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PYC3716 (III)

CONTENTS Page

Preface iv 1 Welcome to the PYC3716 module iv 2 The purpose of the module iv3 Learning outcomes iv4 Keywords iv5 Format of the module v6 Framework of the module v7 How to get started vi

Activity 1: Before you volunteer, think about other possibilities 1Activity 2: Why would you volunteer? 4Activity 3: What motivates people to volunteer? 9Activity 4: Your community as a space for volunteering 12Activity 5: Shortlist organisations 15Activity 6: Contracting 17Activity 7: Reflect on participant observation 20Activity 8: Reflect on the organisation 22Activity 9: Reflect on Community Psychology 24Activity 10: Reporting 27

Concluding remarks 29References 30Appendix A: Letter to the organisation 31Appendix B: Volunteer contract 32Appendix C: Additional accounts of volunteering and community engagement by

students, colleagues and other practitioners 33Appendix D: Stakeholder analysis matrix 39Appendix E: Principles of Community Psychology 40

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PREFACE

PREFACE

1 WelcomeYou are probably already familiar with this module’s twin sisters: Re-imagining Community (PYC2604) (offered up to 2017) and Community Psychology: Building Foundations (PYC2614) (offered from 2018 onwards). If you are, you probably have a fairly good idea of what to expect from this module. If not, we suggest that you click on the Additional Resources option on myUnisa to access and read the second-year study material.

In this module we will be inviting you to create your own understandings and, in this regard, we encourage you to engage in open-ended, creative exploration, rather than worrying about giving “correct answers”.

2 Purpose of the moduleThe purpose of this module is for you to gain an understanding of working for change through community organisations. We will guide you towards an under-standing of community psychology interventions; you will also learn how to negoti-ate entry into and involvement in a community organisation, non-governmental organisation (NGO), non-profit organisation (NPO) or community-based organi-sation – or any group that renders a service to a community. We will ask you to do many small things in this module, all of which will be in the context of two big things: The first is to join an organisation as a volunteer; the second is to create a portfolio to record everything that you learn during the course of the module.

3 Learning outcomes

Outcome 1: Analyse key challenges and opportunities in volunteer work.

Outcome 2: Contract with a community organisation as a volunteer.

Outcome 3: Report on a community organisation and your personal experiences as a participant observer in that organisation.

4 Keywords

volunteering; Community Psychology; community engagement; decoloniality; principles of Community Psychology; organisations

“Volunteering is the ultimate exercise in democracy. You vote in elections once a year, but when you volunteer, you vote every day about the kind of community you want to live in.” Unknown

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Preface

5 Format of the moduleThis module involves a series of activities and assignments, all of which are aimed at helping you to compile a portfolio. You will submit a portfolio of evi-dence, which serves as final proof of what you have learnt about volunteering and about intervention strategies in communities. As you work through each of the activities below, you will be generating bits and pieces of material that you can include in your final portfolio. So don’t wait until the last moment to try and quickly put together your portfolio! You need to work systematically through all the activities below, knowing that in the process you are generating everything you will need for your final portfolio.

Each activity consists of three parts, namely ‘get involved’, ‘create’ and ‘get feedback’.

Icon Description

Get involved. Find out and experience things, for example by searching the internet, going “walkabout”, joining an organisation, reading a journal article or watching a video.

Create. Produce some kind of reflection on what you have just done. Examples are writing a short (or long) review of an article that you have read, drawing a map, answering multiple-choice questions on a reading, rating an online resource, making a photo collage, providing a list of links following an internet search, drawing up a bibliography, and so on.

Get feedback. For some activities, you will be required to provide your own feedback by looking back at what you have produced and considering how it could be improved. Reflecting on your work is not only an effective study strategy, but one of the main principles of Community Psychology. In some cases, you will receive ready-made feedback in the form of model answers that we provide; in other cases, you will submit your work as an assignment and will receive feedback on that.

6 Framework of the moduleThis is a hands-on module. Your learning will come not only from reading, but also from becoming personally involved as a volunteer. The first series of activities included in the module will assist you in getting started on the process of being a volunteer. We will ask you to do the following:

• Consider what you already know. • Read up on the process of volunteering. • Interpret your own experience in terms of what you have read.

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PREFACE

Before we begin, a quick note about being messy: As you might already have discovered in your studies and in getting involved with volunteering and other com-munity projects, things can very quickly get messy. For us, messy is good. It is an important part of the experiential learning process. If you produce a big, messy tangle of writings, diagrams, drawings, photographs, newspaper clippings and links to online materials, such as videos and articles, it is a sign that you are really serious about creating your own understanding of Community Psychology intervention strategies. It also shows your appreciation for the fact that change is a richly complex, contradictory and confusing phenomenon. We would rather that you go away from this module thinking “Wow! Getting involved and changing things is a lot more complicated than I thought!”, than that you go away with some neat, clean and all-encompassing (and maybe even dangerous) theory that claims to explain every aspect of the change process.

7 How to get startedThe first thing you should do is to read through the entire study guide. This will give you an idea of what is expected of you and how much time you will need to complete all the activities. You will see that there are ten activities. For each activity, estimate how long you think it will take to complete it and then block out that amount of time in your diary for this purpose.

SO, LET’S GET STARTED!

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Activity 1Before you volunteer, think about other possibilities

You will notice that we have used the get involved icon here, which means that you have to engage with something – in this case, Keneilwe’s story. Read the story about the founding of the Tsogang Re Direng Youth Foundation by Keneilwe Mahuma.

Keneilwe’s storyKeneilwe, which means “Given”, is a proud rural girl with big dreams and multiple talents, the founder of Tsogang Re Direng Youth Foundation.Tsogang Re Direng Youth Foundation is an NPO which means “lets wake up and work together to bring change and promote the lives of the learners growing up in the remote rural areas”. The organisation started as an idea after I enrolled for my third year modules and the inspiration came while I was doing an assignment in one of the modules, Community Psychology. The assignment asked us to imagine starting a large scale programme to combat a problem in our communities, and that’s when I asked myself: “Why can’t I do my programme practically and register a community devel-opment programme?” People in the remote rural areas are economically challenged and nowadays teenagers, both boys and girls, involve them-selves in transactional relationships with older men and women. A transac-tional relationship is a situation whereby a person gets into a relationship with an older person for beneficial purposes, For example the teenagers date older people knowing that after having sex with them they will give them money. Research shows that numerous young people struggle with basic human needs which in turn affect their academic progress. While academic progress is pertinent in the success and positive future for the young generation, it is our belief that we need to employ a holistic ap-proach in assisting our learners. We work from the premise that as civil society we each need to play a role in assisting the government with its various tasks, one of them being provision of good quality education within a conducive environment. We as Tsogang Re Direng Youth Foundation then decided to voluntarily render the following services to learners going to schools in the remote rural areas: Donation of toiletries including sani-tary towels for girls; life coaching; career guidance and raising funds for their educational tours. We intend to start working with primary schools, because a wise author once said: “In order to bring change you must start working with the children”.For more information about the organisation, to donate or for support, you may contact Keneilwe at keneilwemahuma@gmail.com.

AcknowledgementKeneilwe’s story was first published in the 2016 M & D Newsletter of the Department of Psychology at Unisa, volume 5, number 4.

Here we have used the create icon, which means that you have to create something. In this case, we want you to create the following: Consider what type of project you might like to start (either something like Keneilwe’s or maybe something completely different). Write a short paragraph explaining what the project would entail. Now write brief notes (one or two short paragraphs) on what resources would be needed to get your project off the ground. By resources,

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we mean anything that might be needed, including things such as time, money and passion. Then consider the time between now and the end of the module and think of what resources are available to you in that time. Do you have the personal qualities, time and money to start up a whole new project, such as Keneilwe’s project?

When we say “do something”, we really mean it …You may be tempted to skip over actually producing the bits and pieces of written and visual material that we ask you to produce. There are two very good reasons why you should resist this temptation:1. Actually writing something down or making some visual representation of

it, rather than just thinking about it, helps you to process the material so that you fully understand it.

2. Whatever you create can be included in your portfolio, which is the final and most important way in which you will be assessed in this module. Don’t try to create a portfolio from scratch just before the end of the module. Rather complete each of the small tasks now so that when you reach the end of the module, most of the work has already been done.

Whenever you produce something, we urge you to add at least a few en-tries (maybe just a few sentences or pictures or links to online documents and spaces) to the portfolio – as a sign that everything really begins and ends with your own knowledge. It will also help you to break the ice in get-ting started with your portfolio.From now on, think of your portfolio as a shoebox in which you can put all sorts of interesting bits and pieces – writing, pictures and whatever else. You will have time later to organise everything you have collected into a more coherent story about what you have learnt in this module.

Here we have used the feedback icon. One way of getting feedback is simply to look at other students’ products so that you can get an idea of how different or similar your work is to theirs. This activity does not have just one correct answer, so don’t worry if your response is different from other students’. Nevertheless, it is useful to consider some other people’s responses. Start by having a look at the example box below. Then go to the Additional Resources option on the myUnisa page to see if there are additional examples of how others responded to this activity.

Example Box

For some activities, we will provide you with examples of how some stu-dents and lecturers have responded to the activity. These examples are there to inspire you and get your creative juices flowing. You do not have to structure your own response in the same way as in the examples – do what works for you! Here is our first example.

Errolyn Long’s response to the activity

I have identified about six resources that I would need to get a project such as Keneilwe’s off the ground. The first resource would be to have an inter-est or passion in the community or social issues. It would not help getting involved in a project if there is no personal interest in wanting to make a positive change. The second resource would be access to information.

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This could be accessed through the internet or library and would assist in gaining information on what organisations or institutes do work in what I have an interest in. The third resource is networking with others. This may include networking with people in the area of interest (this would include organisations/institutes and NGO’s) or those who may contain valuable in-sight into practical aspects that are indirectly related to my area of interest. For example, knowing someone who is efficient at bookkeeping might not necessarily know anything about my area of interest but could assist me should I have any financial aspects regarding the kind of work I wish to do. In addition, networking would help me to build a database of people with unique skills.The fourth resource is time. It is important to have an idea of how much time I would have dedicated to doing volunteer work. In addition, by doing volunteer work would help me to gain insight and experience into the mat-ters of the community.The fifth resource is financial. It is important to attempt in doing tasks that require very little money. Initiatives such as fundraising could alleviate some of the financial burdens. Requesting for donations at various organi-sation and institutes could also be helpful. Once there are outputs to show for the work done then one could consider asking for money from busi-nesses, grant foundations, and governments. The sixth resource would be emotional support. Sometimes doing volunteer work and trying to under-stand community processes can be overwhelming, especially if you are trying to find sustainable ways of bringing about change. It would be helpful to find a mentor to debrief to and to assist with putting one’s thoughts into practice. In addition, when interacting with members of the community or other volunteers, it would be helpful to refer them to professionals should there be a need for it.

Would you like to see some more examples? For some activities, we have up-loaded additional examples on the module’s myUnisa page. Have a look under Additional Resources to see what is available.

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ACTIVITY 2

Activity 2Why would you volunteer?Starting something from scratch can be really exciting and rewarding. However, it is not always the best course of action. From the previous activity, you will already have gathered that you need to consider carefully whether the neces-sary resources are available in order to make starting a new project a practical proposition. If, like Keneilwe, you have the courage and the resources to start something new, we encourage you to do so. However, for this module, we do not want you to start something new; instead, we want you to volunteer with an existing organisation or group.

But what if I want to start something new?You are welcome to do so! However, for this module we want you to have the experience of volunteering with an existing initiative.If, in your own time, you decide to start something new, please do consider the following two issues first:1. Do you have the resources? (See activity 1.)2. Often, initiatives similar to what you want to do are already under way in

a community, so starting something new would simply duplicate what already exists. A key principle of Community Psychology is to value the positive elements in communities. Even if a project exactly like the one you have in mind does not exist yet, there may well be similar initiatives in progress.

We do not want you to make use of your experiences as an employee of an organisation or a company. We want you to join an organisation as a vol-unteer. The first thing you need to do is to understand a little bit more about volunteering and to share your understandings in your portfolio. But where will your understandings come from? We think a good starting point is always your own experiences and thoughts.

Think about what you already know about yourself as a volunteer. What kinds of volunteering have you done? What sorts of volunteering might you be interested in doing? What do you have to offer as a volunteer? What might be in it for you – feeling good about helping out, learning new skills, broadening your horizons?

Bear in mind that volunteering is not necessarily a formal activity. You may have officially joined an organisation, such as Lifeline, as a volunteer, but informally you may also have volunteered to assist with organising a church tour, for example. Sometimes people step forward as volunteers in response to natural disasters; sometimes they drift into volunteering as part of their involvement with organisa-tions such as social clubs. Many people get involved in special events, such as charity drives linked to Mandela Day (https://www.mandeladay.com/). Volunteering is diverse and multifaceted, so when you think about where and how you have volunteered in the past, don’t limit yourself. Even just signing an online petition (and encouraging your friends to sign too) could be seen as a form of volunteering.

We asked two of our colleagues at Unisa, Hugo van der Walt and Lontinah Ncha-beleng, to tell us about their volunteering experiences. Read their stories below and then think about your own experiences as a volunteer.

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Hugo’s story

1 Pug RescuePug Rescue South Africa rescues, rehabilitates, rehomes and offers sanc-tuary to pugs (a small breed of dog) in South Africa. Pug Rescue SA runs many fundraising campaigns to assist with funding the sanctuary. They are dependent on the public to support their fundraising activities and on the donations from their community. They aim to give all rescued pugs a sec-ond chance to find a happy, loving home for the rest of their lifetime. A pug in need cannot ask for help, so Pug Rescue acts as a voice for these little dogs. The reason that I am involved with this organisation is that I am also an owner of two lovely pugs and I know how hard it is to keep these little dogs in shape and healthy, since they are quite prone to various diseases. I have developed a love for this breed and felt that I needed to contribute to finding a loving home for these dogs, or at least assist the organisation financially to feed and nurture rescued pugs so that they can find a loving home. I also tend to assist in fundraising opportunities by offering labour services (selling pancakes and hotdogs during an event) so that these little creatures will be well looked after. I managed to gain access to Pug Res-cue through social media, where they explained how the community would be able to assist them in fundraising. There have been many successes throughout this process, with pugs being adopted regularly. The adop-tions are shared with the Pug Rescue community on their Facebook page, where they express gratitude to the people that were involved throughout the process. This makes me feel that I am part of the voice that speaks for these little guys.

2 Round Table community fundingDuring my first two years after high school, I was involved with the Round Table Secunda Lodge. This organisation consists of a men’s youth group that provides a platform for personal development, networking, local and international travel, community service, as well as the support of local and national charity organisations. We used to meet regularly to plan and organise functions for others and ourselves in the local community. The focus was on community service, raising funds for charitable causes, per-sonal development, as well as fun and fellowship. We thus formed a net-work of businessmen that would be able to assist the local community. The reason for my involvement was to create networks for business purposes, whereby I would be able to give back to the community in some way. We managed to raise funds for various charitable organisations, including old age homes, the SPCA, victims of crime and soup kitchens. I managed to gain access through business connections.

Lontinah’s storyIt all started when I was doing my first year at university. I volunteered at the University of Limpopo Care Centre as a peer helper. My friend recruit-ed me and I was able to join. My role was to distribute condoms among the campus residents and I also did HIV peer talks with students. These volun-teering experiences were structured and we were often supervised. I was required to sign a time sheet and be at work for at least 3 hours per day. All this happened while I was studying and I had to balance my academic work and my job.

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After graduating at the University of Limpopo, I went to Unisa to study further. While studying at Unisa, I met different people who told me about the importance of volunteering, especially if I would like to become a psychologist.

Those talks fuelled my passion to acquire more psychology-related skills while volunteering. So I went to an organisation that deals with alcohol and drug use and abuse in Polokwane. On my arrival, I met the administrator of the organisation and she promised to call me back after speaking to the manager. I waited for months and nothing happened. I think the organisa-tion was very strict about letting strangers in, but I also realised that I was restricting myself to volunteering only in the psychology sector. I probably should have viewed volunteering as a learning and helping journey, rather than using it to suit my own interests.

One of my honours degree modules at Unisa required students to volun-teer at an organisation. I took this opportunity very seriously and I used every hint provided to succeed. I managed to volunteer at the Cancer Association of South Africa (CANSA). These volunteering experiences opened my eyes to the needs and many opportunities for community service. I realised that there is so much one can do and learn when volun-teering. You may go to an organisation with certain goals in mind, but you will definitely come back with a vast knowledge and various skills. This only happens when you allow yourself that space to learn and do more.

After volunteering at CANSA, I really felt the need to help communities and be involved with organisations without limiting myself to certain skills, like I did before. Although psychology remained my passion, I told myself that my volunteering experiences would no longer be limited to psychology skills, but I would help in every organisation that allowed me the oppor-tunity to do so. Another opportunity for me to volunteer came while I was doing my Master’s Degree. As part of the Master’s course work, we were required to volunteer with organisations in the form of practical research placements. I decided to volunteer at two organisations: one was the Unisa Directorate: Counselling and Career Development (DCCD) and the other was the Inside-out Outside-in South African Corrections Interest Group. My reasons for volunteering with Unisa DCCD were more research-related, as I wanted to work as part of a team, while for Inside-out Outside-in, I was more interested in getting exposure to a mapping project and also I wanted to work independently. Every organisation was different, and even how I got involved was different. The organisational environment, the people and the atmosphere at each placement were different. All went well with each organisation, although there were some challenges. One challenge I experienced was the lack of communication and unclear rules in some organisations, especially for volunteers.

For my Master’s, volunteering opportunities presented themselves through other people and these were structured and directed by placement co-ordinators. Then a time came were I had to be at home most of the time while writing my dissertation. During this time, I felt alone, isolated and selfish because I was dedicating all my time to myself and forgetting about other people who possibly needed my time and involvement. At that stage I thought of organisations which are meaningful to me and which I could devote my time to. Orange Babies (http://orangebabies.org.za/our-organ-isation-3) came to mind and I immediately emailed them to propose that I volunteer with them.

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The organisation was prompt in responding and I was called to meet the organisation’s members soon after that. Together we sat down and wrote down the ways in which I was to become involved with the organisation, and the rest is history. I volunteered at Orange Babies for quite some time and I am pleased that I was the one who initiated this opportunity. I have never felt isolated and selfish again. As Barack Obama once said:

The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.

Just like Hugo and Lontinah, you probably already know lots of things – more than you think – about communities and the process of volunteering. You know many things because of your own life experiences, the type of work you do, your involvement as a volunteer in the past or currently, or from what you learnt while completing the second-year Community Psychology module.

Draw a stick figure with the label “WHY I VOLUNTEER” and, to the left of the figure, provide a list of reasons why you have volunteered in the past. (If you find it hard to create a stick figure on your own, you are welcome to download the template that we created for you from myUnisa.) To the right of the stick figure, provide a list of additional reasons for volunteering that you might consider in the future. People often do volunteer work because they feel passionate about particular social issues or because they have particular skills that they think could be useful.

As feedback on this activity, look at the examples of some colleagues in the boxes below and reflect on how they compare with your stick figure.

Itumeleng’s stick figure

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Lontinah’s stick figure

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Activity 3What motivates people to volunteer?Next we want you to read the article on what motivates people to volunteer by Akintola (2011). Below is a copy of the abstract. The full article is available under e-reserves. Because the article is published as an open access academic text, you can also download it directly from the URL indicated at the bottom of the abstract.

Akintola, O. (2011). What motivates people to volunteer? The case of volunteer AIDS caregivers in faith-based organizations in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Health Policy and Planning, 26, 53–62.

AbstractVolunteers are increasingly being relied upon to provide home-based care for people living with AIDS in South Africa and this presents several unique challenges specific to the HIV/AIDS context in Africa. Yet it is not clear what motivates people to volunteer as home-based caregivers. Drawing on the functional theory on volunteer motivations, this study uses data from qualitative interviews with 57 volunteer caregivers of people living with HIV/AIDS in six semi-rural South African communities to explore volunteer mo-tivations. Findings revealed complex motivations underlying volunteering in AIDS care. Consistent with functional theorizing, most of the volunteers reported having more than one motive for enrolling as volunteers. Of the 11 categories of motivations identified, those relating to altruistic concerns for others and community, employment or career benefits and a desire by the unemployed to avoid idleness were the most frequently mentioned. Volun-teers also saw volunteering as an opportunity to learn caring skills or to put their own skills to good use, for personal growth and to attract good things to themselves. A few of the volunteers were heeding a religious call, hop-ing to gain community recognition, dealing with a devastating experience of AIDS in the family or motivated for social reasons. Care organizations’ poor understanding of volunteer motives, a mismatch between organizational goals and volunteer motivations, and inadequate funding meant that volun-teers’ most pressing motives were not satisfied. This led to discontentment, resentment and attrition among volunteers. The findings have implications for home-based care policies and programmes, suggesting the need to rethink current models using non-stipended volunteers in informal AIDS care. Information about volunteer motivations could help organizations plan recruitment messages, recruit volunteers whose motives match organi-zational goals and plan how to assist volunteers to satisfy these motives. This could reduce resentment and attrition among volunteers and improve programme sustainability.

Keywords: caregivers, caregiving, home-based care, motivation, PLWHA, volunteers, HIV/AIDShttps://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e64c/e984491909f2658f66126cdf52f-c21a81086.pdf

(1) Write down each of the motivations listed in Akintola’s (2011) article. Now decide which of all the possible motivations are most important in your case and move that to the top of the list. Decide which possible motivation is sec-ond-most important to you, and put that in the second place. Continue in this way, ranking all the possible motivations from most to least important to you.

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(2) Write two short paragraphs explaining why the first and second motivations on your list are the most important ones to you.

(3) Look back at your stick figure from the previous activity. Would you like to add some of the motivations identified by Akintola to your stick figure? Feel free to keep updating your stick figure as you read more and gain more experience about volunteering. Look at Gardiol’s example in the following example box, although you may want to do something completely different for your portfolio.

(4) Submit Assignment 01 as described in Tutorial Letter 101.

Example Box1977 Past Present 2017

Naiveté. Volunteering is what one does and the world will change for the better.

I donate my time, resources and skills that are available out of thankfulness for the privileges that I have and that others less fortunate do not. I want to share what I can.

It just has not been done well enough before and my efforts would have an impact.

When I identify an opportunity and have the means that meets that need, I willingly contribute, for example when my schedule allows I present pro bono life skills developing workshops and counselling.

I felt sorry for poor people and those I believed to be less fortu-nate than me

My free time is more limited than in the past, so I find that I make online (financial) donations much more often rather than giving of my time

I thought it was my religious duty.

Peer group pressure at univer-sity played a big role as I wanted to be accepted by my peers (as a student and as chairperson of the university’s charitable um-brella organisation

It feels to me that I had spent many decades doing mostly volunteer work; I still have the need do social uplift-ment though, hopefully in the near future I will have more time to become physically involved by giving my time and share my skills again.

Living under Apartheid made me feel a deep sense of guilt. My very first visit ever to a town-ship with black residents was in 1983. After a visit to Gugulethu I then volunteered and worked for many years only in “Black” town-ships whilst working for IDASA.

I received many compliments and appreciation; thankfulness from the people that I helped

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Skills:I am a good organiser and motivator.

I can reason, debate, read & speak well.I am practical, a problem solver.

I have access to some resources, even if I have to mobilise my network of friends to access them.

Passion:I am patient and tolerant and love working with the disabled,

the elderly and marginalised communities.

Obstacles:Thinking that I know how to do it better, differently, quicker.

At some stage I was too involved and I started neglecting my family, it was emotionally very difficult to stop some of my volunteer work.

I am not a good forward planner, I tend to do things on impulse and then have to deal with embarrassing financial or time limitations at the cost of someone else or myself. I tend to do things FOR people, only much later

did I learn to empower them and allow them to do it for themselves.

Do you think the way in which you ranked these motivations is typical of how PYC3716 students rank their motivations? As feedback on this activity, you will get information about how other students ranked their motivations. Take some time to compare your ranking with what other students did. Of course, there is no correct ranking, but it is worth considering why some things are really impor-tant to you and perhaps less important to other students. How people feel about volunteering depends, in part, on their current position in life – their age, whether they are employed or not, their cultural and religious beliefs about volunteering, and the nature of their past and current studies.

... let us remember the large numbers of citizens who, day in and day out, through acts of volunteerism large and small, bring hope to so many of the world’s disadvantaged. Let us ensure that this wonderful resource, avail-able in abundance to every nation, is recognized and supported as it works towards a more prosperous and peaceful world. — Kofi Annan

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Activity 4Your community as a space for volunteeringThere are many different types of communities, for example geographical com-munities (e.g. the neighbourhood of Soshanguve near Pretoria), communities of interest (e.g. people who are involved in environmental activism), institutional com-munities (e.g. the community of third-year Community Psychology students at Unisa), and many more. We want you to find a volunteering opportunity in your community. This could be the neighbourhood where you live, a geographical or online community of like-minded people that you belong to, or any other com-munity. We want you to get involved in two ways:

(1) To better understand your community as a space for volunteering, we want you to “go walkabout” in your community. By this we mean that we want you to take a stroll through your community. You should actually walk around your community, if it is a geographical community and if walking through it is possible for you. In particular, we want you to be on the lookout for all the groups and organisations that are active in the community. You may want to ask some friends to join you on your walkabout – not only because there is safety in numbers, but also because other people might notice interest-ing things that you overlook. Take a notebook with you and jot down things you would like to remember later. If you will be walking far, consider taking a water bottle and some snacks!

Walking can be difficultWalking is something many of us take for granted, but not everybody finds walking easy. Here are three reasons why “going walkabout” might not be easy for you:

• If you have a physical disability, walking might be a challenge. Of course, most people do have some way of ensuring mobility, so if it is at all possible for you to move around, we encourage you to move about in a way that works for you.

• Some people find themselves in environments (e.g. correctional centres) where movement is severely restricted. Again, we encourage you to move around as much as you can, without breaking any rules or trespassing on anybody’s property.

• In some communities, walking around can be dangerous, especially at night. Please look after your own safety first, but also don’t allow unrealistic fears to keep you from stepping outside your immediate comfort zone.

(2) “Going walkabout” in a community means more than just physically walking around in the community. You should also explore the community by speak-ing to people, searching for information about the community on the internet and recalling things that you already know about the community. We want you to take a fresh look at your community and to collect information about it in whatever way you can. Actively exploring our communities helps us to see things that we might never have noticed before.

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Example BoxLontinah thinking back on her walkaboutThinking of my community and the “resources” within the community in my mind I see people sitting around in groups having casual conversa-tions, children playing, CW cleaning the streets, vendors (stalikies as we call them), people coming from work, taxis, houses, taverns. In the vil-lages, there could be animals, the elderly people sitting under trees, empty spaces, crops. I am guessing that what people consciously observe in their community helps them better understand their community.

Zakhele taking notes during his walkabout • people selling products on the pavement • people driving home from work • a shopping centre • small businesses • a church • primary school • blocks of flats • retirement village • taxis

For this activity, we want you to produce something that could be useful to other people in your community, namely a booklet with details about organisations that are active in the community. Using the information that you gathered about your community, make a booklet with brief details about as many of the organisa-tions that are active in your community as possible.

For each organisation, try to provide the following information: • the name of the organisation • its website (if it has one) • contact information (e.g. phone number and e-mail address) • a very brief description of what the organisation does • an indication of which sector(s) the organisation belongs to (consult the list of

sectors in the box below)

When making your booklet, try to be as inclusive as possible. An organisation does not have to be a formal institution with an office; it could be a small informal group of people who are trying to do some good in the community. The only types of organisation that we do not want you to include in the booklet are commercial enterprises, such as shops, gyms and restaurants.

Sectors • physical and mental health (hospitals, clinics, support groups, counselling centres) • education and recreation (schools, sports clubs, colleges, universities,

theatre clubs) • caregiving (old age homes, frail care centres, orphanages, youth care,

child development initiatives, feeding schemes) • safety and security (police, correctional institutions, neighbourhood watches) • housing and municipal services (municipalities, housing activist groups) • religion and spirituality (churches, church choirs, youth religious

organisations) • environment (nature conservation, animal welfare, anti-pollution initiatives,

recycling) • other

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ACTIVITY 4

Three frequently asked questions about this activity

• What if there are thousands of organisations in my community?We understand that, depending on what kind of community you select, it may be an impossible task to collect information about all the organi-sations in the community. We suggest that you stop if the number of organisations becomes more than 50 or so, and just add a little informa-tion to the end of your booklet telling people how they might go about finding more organisations in the community.

• What if there are no organisations in my community?Sometimes students select interesting communities that are not neces-sarily geographical, for example the community of hip hop artists and supporters in South Africa. If you choose a community like that, we suggest that you get creative with this activity and make a booklet that lists some other components of your community, such as stakeholder groups, sub-organisations or subdivisions. Just try to create a booklet that would be useful to a newcomer to the community.

• How am I supposed to make a booklet?It is up to you. Your booklet could simply be a Word or Adobe PDF document or a website, or you could try to make something physical by printing it out and binding it. Just bear in mind that whatever you do, you will have to find some way of including it in your final portfolio.

How many volunteers are there?According to Swilling and Russell (2002), the number of people involved in volunteer work in South Africa is well above the international average. According to them nearly 1.5 million volunteers work for non-profit organi-sations (NPOs) in this country. They estimated that this is the equivalent of 316 991 full-time jobs, making up 49% of the workforce in the NPO sector.Swilling, M & Russell, B. (2002). The size and scope of the non-profit sector in South Africa. School for Public and Development Management, University of the Witwatersrand.

For this activity, we want you to get feedback from community members. Show your booklet to one or more people in the community and get their feedback on two aspects:

(1) Do they have any suggestions for additional organisations that should be included or for changes to the information about any of the organisations?

(2) Do they have any suggestions for improving the format or appearance of the booklet? (Remember that whenever you get feedback, you can include it in your portfolio.)

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Activity 5Shortlist organisations

“Whatever community organization, whether it’s a women’s organization, or fighting for racial justice … you will get satisfaction out of doing something to give back to the community that you never get in any other way.” — Ruth Bader Ginsburg

You may recall from previous Community Psychology modules that one of the key principles of Community Psychology is to focus on assets, strengths and re-sources in communities, rather than only on problems. The booklet that you made for the previous activity can be seen as a catalogue of such community assets and resources. The question now is how you can cooperate with these positive forces in your community to help work for change. You also need to consider who you are, including your interests, passions, skills and resources. So, in addition to engaging with your community booklet, you also need to have another look at the stick figure that you created in activities 2 and 3. Which of the organisations in your booklet best match your personal preferences and strengths as a volun-teer? You will also need to consider practicalities, such as if the organisation is nearby and how much time you have available for volunteering.

Make a shortlist of each of the organisations at which you would consider vol-unteering. This list will consist of a subset of the organisations in your booklet – approximately three to ten organisations. Put the organisation at which you would most like to volunteer at the top of the list. You are also welcome to add organisations (perhaps organisations in a neighbouring community) to your short-list, in other words, those that you did not include in the booklet. In most cases, students find that they end up volunteering at one of the organisations mentioned in their booklet, but we do not want to limit you – you can include any community organisation (excluding commercial enterprises) in your shortlist of organisations at which you would like to volunteer.

Narrowing down our choices in life isn’t always a simple process. Therefore, it is useful to “scope the field” to get a sense of what is available and what the “landscape” of possibilities looks like. However, frequently people end up mak-ing choices for other reasons, such as their past history or previous contact with particular people. And sometimes those choices turn out well. Read the account by one of our colleagues, Itumeleng Masisi, about how she ended up choosing a particular organisation to volunteer at. How does this compare with your process of narrowing down your choices?

Example Box

How I be came involved in volunteering in different organisationsby Itumeleng MasisiI never formally “scoped” the field of possible places for volunteer work. In my case the organisations that I chose emerged organically from various aspects of my life.

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ACTIVITY 5

• Emmanuel Christian church In my church I have been involved in many activities, some being once-off while others are continuous. I volunteer in different activities because I am a member of the church. Tsogang Re Direng Youth Foundation In this organisation, I was approached by the founder to become the co-ordinator of the organisation. Though this did not involve a formal entry process, I regard the nature of my involvement to be formal and structured.

• Commonwealth Youth Peace Ambassadors Network I volunteered in this programme because of my passion for working with young people and the issues facing our generation. The programme was introduced by a friend and did not require any formal process of joining.

• Itsoseng Clinic This was my first formal volunteer opportunity which also related to my studies. I got connected to the organisation through a school conference. I performed administrative work and also had the opportunity to translate counselling sessions between children (clients) and the psychologist.

• Unisa Directorate of Counselling and Career Development This opportunity was offered to students of Psychology who wanted to gain experience while helping fellow students with their studies and their careers.

There are other volunteer opportunities that I identified in my community and surrounding areas but could not be involved in. Some I could not join due to the requirements of the organisation, in other cases I did not have sufficient free time available.

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Activity 6ContractingFor this activity, we want you to approach one or more organisations and to ar-range with one of them to work as a volunteer. But before you start approaching organisations, first read the boxes entitled “Finding a way in” and “Establishing a working relationship”. This will give you some idea of how to go about engaging with people in organisations. Begin with the organisation at the top of your list. Do it now! We know that making “cold calls” (i.e. approaching people that you don’t know) can be daunting, but the sooner you get started, the sooner it will be done. This activity will be completed only once you have been formally accepted as a volunteer in an organisation. You should complete the contract form (see Appendix B) and a representative of the organisation should sign it.

Finding a way inOrganisations are a bit like countries – they have borders, and sometimes they make it quite difficult for people to get in and out. Do not expect to arrive at an organisation’s doorstep and to find a welcoming committee waiting for you. There are three things that you can do to make it past the first obstacles to entry that you may encounter:1 Find out as much as possible about the organisation before you approach

them so that you have an idea of what they are about, how they do things, and what their organisational structure is like. Pay particular attention to possible opportunities for volunteering. Some organisations will have a formal volunteering structure in place, but most will not.

2 Figure out who the best person is to approach and what the best way is to contact that person. Sometimes a phone call could be good, sometimes an email, and in some cases personally meeting somebody can also work. Don’t expect to meet the most important and powerful person – rather look for somebody who seems to be a “gatekeeper” who can let you in.

3 Get your story straight. Be clear what it is that you have to offer and what you are hoping to get from the organisation. You need to be able to explain this very briefly and clearly. Be aware that the first thing that people are likely to think about is not how much you will be able to help them, but how much extra work they may have to do to find a place for you. Once you have made the first contact and received a moderate or very positive response, you may be able to set up a longer meeting to discuss the details of mutual expectations (see the box on establishing a working relationship). At the first or second meeting, you should also show or hand over the letter from the Unisa Department of Psychology that is included as Appendix A to this study guide.

Establishing a working relationshipBringing about change (in yourself or in the world) usually involves working together with other people. We have found a classic model of how to work together, which was first developed in the field of counselling psychology, very useful. In the 1970s and 1980s, a famous psychologist, Edward Bor-din (1983), developed a model of how to establish and maintain a working alliance in a variety of contexts, such as psychotherapy, clinical supervision and consultation. It has since been applied to many more types of collabo-rative relationships, including volunteering.

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ACTIVITY 6

To work with somebody you need a contract that specifies what your mu-tual expectations and obligations are. In some contexts, such as being an employee, there really is a formal, legal contract that everybody has to sign and commit to. This may be the case where you volunteer, but more likely the agreement will be more informal. In such a scenario, Bordin’s concept of a good working alliance becomes especially important. A working alli-ance depends on three things:

1 Goals. If the parties involved have different ideas about what they are trying to achieve, things will go wrong. Try to be as clear as possible about what you can offer and do not over-promise. You are not a psychologist and should not pretend to be able to do the types of things that only qualified and registered psychologists are able to do. You probably also don’t have all the time in the world. Given your skills and resources, what types of goals can you realistically commit to? You should also try to understand as clearly as possible what the organisation thinks might be achieved by having you there.

2 Tasks. A working alliance also functions best if the parties involved agree on how the goals are to be achieved. What are the tasks that you can perform for the organisation and that they can reasonably expect from you? Don’t be too ambitious. Your purpose is to understand more about volunteering and about organisations and you can do that equally well whether you are expected to do filing or to manage a large project. It is likely that at the beginning, neither the organisation nor you will have a very clear idea of the tasks, but you should work towards increasing clarity about this for as long as you are at the organisation.

3 Bonds. Bonds are emotional connections. They often arise out of shared experiences and working together. There probably won’t be a strong sense of connection between you and the people you meet at the organisation right from the start, but this is something to work on and nurture from the outset. People who work together are able to do so because they feel emotionally connected – they like each other, care for each other, and have a mutual feeling of trust.

Bordin, ES. (1983). A working alliance based model of supervision. The Counseling Psychologist, 11(1), 35–42.

Write a report about your experiences in approaching organisations. We sug-gest that you structure your report as follows: for each of the organisations that you contacted, briefly describe what the organisation does and how things went when you contacted them. Then, for each organisation, provide a brief reflec-tion on the working relationship (goals, tasks and bonds) that you managed to establish. The three elements of a working relationship are present to some extent in even the briefest of encounters. Don’t feel that you have to portray the encounter as extremely positive – if, for example, you felt that the encounter was too brief to establish much of an emotional connection, then say so and perhaps reflect on how the bond could be deepened, should the relationship continue. If you approached only a single organisation, that is also fine. If you sent e-mails to some organisations, but never received a reply, put that in your report as well. We are interested in the good, the bad, and the ugly (and the beautiful!) of your first steps in becoming a volunteer – whatever that entailed. Submit your report as an official assignment (see Tutorial Letter 101 for details).

You will receive feedback on your report from the teaching team. We will con-centrate on providing suggestions on how you can use the material you collected for your portfolio.

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How volunteering differs from employmentAs a volunteer, you will be working for an organisation, but it is important to remember that you are not a paid employee. Farmer and Fedor (1999) identify a range of ways in which volunteering resembles – but also differs from – employment. The following three differences stood out for us, but you are welcome to find the article and read it for yourself, should you be interested.1 Volunteering is time-limited to a greater extent than employment, so right

from the start you should think about how much time you can invest. For example, you may only be able to volunteer for three months and only on Saturday mornings. You should also make sure that the people in the organisation know what your time constraints are, so that they won’t be surprised that you are not there all the time or if you leave the organisation after, for example, three months.

2 There is greater role uncertainty among volunteers than among employees, meaning that people in the organisation are often not very clear on what they expect of volunteers and that volunteers consequently also don’t always know what they are supposed to be doing. So prepare yourself to live with some uncertainty and try to contribute as best you can.

3 It is more difficult for organisations to discipline volunteers because there usually is no formal employment contract and the volunteer is not dependent on the organisation for an income. Try not to abuse this situation and to give your best, regardless.

Source: Farmer, M & Fedor, DB. (1999). Volunteer participation and withdrawal: A psychological contract perspective on role of expectations and organizational support. Nonprofit Management & Leadership, 9(4), 349-367.

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ACTIVITY 7

Activity 7Reflect on participant observation

Activities 7, 8, 9 and 10 require that you engage fully with being a volunteer in an organisation – you should participate, observe, analyse and report. As both a volunteer in the organisation and a Community Psychology student at Unisa, you have two roles in the organisation – you are both a participant and an observer. The organisation expects you to participate in its work and to make a contribution, and this should be your priority as a good citizen and a reliable person. Unisa, in turn, expects you to observe, analyse and report on your experiences in the organisation, and this should be your priority as a student.

As a first step, we would like you to engage in and think about the process of participant observation. Take your lead from your supervisors and colleagues in the organisation and participate as fully as possible in whatever capacity you are required to. At the same time, try to take some notes about what transpires. Some students find it useful to keep a notebook (either a traditional notebook or using a cellphone/tablet) to jot down what they see and hear and what their thoughts are. Others find carrying around a notebook to be too intrusive, because it sometimes bothers the people you are working with and can also distract your attention from the task at hand. If you don’t keep a notebook, then at least keep a diary in which you write down your observations and impressions after every occasion when you have spent time at the organisation. In addition to engaging with the organisation, we also want you to engage with an academic reading, namely Kawulich’s (2005) article about participant observation as a data collec-tion method (see the box about the article for details). The full article is available under e-reserves.

Participant observation as a data collection method

Kawulich, BB. (2005). Participant observation as a data collection method. Forum: Qualitative Research, 6(2), Art 43.

Abstract: Observation, particularly participant observation, has been used in a variety of disciplines as a tool for collecting data about people, processes, and cultures in qualitative research. This paper provides a look at various definitions of participant observation, the history of its use, the purposes for which it is used, the stances of the observer, and when, what, and how to observe. Information on keeping field notes and writing them up is also discussed, along with some exercises for teaching observation techniques to researchers-in-training.

Keywords: participant observation, qualitative research methods, field notes

Retrieved from http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/466/996

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Write a short essay (maximum three pages) in which you describe your experi-ences as a participant observer, making use of the article by Kawulich. You could, for example, say how your experience relates to what Kawulich has to say about “stances” of the observer, whether you found the tips for collecting data helpful, and so on. You do not have to refer to everything in the article – choose what seems most useful to you. Don’t summarise any part of the article; your task is to show how you were able to make use of the article to better understand your experience. Bear in mind that this is not a research methodology module, so we are not that concerned with “correct” implementation of particular methodologies. Rather, we would like you to make use of ideas from the world of participant ob-servation to help you gain an experience-based understanding of the organisation and your role in it. Finally, you do not have to agree with everything in the article – it might be that you end up with a rather different understanding of participant observation than the one presented in the article.

Feedback on this activity consists of a model essay that we wrote and which you can compare with your essay to see how you might have done better. The model essay is not available on myUnisa, as we do not want you to read it before writing your own essay. Instead, we ask that you e-mail your essay to the email address listed on my Unisa and we will send you the model essay in reply.

VERY IMPORTANT(1) The subject line of your e-mail message should be: PYC3716 send model

essay please.(2) You should attach a copy of your essay (in MS Word or PDF format). If your

e-mail message has a different subject line (or no subject line), or if you do not attach your essay, you won’t receive the model essay in return.

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ACTIVITY 8

Activity 8Reflect on the organisationIn the previous activity we asked you to reflect on the process of being a par-ticipant observer. In this activity we would like you to reflect on the organisation itself. Reflecting on the organisation should start as soon as you get involved with the organisation and should continue until your engagement/association ends. So don’t leave this task until the last minute. Start working on it as soon as you can. You can reflect on the organisation in any way that makes sense to you, but we recommend that you make use of the following three perspectives: the organisation’s basic structure and function; the organisation’s stakeholders; and intervention models. We provide more details of these perspectives below.

For this activity, we want you to create a “picture” of the organisation. By this we mean that you must give an interesting and appreciative description of what the organisation is like. Feel free to include graphic material of any kind, such as brochures, photographs and maps (but if you make use of photographs, please be sure to get people’s permission to use them). We have not set a page limit for this activity – we have left that up to you. Remember that whatever you do can go into your portfolio. We suggest the following structure for your “picture”:

(1) The organisation’s basic structure and function – Provide basic infor-mation about the organisation, such as where it is located (if it has a physi-cal address), how many people are involved and how long it has been in existence. Explain what issue, problem or cause the organisation focuses on. How does the organisation define the problem, issue or cause? Some organisations have a very clear-cut idea of what they are trying to change or support; others have a broader focus. Also provide some historical/social/political/economic background on the organisation and what it is trying to achieve. How does the organisation’s focus relate to other social issues? What does the organisation actually do? Some organisations have a very simple and clear-cut strategy for trying to bring about change; others try to do many things at the same time.

(2) The organisation’s stakeholders – Organisations do not consist only of the people who formally work for them (or who volunteer for them); they also depend on a network of internal and external stakeholders who have “invested” in the organisation’s activities. Who are the stakeholders of your organisation? It is useful to read up on stakeholder analysis before attempting to do a stakeholder analysis yourself. You are welcome to find and read any literature on stakeholder analysis, but to make things easier for you, we sug-gest you start by reading the short basic introduction provided by GroupMap at https://www.groupmap.com/map-templates/stakeholder-analysis/. You are also welcome to make use of their online tool, but personally we find the stakeholder analysis matrix provided by tools4dev more useful. There is a copy of the matrix available as Appendix D and under Additional Resources on myUnisa, which you can download. You will see that the second and third columns in the matrix are “impact” and “influence”. These two factors are commonly considered in most types of stakeholder analysis, but the remaining columns in the tools4dev matrix help you to create a fine-grained picture of the stakeholders and their roles.

(3) Intervention models – As you know, Community Psychology practitioners have done a great deal of thinking and theorising about how organisations might bring about change. You are welcome to make use of any literature

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on social and organisational change processes, but we recommend that you read section 2.6 (Intervention models in community psychology) in the second-year Community Psychology Unisa study guide (PYC2614). The study guide is available under Additional Resources on the myUnisa page for this module. Try to relate what you see in and around the organisation to the theoretical material included under section 2.6 of the above-mentioned guide. The organisation may not fit neatly into any of the models, but there are sure to be certain aspects that are useful to illustrate the organisation’s functioning. The challenge here is for you to grapple with the theoretical material and to show how it can actually help us to understand people and organisations in the real world.

As feedback on your description of the organisation, we provide a range of con-tributions by students and colleagues under Additional Resources on myUnisa. We hope that this will give you some idea of the possibilities, but please don’t think that you have to copy what they have done. Let your creative juices flow!

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ACTIVITY 9

Activity 9Reflect on Community PsychologyIn studying this module, you have become part of an organisation, but you have also been engaging in a wider process of becoming part of the community of (emerging) Community Psychology practitioners and scholars. As a student, you may have seen yourself mainly as a consumer of Community Psychology knowl-edge, but we would like to think that, increasingly, you will also be a producer of knowledge in our discipline. Your experience is valuable and can help to shape how the subdiscipline of Community Psychology continues to develop. For this activity, we would like you to start by getting involved with three readings. These provide a summary of the key principles of Community Psychology (adapted from another Community Psychology module) and two editorial articles on psychology and decoloniality, written by Suntosh Pillay (2016, 2017). The details of these articles are in the box below.

Three readings on Community Psychology todayWe would like you to read the following three readings. The first two (by Pil-lay) are available under e-reserves; the third is included in this study guide as Appendix E.1 Pillay, RS. (2016). Silence is violence: (Critical) psychology in an era of

Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall. South African Journal of Psychology, 46(2), 155–159

2 Pillay, RS. (2017). Cracking the fortress: Can we really decolonize psychology? South African Journal of Psychology, 47(2), 135–140.

3 Principles of Community Psychology, derived from the PYC2604 Community Psychology: Building Foundations module (see Appendix E).

For this activity, we want you to work with two lists (see the boxes below).

(1) First, have a look at the list of Community Psychology principles. Write down each principle as a heading and then write a short paragraph under the heading about how that principle applies or could apply to your experience in joining an organisation (or to the organisation itself). Try to provide exam-ples from your experience that illustrate what you have observed, but also feel free to share your more general thoughts and ideas on each principle.

(2) Next, have a look at the list of six decolonial axioms. Do the same as you did for the list of Community Psychology principles – draw on your experience in the organisation to write a paragraph in which you try to further illuminate how one could understand each axiom.

Principles of Community Psychology • empowerment

• respect for diversity

• social justice

• caring, compassion and a psychological sense of community

• risk prevention and health promotion

See Appendix E: Principles of Community Psychology

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Six decolonial axiomsCommunity Psychology, as an academic discipline and as a branch of Psy-chology, is partly a product of our colonial and apartheid past. Increasingly, there are calls to “decolonise” our society, our universities and psychology itself. After reading the two editorial articles by Pillay, think about the fol-lowing six axioms about decolonising Community Psychology. An axiom is a statement that is claimed to be true, but that is also intended as a starting point for further reasoning and argument.

• People are shaped by the history, politics, economics and culture that they grow up inHow people experience life, how they feel about themselves and others, and the things that they think are possible to achieve, vary from place to place and from time to time. Psychology should therefore be vitally concerned with understanding and participating in history and in the politics of the day. The political is personal and the personal is political. How do people in the organisation where you volunteered understand the organisation as emerging from a larger history, political context and society?

• Decolonisation happens in institutions, in relationships and in the hearts and minds of individualsWhen the colonial powers withdrew from their colonies in the Americas, Africa, Asia and elsewhere, these territories became decolonised in the sense that the colonisers relinquished state power. However, histories of oppression and of liberation are present not only in state structures, but also in the hearts and minds of people. Therefore, decolonisation needs to happen not only in respect of state structures, but also in all social institutions and relationships, and in individuals’ ways of understanding the world. We need to develop what Collins (as quoted in Pillay’s article) calls a “bad attitude” towards how things are currently arranged in terms of culture, race, class and gender. How do people in the organisation where you volunteered think about the organisation’s response to the legacy of colonialism and apartheid in terms of culture, race, class and gender?

• “Psychology” and “Community Psychology” may not be useful categoriesThe disciplines of Psychology and Community Psychology (and even the idea of academic disciplines as they occur in Western-influenced universities) are historically specific. It may be that there are better ways of organising things. Maybe what we currently call “Psychology” should actually be a part of politics. Maybe “Community Psychology” is bet-ter thought of as a branch of Development Studies. The fortress can be cracked and rebuilt in different ways. What ideas do people in the organisation where you volunteered have about what Psychology (or Community Psychology) is and how it could be useful in their context?

• Knowledge can come from many sourcesKnowledge is not the sole preserve of scientists and universities. It is possible to value and honour sources of knowledge other than tradition-al academic texts. This includes texts from the “Global South” (google this term if you aren’t familiar with it), traditional and social media, formal and informal sources of knowledge in communities, and students’ own understandings. What are the sources of knowledge that the people in the organisation where you volunteered appear to rely on and why?

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ACTIVITY 9

• Knowledge becomes known and accepted in different waysWe are sometimes told that we should take knowledge seriously only if it has been scientifically proven and published in academic journals. Science and the system of academic publication have produced much that is useful, but they also silence many other ways of knowing (and of spreading knowledge) that are also valuable. We should therefore try to develop and model an attitude of respectful listening as much as an attitude of willingness to engage in robust debate. How do people in the organisation where you volunteered go about deciding what to accept as “true knowledge”?

• Knowledge products can take many formsAcademic articles and textbooks are not the only way in which knowl-edge can be “packaged”. We should encourage and celebrate forms of knowledge production other than traditional academic writing, including in languages other than English. Examples are music, video, drawings, masks, performance art, beadwork and poetry. Of course, we should not unthinkingly accept any knowledge product as truthful or benign. The world with live in is saturated with memes, symbols, superstitions and “fake news”, and we have to chart a way through this knowledge landscape, individually and collectively. What interesting, creative, challenging “knowledge products” exist in and around the organisation where you volunteered?

You will get feedback on this activity by uploading some of what you created to an online repository and seeing what your fellow students uploaded. Select three paragraphs from what you created for this activity. Some of the paragraphs you select can be about Community Psychology principles and some can be about decolonial axioms – it is up to you. Go to an online form available on myUnisa and paste your three paragraphs into the spaces provided. You will then see a link to a document showing some of the paragraphs that have been uploaded by other students. As part of the form, we also ask for your permission to use your contribution for an online resource about Community Psychology that we are building with the help of students. You are free to accept or decline this request.

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Activity 10ReportingOn nine occasions in this module, we have asked you to get involved, to create something and then to consider the feedback. This is the final activity in which we will again ask you to do these three things, thus enabling you to experience a sense of closure. We suggest that you start by setting aside some time to reflect quietly on everything you have done and learnt while completing this module. This will prepare you for reporting to various audiences, as we will explain below. In addition to quiet reflection (getting involved with yourself), you may also want to get involved with the box in which we give you some thoughts about saying “thank you and goodbye”.

Saying “thank you and goodbye”Hopefully you will be able to stay on as a volunteer in the organisation after you have completed the module. However, if you are leaving the organisa-tion, we recommend that you find some way of bringing your experience to a close. A small farewell party (perhaps during a lunch break) may be a good idea.As part of saying “thank you and goodbye”, it is a good idea to try and share some of your understandings with other people.It is up to you whom you share your understandings with, but ideally it should be one or more people that you have been working with in the organisation. It is best to choose people that you feel comfortable with and that you can trust. But please be careful not to come across as somebody who thinks they know everything and whose task it is to point out to people where the organisation is going wrong. In our experience, it is very easy for people who care strongly about an organisation to take offence when they hear critical comments about the organisation – even if the comments are well meant. When you discuss your insights with people, be tentative (in other words open to correction) and focus as much on their contributions as on communicating your own insights. If you are unsure of your position in the organisation or if there is a lot of (open or hidden) conflict, it may be best to discuss your insights with a friend or family member outside the organisation.It is easy to criticise, but very difficult to start and maintain an organisation. So rather play a supportive role by encouraging, building up and praising, instead of criticising. And remember that you are not a psychologist or an organisational expert; you are just somebody who is developing your own understanding of what it is like to get involved in bringing about change. If you feel that there are certain things that the organisation could or should do differently, try to find a way of communicating this observation without making people feel defensive.Most students intuitively know that it is best not to come across as arrogant and critical when discussing issues that matter to others, but we thought we should mention this point anyway – just in case.Something else that is worth avoiding is boring and confusing people. As academics, we know that we are experts at “boring and confusing”, but please don’t do as we do – do as we say! You now have a wealth of knowl-edge about volunteering and organisations and may be bursting to share it with others – but it is definitely too much to share in a single sitting.

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ACTIVITY 10

So we strongly recommend that you identify just a couple of really interest-ing or useful things that you have learnt and then tell people about those few things. These points don’t have to be based on your readings; they could be things that you have learnt from your practical experience or from thinking about community organisations.The format you use to share your understandings with people in the or-ganisation is again up to you. You could just have an informal chat with one or two people that you trust. Alternatively, you could show them some pictures or diagrams or even give them a short report to read.Listen to how people in the organisation respond to what you have to say. Then use their insights to deepen your understanding.Now that you have almost completed the module, we suggest that you con-sider one last issue – what has your role been in creating new understand-ings, forging new links in the community and reinterpreting this module? How have you changed while working through the activities? If your port-folio seems very abstract and academic, this may be an opportunity to add more of yourself to it – even if only a photograph of yourself, a poem or a short reflection on experiences you personally enjoyed or found particularly difficult.

To round off your work for this module, we would like you to report on what you have learnt in three different ways:

(1) Report to the organisation and the community of which the organisation is a part. We will leave it to you to decide exactly how you go about doing this, but please do take our suggestions in the “Saying thank you and goodbye” box seriously.

(2) Report to the community of emerging Community Psychology practitioners. By this, we mean your fellow students – past, present and future. Write a one-page report providing highlights and tips from your engagement with the module. With your permission, we will place this document online so that other students can benefit from your insights. See Tutorial Letter 101 for the consent form and more details in this regard.

(3) Report to the Department of Psychology at Unisa. You do this by submit-ting your portfolio. By now you will have gathered together a large amount of material for your portfolio, so this is your opportunity to organise and finalise/polish the document. There are more details in Tutorial Letter 101 about the portfolio.

As you will be reporting to three different groups of people, you can expect three different kinds of feedback.

(1) The organisation will probably respond in some way to your report. If you report to them in the form of an oral presentation, please be sure to include opportunities for them to comment, ask questions and discuss matters raised. If you submit a written report to them, try to make an appointment with one or more key people in the organisation to get their feedback. Just be aware that people are often busy, so don’t put too much pressure on people to speak to you or to give you written feedback. Of course, whatever feedback you do get can be included in your portfolio.

(2) Feedback from the community of emerging Community Psychology prac-titioners will come in the form of access to the one-page reports that other

PYC3716 29

students produced and which you can compare with your own report. We will provide you with the link to where you can view these reports.

(3) In this module, the final/summative assessment consists of an evaluation of the portfolio, rather than an examination. Because the portfolio is the equivalent of an examination, we unfortunately cannot provide detailed feedback on it, but we will give you overall feedback and you will, of course, know what your final mark for the module is.

Concluding remarksThank you for coming on this journey with us. We hope that the various activities that we asked you to engage in were meaningful to you and that, by the end of the module, you feel that you have gained something more than abstract academic knowledge. We value your participation in this process and welcome you once again as a member of the community of emerging community psychology prac-titioners. Thank you for sharing your story with us. As a final goodbye, we invite you to read some of the stories of community engagement that other students, colleagues and practitioners have shared with us (see Appendix C).

THE PYC3716 MODULE TEAM

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REFERENCES

Akintola, O. (2011). What motivates people to volunteer? The case of volunteer AIDS caregivers in faith-based organizations in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Health Policy and Planning, 26, 53–62.

Bordin, ES. (1983). A working alliance based model of supervision. The Coun-seling Psychologist, 11(1), 35–42.

Farmer, M & Fedor, DB. (1999). Volunteer participation and withdrawal: A psy-chological contract perspective on role of expectations and organizational support. Nonprofit Management & Leadership, 9(4), 349–367.

Groupmap. Retrieved from https://www.groupmap.com/map-templates/stakeholder-analysis/

Kawulich, BB. (2005). Participant observation as a data collection method. Forum: Qualitative Research, 6(2), Art 43. Retrieved from http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/466/996

Pillay, RS. (2016). Silence is violence: (Critical) psychology in an era of Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall. South African Journal of Psychology, 46(2), 155–159.

Pillay, RS. (2017). Cracking the fortress: Can we really decolonize psychology? South African Journal of Psychology, 47(2), 135–140.

Swilling, M & Russell, B. (2002). The size and scope of the non-profit sector in South Africa. School for Public and Development Management, University of the Witwatersrand.

PYC3716 31

APPENDIX A

Letter to the Organisation

LETTER OF INTRODUCTION

Dear Madam/Sir

One of the modules presented by the Department of Psychology at Unisa is a module in Community Psychology (PYC3716). As part of their studies for this module, we suggest to students that they involve themselves in a community organisation. The experience and insight gained through their participation will assist them in meeting the requirements of the module. Such participation could also be beneficial to organisations willing to accommodate them.

We therefore request your kind assistance to students in our Department who might approach you in this regard.

Students’ participation in community organisations is subject to the following:

• The Department of Psychology is not in a position to supervise these undergraduate students and can, therefore, not be held accountable for the conduct of such students.

• Students are personally responsible for negotiating the nature, duration and extent of their involvement with your organisation. Whether the student will be informally involved on a volunteer basis or in a more formal capacity is a matter between the student and the organisation. The Department and the University cannot be party to any such agreements between students and organisations.

We believe that our students are keen and sincere in their quest for knowledge and are in a position to make a meaningful contribution to your activities. As a valued partner in higher education, you are welcome to contact me, should you require any further information.

Kind regards

Prof Eduard FourieModule leader: Community Psychology (PYC3716)

e-mail: fourime@unisa.ac.zaTel: 012 429-8523

Alternatively, you may contact the Psychology Department administrator at 012 429-8088.

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APPENDIX B

Volunteer contract

VOLUNTEER CONTRACT

This agreement is hereby made between

(hereafter referred to as “the Volunteer”) and (hereafter referred to as “the Representative of the Organisation”).

The Volunteer hereby agrees to donate his/her time, effort and services to

(name of Organisation) in a volun-teer capacity. The Volunteer understands that no compensation of any kind will be given in exchange for these services.

The Volunteer will participate in volunteer work from (start date) to (end date).

The Volunteer or the Representative of the Organisation may terminate this contract early at any time, for any reason, without penalty.

The Volunteer agrees to undergo all necessary training to perform his/her du-ties. The Volunteer and the Representative of the Organisation will come to an agreement regarding the Volunteer’s primary tasks. The Volunteer may be asked to perform other duties at any time.

The Volunteer agrees to abide by the rules and regulations of the Organisation. Failure to do so may result in termination.

The Volunteer will be held harmless, indemnified, and released, should damages or harm arise during the safe, lawful execution of his/her duties. However, should damages or harm arise due to negligence or criminal intent, the Volunteer may be subject to penalties.

Volunteer signature Organisation representative signature

Date

PYC3716 33

APPENDIX C

Additional accounts of volunteering and community engagement by students, colleagues and other practitioners

(1) Mbongiseni Mdakane’s storySomewhere deep inside ourselves resides a story … a story worthy of being told. Like so many others, I too, have a story to tell. During the past decade or so, I have become more and more consumed by the belief that the river of life pulls us in so many different directions; even though we do not have the slightest clue where we are headed! I often choose to describe this episode of my life as metamorphic because it changed and transformed my life forever. Allow me to share with you who am I and what inspired my story.

I am a by-product of the Department of Correctional Services. And having spent almost a decade in prison, I believe it is not only a personal obligation but also a social responsibility for me not only to dispel myths and stereotypes commonly associated with incarceration, but more importantly to carve inroads towards the treatment, betterment and rehabilitation of other fellow offenders. Therefore, the journey of my story is symbolic and will primarily centre around the importance of Correctional Education: specifically, the link between rehabilitation and study-ing while incarcerated.

To the extent that crime is pervasive denotes that at any one stage we are all directly/indirectly affected by actions of criminal behaviour and that this makes each and every one of us in our communities a stakeholder in the fight against crime. However, the issue surrounding confinement has become so contentious that many of us, if not all, possess some level of fundamental belief on how correctional centres should be or should not be managed. Often than not, this rhetoric usually oscillates and portrays correctional centres as either five star hotels or simply houses of terror! Nevertheless, and contrary to popular belief; if you were to ask me what prison is like, then I would tell you that a prison is a place that can either make you or break you!

You see, the irony of imprisonment is that it does not only lead to the detriment of those incarcerated, but it can also offer remarkable opportunities in terms of self and collective development. As an example, during my 10-year incarcera-tion, I was trained as a peer psychological counsellor and subsequent to this, assisted the prison’s psychological services with the facilitation of various thera-peutic programmes. These included programmes like Anger Management and Forgiveness, Sexual Orientation, Life Skills and Substance Abuse programmes. In addition to this, I also qualified as an ABET practitioner with Unisa and began my teaching career in one of the correctional centres. I went ahead and taught different learning areas at different levels at several other correctional centres.

Notwithstanding all the publicly documented inadequacies and adversities inher-ent in the corrections fraternity, for me, it simply did not make sense to sit around in the prison cell and watch my life disintegrate. It was precisely because of this that I was challenged to undertake measures to ignite my own rehabilitation through educating myself. Therefore, what started as a convenient strategy to kill time eventually laid the foundation of what was to become. Today, I am a lec-turer and a PhD candidate in the Department of Psychology at Unisa and I stand

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proud to have accomplished my Master’s Degree (cum laude). With this, I can also attest that there are other multitudes of offenders whose lives transcend the circumstances they have subjected themselves into; what we need as society is to explicitly recognise that among those imprisoned there is an immense wealth of talent and potential abilities that should not go to waste.

Because of my practical, first-hand experience with imprisonment, together with my interests around the psychology of imprisonment; in 2013, a group of Unisa students, including myself and lecturers interested in issues of corrections, co-founded what is now known as the Inside-out Outside-in South African Correc-tions Interest Group. It is also worth mentioning that subsequent to the birth of this initiative, there has been an increase in the number of Master’s and Doctoral students registered for corrections related research studies in the Department of Psychology at Unisa. Other work that we have done as an interest group include: the Mapping Corrections in South Africa Project; the Inside-out Books Project; the Fatherhood Project; the Spirtiual Dialogue Project; organising career day expositions in correctional centres; and engaging various interdisciplinary and intersectoral stakeholders by presenting our research findings at several national and international conferences.

So, why keep a healthy focus on people who have defied the law? Simply because research findings continue to show that more and more offenders are transitioning into the community today than ever before. In fact, almost all offenders detained in our correctional centres today will eventually be released into the community one day and as such, emphasis should be placed on the their development while incarcerated. Offender resocialisation is not a problem facing the Department of Correctional Services alone but a major societal responsibility to ensure that all offenders are positively developed and supported during their incarceration so that upon their release they are skilled and reformed individuals who are capable of successful reintegration as productive and law-abiding citizens. In this regard, I am grateful to Unisa for it can attest to contributing positively to the reintegration of ex-offenders by providing them with employment.

(2) Lorinda Diedericks’s story of volunteering at an institute for the visu-ally impaired

I decided to become involved in the Transoranje Institute for Special Education (Tise). After contacting and considering various organisations without success, I decided to contact the psychologist at Prinshof School for the visually impaired. During our telephonic conversation, she advised me to come in contact with Tise. I contacted the executive officer at Tise and experienced my visit very enriching and insightful. She was extremely friendly and made me feel welcome from the beginning. Due to my multiple disability (blindness and hearing impairment), it would have been difficult for me to participate fully in an organisation. Therefore, I decided on having a one-on-one conversation at an organisation.

I spent approximately two hours with the executive officer at the office of Tise in Duxbury road, Hatfield, Hillcrest. I was extremely overwhelmed when I heard that she was willing to welcome me in the organisation and to share all the important information. All my previous failed attempts of joining an organisation made me feel sceptic of finding a suitable organisation, but when I came across Tise, I was very surprised and thankful that everything worked out well. The purpose of my involvement with Tise was to observe and find out more about the organisation, their obstacles as well as successes. We discussed what Tise entails and its purpose in disabled children’s lives.

PYC3716 35

Tise was developed in 1947 by the three denomination churches as a non-profit organisation (NPO). At first its purpose was to establish a school for the deaf in the north, because at that stage the only school for the deaf was in Worcester in the Western Cape. Transoranje School for the Deaf was opened in 1954, af-ter which another four schools. However in the late ‘80’s and early ‘90’s, these schools and the buildings were handed over to the Department of Education, except for Sonitus and Transvalia who remained the property of the Institute. They rent their school buildings from the Institute costless, because they don’t have the funds to pay for the school buildings themselves. The amount of staff was reduced to only an executive officer. The Institute has a day management team who are the representatives of the founder members of Tise. The Reformed and two Dutch Reformed churches together with their church members are the biggest contributors of funds, therefore both the day management team and the executive officer have the responsibility to report how the funds are being al-located. The main task of the executive officer is to raise and mobilise funds in order to support schools financially.

Various projects include project Sonskyn, which got its name from the idea that Tise wants to bring sunshine in a child’s life. This project focuses on meeting the needs of underprivileged children in the five schools in assisting with school, hostel and transportation fees, toiletries, stationary as well as providing special assistive devices such as braille machines, hearing aids and batteries, wheelchairs etc. This project also supports academic, sport and cultural requirements. Other projects include project Volmagie which proceeds on behalf of the schools. The project’s goal is to support schools with their feeding schemes. Out of the overall total of learners, one third of the five schools host children that come from under-privileged families. A large number of day scholars receive food on a daily basis at the school and some of the schools also send food parcels to the scholars’ homes. This project is dependent on donations. The largest fundraising project is called “Casual Day” that takes place yearly on the first Friday of September. All these projects touched me in realising how privileged I am, that in spite of my disabilities, I have food, clothes and loving parents. Thus I am determined to make a monthly contribution to relevant projects.

A personal experience to how the problem Tise faced links to me personally re-fers to the period where my parents and I also had to raise funds for my cochlear implant when I became deaf in 2006 because of Usher syndrome. I can there-fore completely relate to how it feels to ask, plead and beg the public for money and being able to handle the disappointment with dignity when their answer was “no”. Through my involvement with Tise, I have learned that through God’s grace and a Christian standpoint, they still manage to raise funds in spite of economic difficulties. Hence, I share a communal viewpoint with them that there is always hope. Through my involvement with Tise I treasure the following metaphor: “In capitalism, money is the life blood of society, but charity is the soul”. This means that money is needed for success; however we should never lose our focus on charity. Our wealth is only entrusted to us to share with those in need, therefore I would like to encourage everyone to make a difference through participating in volunteering.

My impressions of Tise are positive and enriching. I value the compassion with which the executive officer, together with the relevant role players, operates to ensure that beneficiary disabled children can develop into champions so that they may enter the grown-up world with confidence.

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(3) More of Itumeleng Masisi’s experiences of volunteeringOver the years I have volunteered in various communities including churches, psychology clinics, NGOs and youth activism. There are formal and informal volunteer opportunities available in different communities. Formal volunteering opportunities often involve formal entry processes like filling out forms, going through an interview and or training before one can become a volunteer. In my experience with formal volunteering, there is often a “gatekeeper” that you have to go through, often the contact person for the organisation. In an interview with the gatekeeper, it is important to understand why you want to become a part of the organisation as a volunteer. The obstacles I have faced with this kind of vol-unteering sometimes are the expectations and requirements of the organisation or community. For example, one would be required to volunteer for certain hours on certain days only. This can be an obstacle for someone working full-time, willing to volunteer over weekends for example.

Informal volunteering often does not require a rigorous entry process, it could be a once off thing or occur from time to time. In my community, churches have informal volunteer opportunities where one can come as and when needed and offer their time or skills. Opportunities involve organizing youth events, helping in the soup kitchen, visiting shelter to paint and doing garden work etc. One other example of an informal voluntary activity is the response of community members, organisations and businesses in the recent plight caused by fires in Knysna in the Western Cape.

Involvement with a student organisation or a group of activists can fall both in formal and informal volunteering. For example, one may join a student structure registered with the University, this may require formal involvement, attending meet-ings, advocating for the needs of students, and even remuneration. One could become a member of the same group as a supporter and assist when needed.

(4) Puleng Segalo’s reflections on her communitiesI grew up with a community of women around me. The community consisted of my mother, aunts, grandmothers and neighbours who all played the mother-hood role in my life. While they were not around me all the time it always felt like they surrounded me as their teachings lingered long after spending time with them. They instilled values that contributed in shaping me as a person and my view of the world. For me community has always been a complex notion as its meaning constantly shifts, allowing for a fluid understanding of what it means to be a community or to belong to one. With this background that I carried and continue to carry, having to teach community psychology meant having to inter-rogate the definitions I was confronted with in the texts we drew from for our teaching and learning. As a sub-discipline of psychology, community psychol-ogy seeks to immerse learners/practitioners in the various facets of society and creates space for engagement with groups/organisations/communities, etc. in the quest for ways to grapple with societal issues. It moves from the individual to the social/collective. My perspective has always been a critical one pushing for the interrogation of the status quo, structural injustices and ways in which we come to know and evaluate what happens in society. I believe that students are knowers embedded in various communities where their sense of selves are coined and perspectives about the world learned. I have always wondered how sufficient are our theories (often borrowed from other contexts) in assisting us to make sense of our surroundings. Our students bring lived experiences and often the platform is not created wherein they can “teach” us based on the embodied

PYC3716 37

knowledges they carry. I was once an undergraduate student and I think back of the questions I had and how in many ways they might be similar to those my students also have. So how can I create a space where such questions could be deemed legitimate enough and be perceived as possible theories that could be adopted in our quest for “solving” our issues? I have many questions and it is these questions that force me to think about possible alternatives to how we do psychology. Community psychology should be grounded in the locales of those who practice it – blind importation of knowledge has some elements of laziness in it. This takes me back to the community of women I reflected on earlier. As I flipped (and continue to flip) through the textbook and article pages within the academic walls, I realized that the wisdom that the women who raised me have could not be found in the theories I learned. This realization forced me to go back to the base, to the carriers of knowledge, the women who raised me – to critically think about what in the academia may be deemed as “African Feminism” or “womanism”. I open myself to these multiple sources of knowledge – the ivory tower and the women groups in my community have shaped how I approach learning and teaching.

(5) Gardiol van de Venter shares her experiences as a volunteerI am from a family of religious leaders, doctors and social workers, so I grew up with community work, attending activities as a child with my Mom to raise funds, create awareness for people with disabilities, teach first aid to learners in a local school and bake a lot of pancakes to raise funds for a new vehicle to transport the elderly.

At first, I volunteered because it is what we do … Gradually I became aware of a change in myself, and I realised I volunteer because of what I altruistically get from it and much later, currently, I volunteer because I can …

The project that I would like to share with you, relates to my skills. I am a good organiser, I motivate large groups of people, I love being part of a working com-mittee, a task group, a launch, a happening … At the time, I was living in a small town and my children were involved in after school sports activities. The young-est did not enjoy sports and wanted to do something else, but there were only piano lessons and choir singing, which he also did not want to do. He enjoyed board games, so I decided to teach him how to play chess. So, in the first place, I had to identify what he wanted. Then the resources: did I have at least a basic knowledge of chess, did I have the time and patience to teach him and did we possess a chess board. Check .

He soon became a better player than I and we realised that there was no op-portunity for chess lessons. I contacted the school principal to ask if he knew of someone who can teach my son further and to my surprise and joy, the principal said he can teach him. He loved playing chess and is actually quite good at it. My son did not want to attend lessons on his own, so we invited friends to join him… and that is how it started. So, I planted a seed, I watered it, the little sap-ling was growing vigorously, I soon had to either trim it, or allow it to bloom. I did not have the resources nor the time or knowledge to teach a group of children. The next step would be to ask for assistance, share my idea, allowing others to become part of it.

I asked the school governing body if we could use a classroom twice a week for about six children. I contacted Chess South Africa and asked about donating chess sets (I have never seen chess travel sets like those ones they donated

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and was so enthused by the possibilities, that I requested 25 sets …) and they sent it to us! The chess boards were made of a sturdy vinyl cloth that could be rolled up, the chess pieces made of strong plastic and the whole set carried in a small bag with a pull-string! More teachers and parents volunteered to teach the children (1 per 5 children) and we ended up with a chess club of 25 children. The donation of 25 chess boards (resources) enabled many more than the original group of six children, to participate.

I soon became the organiser, not the teacher, as the children fared much better than I! I started to contact other schools from nearby towns to arrange tourna-ments, transport, fees, refreshments, indemnity forms and rewards like medals and certificates. This was started many years ago, and it pleased me immensely to read that, recently, two of the learners from that chess club, were included in a team attending a tournament in Spain – something I never envisaged when I invited a few of my son’s friends, just because he was too shy to go by himself.

I still have one of those travel sets, and I am inspired every time I see it, by the insight not to limit oneself to “what you cannot do” (I am not a good chess player) but to free yourself with the salutation of what you can do (I am a good organiser). The decision is often not made rationally, but by instinct or intuition. The practicalities will follow the idea. So first, start with what you enjoy doing, find someone who would want to join you; then do it. And grow it. Then share it. At the end, do not allow your own limitations to prevent the development of the project, either develop your own skills further (for instance to do fund raising or marketing of the project) and let it grow abundantly, or allow other people to join the team, share in the joy, the responsibility, the funding and the managing of a proper project.

PYC3716 39

APPENDIX D: Stakeholder analysis matrix

This template was adapted from a template developed by tools4dev and is li-censed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Stak

ehol

der

nam

eIm

pact

How

muc

h do

es

the

proj

ect a

f-fe

ct th

em?

(low

, m

ediu

m, h

igh)

Influ

ence

How

muc

h in

fluen

ce d

o th

ey

have

ove

r the

pr

ojec

t? (l

ow,

med

ium

, hig

h)

Wha

t is

im-

port

ant t

o th

e st

akeh

olde

r?

How

cou

ld th

e st

akeh

olde

r co

ntrib

ute

to

the

proj

ect?

How

cou

ld

the

stak

e-ho

lder

blo

ck

the

proj

ect?

Stra

tegy

for

enga

ging

the

stak

ehol

der

EX

AM

PLES

Nur

ses

& M

id-

wiv

es U

nion

Hig

hH

igh

Mai

ntai

n-in

g w

orki

ng

cond

ition

s fo

r nu

rses

Agre

e fo

r un

ion

mem

-be

rs to

impl

e-m

ent t

he n

ew

refo

rms

Goi

ng o

n st

rike

Mon

thly

ro

und-

tabl

e di

scus

sion

s

Sund

ay T

imes

ne

wsp

aper

Low

Hig

hG

ettin

g a

good

sto

ryPr

int s

torie

s th

at s

up-

port

the

new

re

form

s

Prin

ting

stor

ies

that

op

pose

the

new

refo

rms

Qua

r-te

rly p

ress

m

eetin

gs

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APPENDIX E

Principles of Community Psychology(Source: Study guide for Community Psychology: Building Foundations (PYC2614))

In this appendix, we will give you an overview of the principles of Community Psychology, pointing out the key factors that are associated with and underpin a Community Psychology approach to psychological practice. History reflects quite a vast amount of information that projects the unity of principles, research, and action within Community Psychology. There are a number of key principles that characterise the field of Community Psychology. These reflect the epistemological foundations and analytical concepts of Community Psychology. These principles have served as the building blocks for community research and action. The fol-lowing are some of the main principles on which Community Psychology is based.

• EmpowermentIt is important for community psychologists to take note of the political dimen-sions of human problems within a particular region or community. The process of oppression and segregation of disadvantaged groups is defined in terms of social structures and processes. It goes hand in hand with the internalised psychological experiences of the disempowerment of people in the community. Through interventions, community psychologists would apply an empower-ment framework with the aim of promoting the self-determination of community members, their democratic participation, and ensuring that power is equally shared in the community. Therefore, “empowerment” refers to the development of a personal sense of control over your life. This is also known as individual empowerment. A collective empowerment approach would also be considered, as it enables communities to act collectively for the benefit of every member of the community. Empowerment is a central principle that is used in psychology as a whole – it is both a psychological and a social process that involves both the individual and the community to which the individual belongs. This principle allows people access to resources, role relationships and participation in social and political aspects in life (Rappaport, 1977).

• Respect for diversityRespect for diversity is one of the major cornerstones of Community Psychology because it relates to the ecological perspective of community. This particular term refers to mutual respect for human diversity, as it recognises the right to be different and to respect the fact that human problems emanate from the match between an individual and the environment in which he/she lives – what is re-ferred to as the person–environment fit (Rappaport, 1977). Historically, people who have been different from the mainstream of society have been viewed as defective or deficient. Community subgroups – such as women, people of colour, the LGBTI community and people with disabilities – were subject to oppressive conditions because they were different. The role of community psychologists is therefore to challenge these cultural norms that tend to disempower subgroups in these communities and to help these subgroups to celebrate the value of be-ing different (Murray, 2004).

• Social justiceIt is important for community psychologists to be able to identify and participate in social movements that promote social justice. Community Psychology should focus on issues of inequality and be actively involved in movements of change.

PYC3716 41

Areas of inequality are mainly visible in situations such as global capitalism, where large multinational corporations accumulate global shares of power and wealth at the expense of the poor and low-level income workers. As a result, these workers tend to suffer from poor living environments, labour conditions, social and health conditions due to the ineffective distribution of resources (Prilleltensky, 2008).

• Caring, compassion and a psychological sense of communityCommunity Psychology shares the principle of caring and compassion for others with humanistic psychology. The only difference is that Community Psychology looks at the broader spectrum in that it views the concept of caring and compassion from a higher ecological level. This speaks to the psychological sense of commu-nity, which refers to the relationship between individuals and the communities to which they belong. Moreover, it refers to the feeling of belonging, as community members are important to one another. There is, therefore, a sense of shared faith in a particular community, as they are committed to one another (Duncan, Bowman, Naidoo, Pillay & Roos, 2007).

• Risk prevention and health promotionOne of the key components of intervention from a Community Psychology per-spective is prevention. This component aims to modify processes and mediate conditions that create risk for problems in a community. Risk involves social contexts that put people’s wellbeing in jeopardy. Therefore, in Community Psy-chology it would be key to implement prevention programmes in order to identify and address factors that would place people at risk (Duncan et al., 2007).

REFERENCESDuncan, N, Bowman, B, Naidoo, A, Pillay, J & Roos, V. (Eds.). (2007). Commu-

nity psychology in South Africa: Analysis, context and action. Cape Town: UCT Press.

Murray, M. (2004). Assumptions and values of community health psychology. Journal of Health Psychology, 9(2), 323–333. Retrieved from http://doi.org/10.1177/1359105304040897

Prilleltensky, I. (2008). The role of power in wellness, oppression, and liberation: The promise of psychopolitical validity. Journal of Community Psychology, 36(2), 116–136.

Rappaport, J. (1977). Community psychology: Values, research, and action. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.