GROUP PAPER

Herman Baert

Group 4

After the introduction, we clarify the concepts of community education, followed by a description of the situation in the different countries and a case study. In the next part we focus on social movements and their evolution towards action-groups, the situation in the different countries and the tasks for adult educators in social movements.

1. INTRODUCTION

Nowadays we are living in a risk-society. Our society is characterised by risks that are manmade but that are not controllable anymore. The risk-society can be described by two keywords: reflexive modernisation and individualisation. By using the word reflexive, we want to stress that the foundations of modernity are put into question. The result is insecurity. On the other hand, individualisation makes the individual person more autonomous. The person is free from traditions and is allowed to choose his own life-project. People don’t become more egoistic, but more self-centred. They can be authentic persons loyal to their own values and to themselves. In other words, post-modern society has to deal with a Janus-face: individualisation has a positive, but also a negative side.

Before pointing out some questions, we want to mention that we discussed the need of improving the communal life in today's society. In our discussion it seemed that there is a gap between the theory and the practical realisation of this improvement of communal life. Several initiatives raised during the module, seemed rather idealistic and not realisable. According to the German student, those initiatives won' t work out because of the mentality and lack of willingness of the German people. Communities can be successful if the individual has the feeling being part of the community contributes to his or her self-development. Forming a community must not be the goal on itself, but should be the implicit consequence because we think if people really have to do something for the other, there is always a part of self-interest involved.

After this remark, several questions can be pointed out. Is the risk-society a threat for democracy? Do people still believe in common projects? Is community life really disappearing? Are social movements an appropriate answer to this post-modern society? How can networks between different generations be built? Which role does adult education fulfil? These are several questions that came up while discussing the topic of community education. We will try to give our opinion in a structured way.

In a first part, we will try to clarify the concept of 'community education' and the link with adult education in the different countries. This seemed to be a necessary condition to a fruitful discussion. Thereafter, we apply the theory in a case study. In a second part, we will try to look closer to the role of social movements in society en how they adapt their strategies to this society. In a third part, we will put some question marks after some consequences of individualisation.

According to Jansen, community education embraces the task of making people better to be able to participate in the community they are member of and the task of enhancing their willingness. The emphasis is placed on the emotional ties, the moral responsability, the capabilities and willingness of people to involve themselves as a person in collective life. Compared to the collective orientation of community education, adult education is more linked with an individual (vocational) orientation: a 'contract' between the individual and an educational institute. Next to adult education and community education, Baert also mentions the term 'community development'. Whereas in the educational approaches (community schools and outreaching work) programs/curricula are developed or people are made aware of the need of such programs/curricula to solve their problem(s) -programs as an educational goal-, the developmental approaches (locality development and community development projects) stress attention to the process of solving collective problems. In this last case, it is less important if the final goal is reached or not because the process itself is also seen as a strategy of involving people in changes of their community

We want to clarify what is the relationship between the terms 'community education' and 'adult education' in the different European countries, in this case Belgium, Germany and Finland, the three countries the members of our inter-cultural group are belonging to. We do this to make clear that now in our studies and later on in our professional lives, some of us are or will be less or more acquainted with the subject community education.

When looking at the content of our studies, we see differences between the countries we come from. In Germany, community development and even community education are no part of the study to become an adult educator. Those domains are part of social pedagogy, which has in contrast to adult education a strong legitimisation in Germany. Nevertheless the German member of our group admits that this module can be seen as a broader view to build up kind of a network between adult education and social pedagogy. In Finland, when studying adult education, it depends on the optional courses you choose which branch you will get a job in. Most students who are interested in community development or community education, start studying social sciences. The link between adult education and community education/development can be made when choosing courses from social sciences as an option. But it has to be said that in most cases students of adult education choose management and accounting-courses as an option. In Belgium on the other hand, community education forms together with youth-work, vocational training and liberal education one of the four focuses in the training of social pedagogy.

Instead of repeating some part of the theory and searching some examples for it, we prefer to start from a concrete question that will be underpinned theoretically. As starting-point, we focus on the case of Riverside-district. Riverside-district is a disadvantaged neighbourhood, where a large part of the population is unemployed and where nearly 45% of the population are older people. In our case study, we want to stimulate networks between generations. We think this is important because of the improvement of communal life. Through networking, the strangeness can be increased. People of different generations are confronted with each other and have the chance to know each other. This gives them the opportunity to get a better understanding of their different worlds/ways of thinking and the insight that some things of the other just can't be understood (foreignness as complementarity). This contributes to an improvement of the feeling of safety and a diminishment of anxiety.

According to Spierts (1994) there are four kinds of networks, two on the organisational and two on the individual level.

(1) Issue networks gather around a certain issue they want to deal with. This network will be ended at the moment the goal is reached.

(2) Organisational networks have a permanent character. The common and final goals ask some continuity and regularity.

(3) Social networks consist of individuals and informal groups. The aim is having social contact, appreciation and material support by exchanging experiences and doing activities together.

(4) Supporting networks gather people that share a common situation. These people solve their problems by supporting each other. These networks have a temporary character.

Concerning our case, we want to improve the individual networks (social and supporting networks) and focus on the question how these networks can improve communal life between generations. We came to the following suggestions.

* If we want to improve the fact that generations get in contact with each-other, a good starting point is giving them a place where they can have chances for formal and -even more important- informal meetings. For this reason, we think an activity-centre in the neighbourhood is indispensable. This activity-centre must be a space where youngsters and elderly people can have their own activities. Social workers who work together with both groups must search out some common interests or contradictory ideas of both groups to work with or organise debates about.

* The renovation of Riverside-district as a contribution to the 600-years-celebracy is an opportunity to get both youngsters and elderly people together to express their wishes. Those debates should be characterised by the different elements of social learning:

- Reflexivity can be obtained by bringing different generations together and

- The element of action-centredness is reached because of the goal to renovate and create a new environment.

- A multi-actor-orientation is fulfilled when not only different generations, cultures,... take part into the discussion, but also different groups such as the trades-people that can have an important contribution to a pleasant social climate of the neighbourhood by developing own initiatives and the unemployed people that can be involved (by giving them job-opportunities) to realise this.

- To fulfil the three elements mentioned above, an open dialogue is a first requirement. Therefore different open meetings must be organised together with some key-representatives of the different groups. The activity-centre seems us an adequate place where debates can take place.

This kind of contributions of community life can be placed in the scheme of Baert (market, associations and services, government and citizen). We see that networks are in the middle of the scheme. All actors can be involved. We need the government to give money to realise the renovation-project and to build the activity-centre. The citizens are the main actors in it. Also services and associations are important partners because they are catalysators in the process of mobilising people. The market can be another actor by sponsoring things and even by providing facilities for the renovation-project. Bigger organisations may contribute in a more important way. What their contribution exactly can be is not clear for us. We discussed it for a long time but we didn't find answers. Maybe they can create jobs. It may be also interesting that people of the village have a look in other districts where networks exist to see how everything is working there.

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

1. DESCRIPTION

Social movements are part of civil society. The civil society is the whole of organisations and associations where citizens can give their opinions and remarks about societal life. They can bring important things on the public agenda. The focus of social movements is social action and collective protest. Movements want to attack the system and do it in an organised and/or intellectual way. Social action is a way to put certain societal problems in the spotlight. Movements want the people and policy to know what is happening and what is going wrong in society. Social action is necessary in democracy. In the first place because of the imperfection of democracy. It is also more difficult to mobilise people for common interests in stead of their particular interest. That's why a social movement can play an important role here. Elections are an opportunity for people to give a sign to the policy that they agree or disagree with the general lines of the decision-making, but therefore they don't agree or disagree with all concrete decisions.

During the centuries, protest-movements have always existed. Before the 19^th century, they had a questionable statute. From 1800, the number of social movements was raising. They got the statue of maintainers of order in society. The movements moved from dangerous outsiders to legitimate central actors. The movements-life had a strong identification-function in that period until the beginning of the 20^th century. In the 20^th century, after the first World-War, ideological mass-movements came up. After the second World-War, the big movements were on their homeward way. After the war, people became more individualistic and didn’t feel a need for big ideologies. So the individual was obliged to give sense to his own life. People are still active in movements, but they want to keep distance. From the ’60's, new social movements came up. These movements are movements who arose in the mid ’60's as a reaction against the societal changes and contradictions. They were independent of political parties, associations and institutions. From the '80's, new social movements went downwards. The state took part of their ideas and as a consequence social movements were looking for a new role. Their new role was characterised by institutionalisation and decay. Social movements became specialised institutions that work together with the policy instead of being critical associations.

2. EVOLUTION FROM OLD SOCIAL MOVEMENTS TOWARDS ACTION GROUPS

Recently, we can see two evolutions towards new emotional movements and towards contemporary action groups.

Emotional movements are recent post-modern organisations. They are organised around victim-hood. The victim is the expert and he has the legitimisation to speak. Those movements (for instance the White movement in Belgium around the White Marsh) are bad structured and they won’t live a long life. The media is also very important for them.

The other evolution is the one towards action-groups. Society has changed, the structural and cultural unity of social community life has fallen apart by a process of social differentiation. One of the consequences is the pluralisation of life. Individualisation and globalisation are the keywords that should be mentioned here. People have to create their own identity. Social movements have a task there. But fragmentation leads to a population that isn’t capable to design and execute common goals. So we see that movements are losing members. Globalisation is also a cause of the decay in memberships of social movements. Political and social action seem to have no significance anymore. The institutional structures are non transparent. People don’t want to be a member of movements because being a member seems to have no sense anymore. That's why people just want to be a member for a very short and limited time. People also want to choose for one specific topic. This is what makes the identity of action-groups. They are distinguished from new social movements by the four following characteristics:

(1) While new social movements are based on a specific ideology, action-groups don’t have a large ideological foundation. They are organised around few concrete goals and they don’t have a coherent vision on society. People don’t believe anymore in big ideologies, they want to chose their own values.

(2) While new social movements could mobilise a lot of people, action-groups are not able to do that anymore. The action-group has become a more or less professional institute where experts are working. Also volunteers have to be qualified. Staff and volunteers are responsible for one part of the actions of the organisation.

(3) New social movements are resisting the system. This is the same for action-groups, but where new social movements get money from the government, action-groups refuse this.

(4) New social movements fulfil a lot of functions on the agogical field. They are occupied with education, activation and animation. Action-groups are only occupied with activation and education, animation and the provision of services are for them no longer important. A new function of action groups is network-development. To increase their efficiency, they have to get more power. Because of the decay of members, they have to look for other solutions to be strong enough. So many organisations are working together to achieve their goals. There is co-operation with many organisations, but only with those who are having the same values. Smaller organisations often are partners in one big network.

Those characteristics of action-groups make the link between individualisation and globalisation clear. It also shows that social movements get a new role and a new task in society.

When looking at the social movements in our different home-countries, we may say (but this is a personal idea of each group-member about his or her own country) that in Finland social movements are not really an actual topic. We thought this may due to the fact that Northern European countries have the reputation already being very open-minded, emancipated, nature-respecting, etc. So, social movements are not really 'needed' there. There is a danger in this way of thinking: on the surface everything may look very democratic and equal, while examining the situation on a deeper level, hidden discrimination of different target groups might be found. It is for instance a given fact that most of the academic teachers are still men. This should be due to the fact that discrimination arises from the image people have of men and women, which is culturally given. Certain qualities should be systematically lower evaluated when done by women, for instance executive abilities. Adult education has the task here to remain people thinking critical and to make them aware of this existing hidden discrimination in real life. A good example is the fact that the head of the Leuven University (Belgium) appointed an advisor for equal chances-policy: ... a woman! In Germany social movements are not really existing on the local level, they're more on the national level and still then they wouldn't be the highest topic the usual German citizen is dealing with. Belgium has always been a country with a high associational life. Many people are member of a social movement. Also the post-modern individual takes part in movements, although it is in a rather different sense then before.

Adult educators are the kind of persons you can find in many different contexts. One function of social movements is education. Members of a movement learn a lot of the issue where the movement is organised around. Via member-bulletins, lectures, information-sessions,… members learn a lot. But also the population and the policy get the chance to learn from those groups. Sensibilisation and activation are the most important functions of action-groups.

Members of a movement also learn more implicit things. For instance by participating in an organisation or movement you may learn to feel responsible and to put problems in a broader context. Also the self-consciousness is increasing.

Social movements and action-groups should reorient their role in society. Instead of creating the identity of people, movements should help people to select their own values. They should give people the capacity to select and to create their own identity.

Social movement should pay more attention to the creation of social stable networks. They can organise different integrative activities to compensate fragmentation.

The civil society exists in the tension between citizen and state. The gap between those two has to be diminished. Social movements can play a role here and can play in a constructive way on this tension. Movements can provide a public debate and dialogue. Also the democratic attitudes such as tolerance, the stimulation of active participation and the responsibility should be taught.

Another task of social movements can be a stress on the communicative handling. Here we also see the concept of experience-learning. People have to reflect on their own ideas and to think about it critically in an inter-subjective and dialogical way. People have to know that knowledge is context-bound and not fixed. A danger is that people stay on this level of experiences. We have to be aware that in a plural context people need meta-theories. There has to be a general frame to place the experiences.

Social movements are the place where new methods and techniques can be experimented. They are precursors in a new way of organising society. This function is very important, social movements have to keep a laboratory-function.

Action-groups have to work both on the individual and societal level. It is important that members can take a partial responsibility in the movement and at the same time also have the feeling that they are part of a social movement with other people. It is very important to create unity in talking and handling. The group-feeling has to be increased.

Social movements have also to work on three levels, moral, political and emotional. By working on the communicative handling and by promoting dialogue and debate, the emotional level will be increased. The sentiment of feeling well in a group or community will arise. By the orientation on one issue, social movements stress also the moral level. And if the social movement wants to be successful and have an impact on the policy, the political level is also very important.

As we can see, social movements have a double function on the individual level: on the one hand they have to play a role in the self-development and the critical participation of persons, on the other hand, they have to get people integrated in society (the element of socialisation). But on the social level, we think that social transformation is the most important function.

MODULE 3: COMMUNITY WORK AND ADULT EDUCATION

Introduction

We will set up a case first and then explain the theoretical backgrounds around that. After that we will clarify some contradictions and reflections we have about our case and the module as a whole.

Our case is based upon the case-study of the River District and two of the field visits we had during this program (CFI-Olympe and IFAD-la Paillade).

1. Case Study: The set-up of an network-embedded individual learning trajectory centre.

In the community of River District (RD) there exist several sub-communities and even some sub-sub-communities. A lot of them overlap each other. We as community-workers/ adult-educators choose a target group for this case: the unemployed people, 20% of the inhabitants.

Who is belonging to this targetgroup/community of unemployed people? (analysis of the target group)

Our definition of the unemployed: everybody (between 18 and 60 years old who lives in the local neighbourhood and who has no job.

We can see the unemployed people as belonging to the disadvantaged people/people at risk. Often the unemployed people will belong to more then one subgroup: unemployed, homeless, depending on social welfare, people with a lot of personal and social problems (alcoholism, criminality, abuse, vandalism, aggressivity, …). We can also see different levels involved for the unemployed individuals: person-citizen, family-friends, neighbourhood, and society. On this levels there are several influences: religious, political, economical and environmental influences. (schemes to visualise this will be added later).

So we can see both the individuals belonging to this group and the group as a whole (community) in a multi-problem context. Because the group of unemployed people form a sub-community within RD / these people are all living in RD, and it is such a high percentage of the inhabitants, this will have influences on the whole community-life in RD.

What is our project about and what is the final aim?

The problems where the individuals and the community(ies) are confronted with, will be less if these people become more involved in society. So this will be our goal: social and professional integration of the unemployed inhabitants in RD. That is why we want to set up a program that works on these both sides. We think a kind of individual-guidance-trajectory – project will be appropriate to do this.

This looks only a strategy for individual development but this project will be situated in the bigger community of RD and specifically for the community of the unemployed inhabitants described above. We will make this more clear further on in the text.

We will now describe the set up of the community-building process that will take place in our project.

1. on the individual and family level: there is already some motivation for participation with the unemployed people from the old industry > moving from old industry to new industry to get a better job (and family life); people can also be motivated to change or to get out of the precarious situation they are in because of the stigma, social exclusion; they have time to do something; 80% has work in RD, so they may have feelings of responsibility, self-esteem and self-confidence, and they can help the unemployed by being an example.
2. Group level: there is a male and female workers association, there is a new industry-implant, there are projects for the 600 years anniversary of the city, the people can become more integrated in and more involved with their city and there is a project about the new road.
3. Collective level: the social services that are working in RD want to reduce the high number of dependent persons (motivation to help the people to be more involved in the community, to take more responsibilities).

Taking the existing situation in accordance, how can we reach our aim?

First we have to do some outreaching work to get in touch with our target group.

Some possible strategies to do this are: to organise some street corner work (personal and informal contacts, e.g. in local pub) search for the informal leaders and activate them for outreaching others (snowball-method, Tupperware-model), to set up an advertisement-campaign to inform people with help of the media about the new programs and individual guidance trajectory centre and the rewarding-system for the participants (see later*), to inform people about a free phone-number and bureau where they can tell their ideas, complaints, and problems; to co-operate with the existing social services who have already contacts with the unemployed people.

*To motivate the people there will be a reward system for participation in some of the projects and maybe for bringing in good ideas to help the unemployed people to become more involved in society. The rewards can be some free food, money or childcare (this idea is based upon some community-projects with parents, children and schools in USA: the reward is not seen in a paternalistic way but as a salary for the time they participate in the program = a kind of ‘job’).

We think it is very important to use a lot of different strategies to reach different kind of people.

Secondly, we have to make use of different institutions to involve the broader community of RD and to guarantee some multi-actor/dimension-approach to the complex issue of unemployment.

We have to arrange special meetings between the social services, neighbourhood centres, schools, and the municipality, industrial companies, workers’ associations. By this way we want to try to build some kind of network. All of these actors can have representatives in a kind of steering committee that will act on one hand as a forum for ideas, and exchange of know-how to support the organisation and content of the individual-guidance-trajectory-project (IGT). And on the other hand can be a kind of feedback-system for both the IGT and the other actors in the network.

Thirdly we will try to set up the IGT.

This will be a tailor-made training program for each unemployed participant:

1. Have individual meetings as an intake, this will be a deep analyses of the personal situation, the problems and competencies of the participant.
2. Defining the professional and personal goals together with the participant.
3. Set up a learning trajectory.

So we want to work with the person as a whole and in his context.

Scheme of our project

2. Theoretical background (we will only give the main issues we want to discuss here, it have to be worked out later on)

We will now place this case in a framework that is based on several of the models that were presented during this module.

Our target group consists of a kind of sub community within the local, territorial community of RD; the unemployed inhabitants. We can define this group as a community in the perspective of two entries:

1. As a human collective: the unemployed people have a characteristic in common, some shared value-system perhaps and may be even a culture of being unemployed.
2. As a territorial community: they are all living in the same district, so there is a kind of consciousness of space.

Because of the stigma that rests upon "being unemployed" and the link with social exclusion, we do not think that the other three entries are dominant: unemployed people do not want to be recognised and do not want to be identified as such. So we expect they will not have a lot of shared activities (only looking for a job, or going to social services perhaps). The sense of solidarity will also not be very strong (everybody works for his own good, more competition then solidarity perhaps). By consequence there will not be a network of close knit relationships between them.

So if we see this community of unemployed people clearly and we link it with the definition of the competent community (Cottrell) we can conclude that we are confronted here with an incompetent community. So that is why the purpose of our project was to build up a more competent community. This means by empowering the individuals belonging to this community, by making them more competent on the personal and professional level, we will break down the existing incompetent community of unemployed inhabitants. In the mean time by doing this these individuals get social and professional integrated in the larger community of RD and so the whole community of RD can become more competent.

We can now put our target group in the political, economical and demographic context of RD (see statistical facts and figures in the given case study).

This context has a large impact on the individual experiences of the community-life.

The final aim of our project is to get the unemployed socially and professionally integrated. First of all we had to reach our target group and because of the specific characteristics of this group, this is a very difficult but crucial first step in our strategy. By doing this outreaching work we not only want to reach as many people as possible but also we can try to find out what their experiences of community-life are.

Our next step is to set up the IGT, we think this fits in a strategy of community-development projects. More explanation about this will be added later.

However, this project can not exist on its own. It will not be efficient to build a community on itself, it really has to be in embedded into RD- the community-context. That is why we think it is necessary to build a kind of network, partnership between all the different actors involved in the community building process and who are dealing with unemployment issues. By creating such a network we try to make a link with the bigger community and improve the social solidarity-responsibility and the social-professional integration.

In each step of our project we can recognise some of the 4 principles of social learning to a certain degree: reflexivity, action-centredness, multi-actor orientation, dialogue or public debate.

Position of the different components (outreach, IGT and network) of our projects within the social midfield of market, citizens, government/public administration, and associations/services.

We will also discuss the model(s) of decision-making we applied.

3. Contradictions and reflections

1. contradiction of dissolving and building communities
2. contradiction of the competent helpless people
3. contradiction of realism and idealism
4. reflections about individualism and communality in the context of risk society
5. reflections about the concept of communities
6. reflections about the role of A.E. (community education-work) and other systems in society (economical, political and social) concerning social exclusion.
7. Reflections about the importance of network building and the link with the framework of Schäffter and Elias.
8. Reflections about reducing unemployment

Project at Riverside district, with aims to get unemployed people more integrated to the community and involve those people more into community by increasing their professional and social competence.

To reduce unemployment is basically question of how to decrease the amount of jobs, how to activate people in the community and how to increase their competencies to take actively part into communal life? What kind of mechanisms are the cause of the high amount of unemployed people and what underlying mechanisms need to be seen to be able to solve this high unemployment? Can we already find some competencies in the community that could be strategically used for this common goal of reducing unemployment?

What are really the goals of this project? How can our case empower the citizen? What should be done to help the individuals to see the common objective’s so that they would understand the benefits of the project for their self-actualisation as well as for the common good?

What are the external strategies, should we inspect the question of unemployment from neo-liberal (utilitarian) point of view, since after all the question of reducing unemployment is more or less redistribution of labour. The target group is group at risk, how they could be activated into labour market instead of living with social welfare? But then again is the question merely neo-liberal one? Since activating people at risk doesn’t merely mean getting their new jobs can we see politically vitalising aspects also in civil society as well as communarity: To activate those people into volunteer organisations (as in civil society) and getting them participate into organising festivities (communitarism) is also important from the community’s cohesion point of view. That exclusion from the daily life of the district because of unemployment is surely more costly for the community than activity in the community in general. So it is a matter of passivity vs. activity.

CHAPTER 3: COMMUNITY EDUCATION

INTRODUCTION

3.1 THE INTENTIONS OF EDUCATION IN THE COMMUNITY

Before this will take place in a community you will need a process of dynamic interaction. The process of dynamic interaction will have to occur between the people of a community and between the internal and external factors of a community on the people of the community. Internal factors are influences from within a community and external factors are influences from outside of the community on the community. When discussing dynamic interaction processes, we will have to take into consideration, that the main goal of the communication has to lead to community competence( Cottrell). The model of Cotrell acknowledges the individual and group aspects that intervene in the process of creating community competence. In the model several other aspects are mentioned next to the aspect of communication and these are for instance commitment, clarity of situational definitions and participation. A dynamic process of interaction should consist those aspects the competence of the community as a result can be a very important factor for the community, to reach, with the help of education, a point where viability in a community is constructed. We see community education as a basis where dynamic interaction can take place and evolve.

3.2 THE ROLE OF THE ADULT EDUCATOR IN THE FIELD OF COMMUNITY EDUCATION

We see community education as a process where different actors play an equal role! An equal role in the sense that there will be no need for authority in order to get an educational process started. The Adult Educator is a professional actor in this field. The professional role can be declared from the fact that the Adult Educator has to act as a professional facilitator. He has to facilitate the needs of the other actors apparent in the community educational process. This facilitating role can be divided in a passive facilitating role and an active facilitating role. Before we continue the discussion we like to define and make a summarize of the division in the facilitating role.

1. PASSIVE FACILITATING ROLE OF THE ADULT EDUCATOR

• He is a supplier of information

• He is an expert; knowledge on a professional basis
• He is a feedback supplier
• He has organizing skills (management skills)
• …This summary is not completed, but contains main points we find necessary for the role of Adult Educator in the community.

The Adult Educator incorporates an amount of knowledge and skills that can be used by the community, when it is needed. The role is passive because the Adult Educator doesn’t have to take the initiative, he has to be there where the people can find him and ask him to supply them the needed and relevant information. The community has to know that they have the opportunity to ask advice when needed. In this case he is not playing an active role, his role consists of being available when there is a need from with in the community.

1. ACTIVE FACILITATING ROLE OF THE ADULT EDUCATOR

• Initializing role (he has to get things started)
• Empowerment; by means of communication with the designated persons or groups and using the expertise to help people find their own solutions
• Be an example for!

• Detective ( search for the originating of problems)
• …this summary is not completed, but contains main points we find necessary for the role of Adult Educator in the community

The Adult Educator has to see the people as experts of their own situations and not abuse his professional skills in order to help them! The communication between the Adult Educator and the community will have to take place on an equal basis. The Adult Educator has to take into consideration that opinions differ and that there has to be a level where agreement can be reached. His role is active because he is in this active role the one starting a process that has to lead to involvement, care and solutions, in a community.

In the beginning the Adult Educator should make a diagnoses of the community. He has to evaluate on an economical, social & cultural and demographic level of the community, so he can create a map of the "situated" community. He has to find out the competencies and deficiencies of the community and can do this with the help of needs- analysis. This needs-analysis should be realized on an equal basis and can be the perfect tool to find out what the needs are of the people from within the community. The Adult Educator has to start working on the basis of the competencies of a community and use these competencies to fight or diminish the deficiencies of the community.

At the end of the process of working in the community, the Adult Educator has to realize as a professional that he was needed to help people structuring their ideas within the community, but that his duty is finished. The community is the objective and the Adult Educator is a bystander that will never integrate in that community where he was appointed to help. He is there only to jump into the community when needed for help.

The goal of community development is to reach a viability level within a community and to reach a level where the community has the capacity to help itself and handle changes without professional input of an Adult Educator. If this level of viability can be reached in a community than the job the Adult Educator fulfilled was successful. Successful in that sense that the input of a professional is no longer acquired and therefore no longer existing!

3.3 COMMUNITY IN POSTMODERNSOCIETY AND A CONCEPT OF INSTANCE COMMUNITY

An example of an instance community can be the migrants that come into a country at the same moment. Often they are from different countries and are put together, at least for the first moments they arrive in the new country, like for instance the fugitives. The necessity of all of them to live in a harmonious way with people from other cultures is apparent, especially when put together under the same roof! This community that is instantly created here is time dependent, when receiving a permit and when those people find a job it will be likely that they will all go their separate ways. Their commitment to each other is from the very start very strong, because they can supply information to each other, seek comfort with each other and form a save place in an environment that is still very strange and new. From the start they know that they aren’t going to stay within this community on a long-term basis and stating this you can say again that the commitment to each other is based on a short-term relationship.

1. The first model is a liberal model; here the State doesn’t intervene at all.
2. The second model is a social model; here the State will intervene to a certain degree.

3.5 THE CASE STUDY OF THE RIVERSIDE DISTRICT: a proposal to create jobs in the riverside district

In relation with the case study we did during the course, we offer a solution concerning the employability of the community.

In the following we made a summation of the plan. Before creating a plan you need certain starting conditions to get information about the designated community.

3.5.1 INITIAL CONDITIONS

• Evaluation and diagnosis; by a local government concerning the community

• Attain an Adult Educator; for a professional input - coordination

  - External view on the problems of a community

• Develop a community center; for instance in the school, because the amount of children is decreasing and the empty spaces can be used and the people can find this place and use the community competence, for instance the women associations, that are active in the riverside district. The function is based on free time activities, creativity and for example sporting events and the goal is to create more social relations and possibilities to meet each other.
• Create an arena to discuss the problems of the community; this is really important so there will be a place where issues concerning the community can be discussed.
• Create a magazine of the community; implicitly this will be a channel for diffusion of information and goods. The main goals of this magazine are:

• Distribution of information (resources, services, activities,…)
• articles to create awareness of the problems in the community
• opinion articles (citizens can give their opinion and persons with a certain expertise can inform the inhabitants of the community via this local newspaper)

The goal of this intervention is based on finding solutions for the high level of unemployment in this community. The solutions should lead to reintegration of the unemployed in the labor market. An idea is that there should be an association of employers and unemployed people of the community, so that there will be a place where interaction between them can take place and that they can form an information board concerning the needs of the companies and the needs of the employers and employers to be! This is important for the information flow about the innovative projects of the industries that are going on. When an association can systemize the information from the industries and from the employers and unemployed, than there is the possibility to direct the needs towards each other and consensus can be reached, concerning the need of the company for employers that know their job and the need of people to find a job.

3.5.2 POLITICAL PERSPECTIVES

As we stated above it is necessary that there is a great form of social participation and self-organizational features should play an important role in creating possibilities to find a job. We discussed about the political perspective that is at stake and came to the conclusion that the meso level of collectivism is an important perspective, because it recognizes the connection with problems and concerns about societal participation in the Civil Society ( Theo Jansen,1997). The main idea behind this is the need to reinforce the participation of citizens. This perspective is focussed on the rising costs of social services that hinder the enrolment of citizens in civil organizations. This perspective urges new enrolment possibilities, while acknowledging the paradox of the "unaffordable welfare state". The professionalization of social services led to higher costs. By motivating volunteer work in social services the costs will lower. The strategy behind this perspective is focussed on recruiting more volunteers to maintain social and cultural services to the aim of supporting citizens who want to take the responsibility for the civil society. In our initial conditions we integrated traditional perspectives as well as innovative perspectives linked with increasing the employment in the community. In the traditional perspective adult education has the role in creating possibilities for the unemployed focussing on responsibility, personal capacities and wants via means of volunteer’s work. By this they will get motivated to organize themselves in the community. The innovative perspective is focused on stimulating critical discussions and look for different organizational principles within the community! Give opportunities to create self-help groups and independent neighbourhood groups, the role of adult education is more a role of an agent for critical debate and to stimulate the opposition within the community towards complex social-cultural professional bureaucratic organizations that execute to much power in the civil society. If you look at the initial conditions presupposed above you would recognize the two perspectives within the meso level of collectivism we used to fundament our ideas with, concerning unemployment. The need to organize the unemployed in this community is also recognized in this perspective. In our opinion it is important to organize the unemployed together with the employed from the community, so that they can form a strong social organization in the community. This organization can negotiate with the food industry and the local government.

Next to this collectivist perspective we see another perspective also very actual in this proposal to create jobs and this is the Neo-Liberal perspective or Utilitarian perspective, we recognize this one because the managers of industries play an important role, if not the most important role in this discussion. They have the power concerning industrial know how and they have the jobs! The neo-liberal perspective or utilitarian is an individualistic perspective which primary concern is that individualization is not radical enough and that the interventions of the state and social-cultural pressures is not acknowledging the freedom of the individual to be responsible for his or her own life history. This perspective acknowledges only political and social interference if it is there to prevent or remedy the social exclusion of persons who are unable or unwilling to make a living. The neo-liberals see the problem of social exclusion as something that is associated with the vulnerability and risks of the labour market that will lead to unemployment and poverty. This perspective sees the rational self-interest of the individual as a factor that will motivate the individual from within in to participate in economic, political and social life, in short, in civil society. In our proposal we see the importance of participation in order for the unemployed in the community to motivate their rational self-interest! This perspective is focussed on the individualistic perspective of our proposal. This perspective is also interesting because it focuses on the importance of training. It is also interesting because it acknowledges the importance of the executing power of industry, which has the money to finance the training.

When we integrate these two perspectives we acknowledge on the one hand social mobilization of the employed and the unemployed in organizations and on the other hand the power of the food industry and the important role they play in creating also possibilities to offer jobs and training for the unemployed and the employed (to stay employed) in the community. We stress the importance of social organizations in the community, because in order to link the two forces (the social organization and the industry); the social forces and economical forces there should be an area where interaction between the two forces can be constructed in order to develop concrete strategies focussed on diminishing the unemployment and increasing jobs that are fit for the unemployed. The civic society can be a place where communication is constructed between the organization, the industry and even the local government. When there is an area where communication on equal basis can take place, then there is a place where constructive communication can take place, because equality is a fundamental aspect for constructive communication. In the communication between the organization, the industry and the local government an agreement has to be reached in the form of a contractual responsibility of training for all the parties involved. If the industry takes up the most responsibility of training, it can effectively locate the needs from within the company and reflect them to the organization that can mobilize people to fulfill the needs of the company with the help of training. The training can then lead to jobs in the industry. Therefore it is important that in agreement with the organization of the unemployed and employed, the industry frameworks or structionalize the training. Another possibility is that the organization of the employed and unemployed create training with the consent of the industry, but still take up most of the responsibility for organizing the training. Then the main focus will be the financial aspect, which is necessary to provide needed training. The local government can play a role in this case and subsidize or offer professionals (for instance adult educators) to help with the training. In any case the role of the government is limited and only a bystander role to regulate and mediate the interaction between the two parties.

3.5.3 REFLECTION

In creating job possibilities in the Riverside district we acknowledge the importance of the organization and the industry. The training mentioned is an effective tool to decrease unemployment especially when the training is based on the needs of both parties and mutual agreement considering job offering and on jobs in general. Training is seen as a tool that will bring the different needs of the party’s closer towards each other.

The social issues that are at stake in the Riverside district are concerned with increasing independence. This is also an issue the Community Social Service is focussed on, but they don’t have a concrete plan to execute. When focussing on mobilizing the unemployed and creating possibilities for them to get a job, the independence level will increase also within the community. Another aspect why we focus on the unemployment (an economical aspect) is the fact that we see this aspect inherently linked with the social aspect concerning vandalism for instance. When unemployment decreases, we are convinced that vandalism will also be reduced especially when in this process the increasing collectivist responsibility is realized!

We realize that this plan is not worked out and has an idealistic undertone, but we think this is a good reflection that can be used as a fundamental aspect in realizing job possibilities for unemployed citizens.

Group 8

Vanhilderson Miet

Wouters Karen

Introduction

Simonen, K. (1998). Uuden polven maalaisnainen
http://www.hkkk.fi/~korpela/keskustelu/maatalous/
Uuuden_polven_maalaisnainen-Kotiliesi-
19981002.htm

Group 9

Anna Palva, Mira Vanolmen, Melissa Verkley, Bart Ketelslegers

This paper is still under construction!!!

The missing texts will be joined later.

The structure of our paper will be as follows:

Dilemmas:

What is development?

Introduction

After looking at an example of making a strategic plan for community building in Ecuador and comparing the Ecuadorian society with our Western risk society, we want to pay more attention to concrete community building projects in Western Europe. Therefore we start from the situation in River District and ask the same question as people of UNOCAM did in Molleturo, namely: 'How to make the people of River District make a strategic developmental plan for their own community?'

We try to find an answer by questioning firstly how we can bring people together, as a first step in community building and community education. After that we try to find out what the importance is of analysing the situation of River District and how such an analysis should be made.????????? Change order??????

We think these are two important questions on a practical level. But just imagine, that while succeeding in bringing people of River District together, or while making an analysis of the situation with participation of all the involved parties, someone comes to you and says:' But why? Why are you interested in the River District? I have nothing to do with the other people of the neighbourhood. Why should we work together? And why do you think we have problems? Why do you think it's important to develop our neighbourhood more?'

These questions bring us to an other, more fundamental level. So in a third and a forth point we want to ask the question: 'We want the people of River District to work on a strategic developmental plan for their community, but do they in fact form a community? And what can be understood by 'development'?

We don’t have the intention to give one right answer to this question. Rather, we will try to explain some dilemmas that must be taken into account when talking about making a strategic plan for development in a certain community.

European context

The differences between the industrial societies in Europe and the rural area, in South America are very big. In Europe we speak about the learning society, because society has changed very fast during last years. People have to learn and change in order to keep up every new innovation and demand. In learning society we have to response to change socio-economical and technological conditions with structural and personal response…but learning society has also a back side.

We have come into a new situation of history where "simple industrial modernization" has transformed itself to "reflexive modernization". Reflexive modernization means that the conditions that in the beginning facilitate the development of the industrial society have become problematic in themselves. This result is called a risk society (Ulrich Beck). The central social issue in industrial society is the unequal production and distribution of social wealth. One reason for global life insecurity is the loss of the central political steering capabilities. All effects are embraced from globalized economy and revolutionary scientific and technological innovations. The traditional political institutions lack power to plan or control effectively the social consequences of these economical and technoscientifical developments. The question is not only about ecological risks, it is also a question about political legitimization, social cohesion and moral values.

A feature of the risk society is the process of individualization. Individualization has given people more freedom of choice for the organization of their own life history. Individual biographies has also become more self-decided and self-organized (self-reflexive). But on the other hand, individuals have also more responsibility for decision making, which represent and reinforce strong ambivalences. Do we all have the same abilities and tools to make choices? Who will take care of those people, who are not able to keep abreast of the new innovation and demand?

Individualization in a risk society changes the character of the social question. The question is not only about unequal production and distribution of social wealth, it is also a question about vulnerability of individuals on the labor market and in the social life in general. The mission of adult education is to make people more reflective and critical in everyday life. Theo Jansen and Ruud van der Veen (International journal of lifelong education, vol 16, no.4) give some key elements of a reflective strategy:

1. Support of new fora for political debate on issues.
2. Support of new forms of self-organization in order to reopen the debate with regard to the bureaucratization of the delivery of social services in civil society.
3. Support of a society based on a plurality of values and norms by fostering intercultural and intergenerational debates.
4. Support of cultural movements that unmask culturally imposed identities.
5. Support of new arrangements to combine work, education and leisure time.

The example from Ecuador has a very different context when we compare it to our society in Europe. But there are also some resemblances between Ecuador and Europe. People began to organize themselves into a second-level-organization (UNOCAM) to solve their problems. Because UNOCAM was not so appreciated by local political authorities, a meeting was organized to make a diagnosis of their region and to make a strategic plan for the development of the region. When all the problems were listed, they started to choose the most important ones. After an analyses, every organization chose a part of the strategic plan to work on.

Also in a European context it could be useful to activate people to organize themselves rather than to trying to find solutions in a political or bureaucratical level. When people can plan and analyze the process themselves, they will be more interest to deal with their problems. Reflective and critical thinking will be the most important skills when planning and analysing the whole process. In the Ecuadorian example there were two parts in the analysis, which could be very useful when evaluating their own situation. In Ecuador they analyzed the suitability of the actor for each problem and then they analysed the readiness and willingness for cooperation with other actors.

In the River-District the Primary School is loosing children; hall of the building is no longer used. There are indications of an abuse and vandalism is noticed several times. Unemployed inhabitants and workers in the old industrial area hope to find a (new) job in the new industrial area. The board and the workers of the Community Social Service want to reduce the high number of dependant persons; providing them benefits doesn´t help them in their socio-cultural and/or professional integration/insertion. Only women are participating in so-called "decentralised cultural activities" organised by cultural community center. The climate in the River-district is dominated by anxiety about the future of the district: the new traffic plans, the care for the elderly, jobs in the new industrial area, youngster at risk…

How to analyze the situation in a community?

One of the first things the community worker in the River District will do when he starts his job in the neighbourhood, is to make an analysis of the situation. He will try to define what problems there are, how the relations are between people or groups of people, what influences from outside are important, and so on. A broad analysis of the situation is a necessary basis for further work. But the community worker is not the only one who makes such an analysis. People of the River District themselves also sometimes make, and maybe more spontaneously and less systematically, an analysis of their situation. They also define what their problems are, how relations between them and other people can be seen. And so do other instances like the government, NGO's,...

It seems important to bring together all these different analyses for some reasons:

A first important reason for bringing together the different analyses is to give the community worker a broader and more realistic view on the situation. Maybe a community worker defines problems while the people of the neighbourhood don't see that situation as a problem. Or maybe the situation is only a problem for certain people. Maybe the community worker forgot some aspects.

Another reason to bring together the different analyses is one of respect. You can only work together with people of a neighbourhood and together build up a stronger community if you respect them. This means concretely that you respect their points of view, their definitions of the situation.

Because people of River District, the community worker, certain instances,... have some common interests, participation of all these partners is very important. And we think that this participation should not end with giving all these parties just a vote, but to see and to stimulate them as responsable and capable partners.

We think we can learn a lot from the Ecuadorian example. When they made an analysis of the situation, UNOCAM invited a lot of individuals and groups from different instances to help with the analysis of the situation in Molleturo.

Another strength we see in their analysis is the fact that they didn't stress exclusively on the problems. They also made a diagnosis of the strenghts, the opportunities they got from outside and the threats of the region. This gave them a more positive, but still realistic overview of the situation. We think this method is a good example to use in communities in Western Europe, like for example in the River District. To stress not only on problems but also on possibilities and strenghts can give more trust and positive energy to people.

If we take in consideration this example we think that the traditional relationship between the community worker and the people of the community as an expert-outsider relationship can no longer be valid. But what does that mean? Does it mean that there are no experts at all? Does it mean that experts have no function or that everyone can be seen as an expert? We think we can find inspiration for a good filling in of this relationship in what J. Vandenabeele (unpublished document) writes about it.

Traditionally, experts are seen as people who think rationally and linearly. They define a problem, pose a goal and undertake certain steps to solve the problem. And then it's finished. They use a technical model of producing knowledge and solving problems. Outsiders often need a translation of the knowledge of experts to make it useful for their concrete problems.

Vandenabeele says that this technical, rational way of thinking and acting should be replaced by a more participative model. She develops four theses about a new relationship between experts and outsiders.

A first thesis is that educators, experts should organize communication between the different actors. Experts become more facilitators than educators.

Secondly, she stresses that in the relation between experts and outsiders, not only the validity of scientific knowledge is involved, but also the reciprocal image-building of the two parties. The question is not only: 'which definition is the right one', but also 'who's definition is the right one'. This image- and identity-building is an important aspect of the relation between experts and outsiders. If outsiders, or people of a community are (maybe implicitly) defined by the community worker as dumb and not understanding what's really going on, their analyses of reality will never be taken in account and outsiders will never believe in their own capacities.

In a third thesis Vandenabeele says that the most important influence of an expert is no longer his capacity to predict and to control reality, but his capacity and willingness to help in the process of construction of reality. A concrete, real situation of a certain community is not a given, but a social construction. This is not an objective reality with a predictable linear process, but a dynamic construction of men.

Finally knowledge can only be constructed by communicating with all people who are involved in a concrete situation. This presupposes a recognition of all people as competent actors. In fact all actors, all outsiders, all people on the street can be seen as experts in their own situation. They know and feel the problems they have to deal with, they feel strong or weak relationships, they experience what pressure from outside really means...

Taking this into consideration, what can be the role of the expert, of the community worker in particular? If everyone has expert knowledge based on his own experiences, what can be the surplus value of a scientific expert?

We think we can find an answer in the discription of experiential learning of Kolb.

Kolb describes experiential learning as a cyclic process of concrete experience, observation and reflection, generalisation and abstract conceptualisation and active experimentation. This active experimentation forms again a concrete experience,...

We think the role of the expert can be to help with the generalisation and abstract conceptualisation. Experts can help people to place their concrete experiences in a broader, more global perspective. They can help people to find links between experiences, to define more underlying, unseen factors and to integrate their concrete experiences in a meaningful frame of more global themes. A community worker is in an ideal position to help people to find links and to construct, in a close relationship with the people of the community a broader overview of concrete daily problems and challenges.

To make people make a strategic plan is quite a top-down approach: the educator arrives at River District and he wants a strategic plan for development. This of course is not neutral, for two reasons: on the one hand he wants the things to be changed ( maybe asked so by the local government), that is, he believes there are problems in River District. On the other hand, by the way the educator invites people for the strategic plan, by the way he calls it ( he must not esxactky use the name " strategic plan for River District") and by the way he proposes the project not only to the inhabitants, but also to the outside world, he will implicitly or explicitly give hints about the way he sees the things, about his ideas, about whether he sees River District as a problem or as a dynamic society/community (problem- or culture-approach). In fact, he will even give hints about whether he sees River District as a community at all. So, even if he really wants to listen to the ideas of the people, even if he really starts from the participatory idea that people have to decide about their own future, he will never completely be able to prevent his definition of the situation form being hinted ( you can compare it to a hidden curriculum of the community education). To prevent it from being hidden he should make a clear choice between for example a problem-approach or a culture-approach. We can redefine this dilemma as a choice between prevention of disembedding or stimulation of reembedding, or if you want ,a choice between a rather conservative and a rather progressive approach (note that both terms are here used in a neutral, value-free way). Of course, both approaches can be combined, but still a certain choice about the hierarchy should be made. In Ecuador the choice that was made was not really clear: first of all you can not really speak of disembedding and reembedding processes as the terms are used in a rapidly changing western society, because in this kind of rural society, things are more static. However, when we use other terms, we can speak of a certain kind of choice, as we spoke of weaknesses, threats, opportunities and strengths. In fact, Molleturo chose for a rather problem-oriented approach (plans were made with the problems as a starting point), although they tried to incorporate not only threats but also strengths and opportunities into the plan. It can be compared to some kind of culture-approach within a larger problem-approach. Development was thus seen as working at the problems, but at least partly using the strengths of the region and its people.

Returning to River District , the question can be asked whether the same kind of approach for development can be fruitful or not. In fact, a problem-approach can have the disadvantage of labelling and stigmatizing the District or some (or all) of his inhabitants, depending on how problems are formulated. In fact this is the creation of a new problem (another hidden agenda). That is, only the mere fact of living in River District, gives the association of problems, and to a certain (maybe extreme) extent, even finding a new job can be hindered in this way. Who wants employees from a neighbourhood full of troubles? They might just bring some of these problems to the workfloor… . And… who wants to live in such a neigbourhood except from people who have no choice… .

In Ecuador this stigmatization problem was not of such a big importance. First of all, almost the whole country has got lots of problems, and secondly the interaction –through which stigmatization takes place- between this kind of a remote rural area and other regions is very little. In fact, hte fact that people work on their development in Molleturo, gives them a rather positive label if there is any labelling at all.

Back to River District, an approach which focusses more on culture, and which promotes reembedding will at least prevent stigmatization.

Still to work on:

But=problems can be forgotten

Examples of both approaches

The question is, what do you see as development