Introduction to Participatory Community Practice

This uniquely illustrated handbook will find a wide audience ranging from social work and community development students to beginner social service practitioners and micro-level development professionals working with communities especially in the Southern African context. An experienced team of authors unpacks the definition that people-centred community practice is a change and management process. This process is facilitated with a community of people to take action to increasingly actualise their fundamental human needs to enhance the quality of their own lives and those of the wider community that they are part of.

The book’s people-centred and assets/strengths-based approach to community practice is consistent with fundamental social work values. This approach ensures that even beginners would work with communities in a respectful way so that communities would not be imposed upon or disempowered in the process. Since the approach is strongly grounded in theory, this equips facilitators with the basic knowledge to approach any community and facilitate any potential project.

The authors, as tertiary educators, researchers and facilitators, have harvested richly from their engagement with students, colleagues and communities to write this user friendly textbook.