Essay On Community Mobilization

This paper examines evidence from intervention research in India and Nepal on the effectiveness of community mobilization in improving reproductive health awareness and use of services for young, married women, and in changing the social norms around youth reproductive health. We discuss the extent to which community mobilization is effective in societies where not only may service options be limited, but the social environment is an equally important barrier for young married women to access reproductive health knowledge and services. We compare community mobilization approaches to approaches that do not specifically target critical aspects of the social context of young people’s lives. Further, we analyze what specific attributes of the community mobilization approaches followed contributed to their effectiveness in accomplishing study goals.

In fact, it has a long history in various fields of development, and in community-based activism. Participatory approaches for community development aim to involve target communities in the running of projects, increase involvement of marginalized groups in community life, and engage civil society in local decision-making and wider political processes. Participatory approaches involve the use of a variety of tools that enable people to express and analyze the realities of their lives and conditions, to plan themselves what action to take, and to monitor and evaluate the results. Advocates of participatory approaches argue that these methodologies allow for interactive problem solving and critical engagement of local expertise. While the questions of how to define and evaluate community participation continue to be debated, most agree that community empowerment and ownership are key aspects of participatory programs and approaches (Chambers and Blackburn 1996; Bell and Brambilla