Singapore University of Social Sciences

Skills for Sustainable Community Change

Skills for Sustainable Community Change (OCE175)

Synopsis

OCE175 Skills for Sustainable Community Change aims to stimulate and foster students’ interest, whether as a potential career or a personal passion project, in enabling community change. It tackles a question many changemakers ask: How do I ensure my community change impact could be sustained, even after my involvement has ended? In this course, students will learn and apply community engagement skills to achieve positive community development outcomes and reflect on whether these outcomes lead to meaningful and sustainable community change. It facilitates the journey from community engagement to community development. The course learning outcomes will be facilitated through ground-up projects carried out by the students. Unlike typically organisation-led community programmes, ground-up projects are carried out by individuals coming together and intending to make a difference in the community. Freed of larger organisational considerations, these projects offer a wider experimental scope to address a community cause of specific interest. The format for this course follows an experiential learning framework (i.e. ""learning by doing""): in groups, students will put their skills into action by designing and testing a ground-up community project, and reflect on the practical implications. Throughout the course, students would be exposed to community engagement skills and explore using these skills for identifying community assets. They would be introduced to the Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) approach which presents a mindset and method for enabling sustainable community change. They would also be guided to use other tools to conceptualise, test and reflect on their ground-up projects. At the end of the course, they would gain community engagement skills that are useful for enabling community development, as well as relevant for career opportunities in the social and community sectors or even for pursuing their own everyday efforts to make a larger, better and sustainable difference in the community.

Level: 1
Credit Units: 2.5
Presentation Pattern: Every semester

Topics

  • 5 Elements of Community Engagement
  • Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD)
  • Ground-Up Community Change
  • Appreciative Inquiry
  • The Golden Circle
  • Theory of Change

Learning Outcome

  • Recall the elements of community engagement
  • Relate the elements of community development to sustainable community change
  • Identify community assets in a community by participation
  • Interpret the purpose of the existing community assets
  • Develop a theory of change for a ground-up change project
  • Implement a prototype based on a proposed theory of change
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