Marcia Rosalie Hale (California, USA)
Peer Reviewed
Community organizing was originally intended to be the most democratic form of activism, a tool to be used to empower the marginalized and voiceless, bringing people together to work toward a common goal. While the goals of organizing activities are diverse, they can be classified within two general objectives, the first of which is resource provision and the second, transformation. This paper explores those aspects that differentiate transformative organizing from resource provision and makes the case that individuals involved in organizing must experience personal transformation before we are able to fundamentally change external structures and systems, as the structures organizers seek to change dwell within the emotional and psychological lives of us all.
Read more...Mari Yoshinaga, Yoshika Takeda, & Isami Kinoshita (Japan)
Peer Reviewed
Evaluating how participating in various experiences affects young people is important to promote further participation in community practices. We examined the effects of participation on junior-high school students’ self-efficacy and motivation towards community-improvement activities: of 114 students from a junior high school (Study 1) and 10 voluntarily participated in a park-design project (Study 2). The experience of participation even in small-scaled contributed to increasing the self-efficacy of the participants and especially enhancing their motivation with regard to community empowerment.
Read more...Rachael D. Goodman, Jessica A. Vilbas, & Reston N. Bell (USA)
Peer Reviewed
Community outreach and service learning have been shown to facilitate counseling and psychology student development. Using qualitative interviews of students participating in a local community outreach, the authors explore student development with a focus on multicultural and social justice practices. The authors discuss the implications for facilitating community outreaches based on the data from student participants.
Read more...Kate S. Chutuape, MPH, Adaline Z. Muyeed, PhD, MSc., Nancy Willard, MS, Lauren Greenberg, MPH, Jonathan M. Ellen, MD and the Adolescent Medicine Trials Network for HIV/AIDS Interventions (USA)
Peer Reviewed
Opportunities to control risk factors that contribute to HIV transmission and acquisition extend far beyond individuals and include addressing social and structural determinants of HIV risk, such as inadequate housing, poor access to healthcare and economic insecurity. The infrastructure within communities, including the policies and practices that guide institutions and organizations, should be considered crucial targets for change. This paper examines the extent to which 13 community coalitions across the U.S. and Puerto Rico were able to achieve “structural change” objectives (i.e., new or modified practices or policies) as an intermediate step toward the long-term goal of reducing HIV risk among adolescents and young adults (12-24 years old).
Read more...Jana Sladkova, PhD, Allyssa McCabe, PhD, Isabel Cano & Danielle Cole (USA)
Peer Reviewed
The present study examined personal narratives of 14 children, aged four to ten, from Spanish-speaking immigrant homes. Results show that children’s narratives were considerably less well-structured than those of Spanish-speaking or English-speaking monolingual age peers. A possible explanation is that current immigration policy, which emphasizes deportation, may influence parents behavior and their socio-economic status and interfere with their inclination to foster their children’s Spanish skills and consequently with the children’s language and literacy development.
Read more...This video of an interview of Dr Jim Kelly is an important video relating to the history of Community Psychology from someone who was part of much of that history.
Watch the videoThis video of an interview (part 2) of Dr Jim Kelly is an important video relating to the history of Community Psychology from someone who was part of much of that history.
Watch the videoThe SCRA Community Mini-Grants was founded in 2010 with the intention of supporting small, time-sensitive community-based projects that are consistent with SCRA’s mission, principles and goals. We are ecstatic about the great work being done by SCRA members and their community partners, and even happier to be able to highlight examples of this work and share them with the GJCPP readership. Below, Isidro Maya-Jariego and Daniel Holgado describe their collaborative work with Edúcame Primero Colombia, an evidence-based child labor prevention program; and provide insight into the impact that Community Mini-Grants funding had on their work in identifying lessons learned and best practices for the replication of this intervention program in Lima, Peru.
by National Civic League
The Winter 2013 issue of the National Civic Review is devoted to Healthy Cities and Healthy Communities. Edited by Tyler Norris, this issue features articles from a variety of key partners in the movement from the past 25 years.
Read more...We are pleased to bring you this last issue of Volume 5. In this issue, we have 5 peer-reviewed articles, two interviews of Jim Kelly, a special spotlight of a grantee from the SCRA Mini-Grant program, and a review of the National Civic Review on the Healthy Cities movement.