Communication and Community Work (página 2)

These communicative practices are mediated by
historical, cultural and territorial conditions leave their
impression in its expression, development and possibilities of
transformation within the community context. Though they can be
analyzed from different dimensions we will circumscribe our
analysis to the dimension of the community work.

The communicative practices in the community context
mediate and are mediated by the process of building of the
community quality that generates the community self-development
as the essential way to the cooperation, participation and
implication of the different community actors. This makes the
transforming processes more viable through the conscious
participation of people in the activities that are planned with
this purpose.

Different institutional and organizational agents make
influence and interact in the community context. For example,
Popular Councils with their presidents, the districts with their
delegates, communities" doctors, the Cuban Women Federation, the
Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, Combatants of the
Revolution Association, educational and cultural institutions and
so forth.

This entire structure of social relations evidences once
again the signification of the social communication and in
particular the communicative practices in the community work. On
the other hand, if we analyze the complexity of the daily life in
the present social development conditions in Cuba that
demands unity and cohesion in the actions of all the
institutions, organizations and people in general in relation to
the multiple social transformations that are taking place and
require urgent, efficient and coordinated answers which demand an
active participation; the analysis of this problematic acquires a
great relevance and constitutes a crucial topic to be analyzed by
the decision-makers and professionals of the community
work.

As we said before it is very complicated to assume a
position on the different approaches in relation to this field,
the reductionist positions in relation to communication and its
role in the social development in general and in particular in
the community development that have prevailed during so many
years in Latin America have had an impact on the conceptions and
styles of communication in our country.

If at present, the model EMISSOR-MESSAGE-RECEPTOR is
being actually so hardly questioned it is not because it is false
but just the other way round, because it describes many of the
forms that have characterized the communications between
different social subjects such as: boss-subordinated,
manager-managed one, professor-student, parent-child, media-users
and so forth.

The controversy to recover the right sense of the
process of communication implies much more than a semantic
aspect, it implies a matter of human vindication, and the polemic
is characterized by a social and political dimension.

Human beings feel the need and demand the right to
participate, to be actors and protagonists in the construction of
the authentically democratic society, proclaiming the right to
participation and therefore, the right to the free, open and
dialogic communication.

People do not want to be mere receptors, they also want
to talk and be listened to be interlocutors. So, it is necessary
to begin with a base communication, an authentically democratic
community communication.

To define the aspired communication means to explain the
ideal society to live in, in society similar to ours that
sustained on the most absolute democracy, it means to define
communication and the communicative practices that are generated
in this society as dialogic, horizontal and participative. They
must be defined as to serve all of us and build up the community
quality.

An analysis of the praxis of the
community work evidences that we have not passed the narrow
limits of a model of communication that even when it intends to
achieve the democratic human participation; it continues
reproducing the traditional model where the governor continues to
be the communicator or transmitter who transmits messages to the
community as receptor. Though participation or "feedback" it
propitiated, it still being unidirectional. In this sense, we
consider that the model is inversed; the community work
professionals in general must the emissors in order to build up
the community quality for the development, community must be the
true emissor, community must communicate through the social actor
and it must play the role of facilitator in the community
processes.

In the consolidation of a society like ours that is
based on the participative democracy, it is urgent to implement
mechanisms of horizontal communication that make possible the
access of
people to the spaces of opinion and social control of the
management of the different social sectors and make visible
people"s expression.

It is opportune to indicate that every process of
communication for the community development is subscribed to a
dynamic and integrating practice. It is possible to offer some
considerations about this practice:

• To make communication for the community development
  is to deal and have access to creativity, since creativity
  challenges and goes beyond with imagination every technologic
  doses beginning from the most important needs of
  people.

• The communication for the community development is
  participative because every social actor belongs to it and
  uses it.

• It is closely related to action since it promotes
  alternative in the search for solutions taking into account a
  sense of pertinence to the economic and sociopolitical
  practice.

• It is a right because if the citizens are excluded
  as main agents of the community development, then it can be
  at risk to be trivial.

• Through communication we identify and project a
  communicative action that gives to the community the
  reciprocate action of a direct action which promotes de
  self-development.

All that has been already explained demonstrates the
need to open to communication a wider horizon in the social
field, consolidating a movement of social development which can
articulate social policies. These spaces of communication that
open the doors to a participative democracy must be characterized
by being plural and expressive so they offer possibilities for
the communication to the individual expression in order to
achieve the participation for the community development. They
must be public since there is the media to offer them to the
public knowledge of all who are involved in this process. They
must be deliberant and participative because they offer
particular visions and interests where senses are negotiated and
collective decisions are built for the community development.
This can only be possible through the creation of communicative
spaces of collective conception in the process of building up of
the community quality.

So, once we have analyzed these previous aspects, it is
possible to ask to ourselves: what are the basic dimensions of a
democratic, community and participative communication?

• 1. It must serve an educative, emancipating and
  transforming project. Community must be building up and
  developing itself from communication. It should assure a
  communicative process that make possible to community to
  understand critically its reality and acquire tools to change
  it.

• 2. it must be closely related since its
  conception, development and execution and control to the
  structures of the People"s Power depending on the level in
  which the work is developed: Popular Council, districts,
  community groups and so forth.

• 3. it must an authentic communication that is
  to say that the dialog and the intense participation must be
  the main objectives.

• 4. It must start from a process of previous
  alimentation, it means to go to the initial search that must
  be done in the community as final receptor of our messages
  for them to represent and reflex these messages.

In this proposal there is an essential statement: to
change the traditional model of communication. It is produced an
inversion of all the components that form the classic scheme
EMISSOR-MESSAGE-RECEPTOR. In this way the final receptor is
placed at the beginning and end of this process. It is present at
the beginning as active source of information and emission of
communicative products and at the end as creative receptor,
protagonist of a transforming process. In this way, the content
of the communicative events will experiment a basic change
because it emerges from the understanding of the reality,
interests and needs of the community. This assures that the
topics will be related to people"s interests and as a result,
their incidence in the transforming process will be
real.

To achieve a real process of communication the first
step must be not to place the final receptor at the end but at
the beginning. We are proposing to assume a model of
communication for the community work of the decision-makers and
professionals of the community work in general. In their
functions associated to the role of communicators for the
community, they must start form the understanding of the
experiences, needs and aspirations of the community and then from
a process of analysis of the information that has been obtained
as a previous alimentation for the processes of governability,
they must select, order, organize and rank such information to
give it back to the final receptors in such a way that they can
make it conscious and analyze and meditate about it.

Once it is established the contact t people, it must try
to give the information that is obtained back so the community
can have a different critical perspective, analyze, give opinions
about them. This also makes possible that the community identify
the main problems and difficulties it has been facing without
knowing the causes of such problems.

All these observations will make possible the process of
communication between decision-makers and the community is more
and more efficient, democratic and participative where the
decision-maker learns how to "get involved" with the community.
However, what does "get involved" mean? It means the people feel
that they are attended, heard, understood and identified; it
means that decision-makers make people to get interested in the
process, to mobilize internally the ones who are involved in such
process, to analyze the situations as real problems, to generate
the dialog and participation and to strengthen the process of
acquisition of a critical conscience to face the
reality.

The dialog and participation are not achieved either by
decree or spontaneously. We have already made reference to the
educative process it involves and the necessary subvention of
practices that do not propitiate transformative changes.
Therefore it is necessary to organize this process with the
spontaneity and creative richness of the social
practice.

The strategic planning in communication can be a way to
achieve dialog and participation, it is about to plan actions that
are rationally interrelationed to achieve a specific goal in a
medium or long term.

As PhD. Raysa Portal Moreno rightly states, the
strategies is the one that allows us to design a scenario of
action analyzing the certainties and uncertainties of the
situation, the probabilities for success and all the factor that
could obstacle and impede it. So, to plan strategically will be
"the process that must guide the planned will of the human being
with a sense and direction toward the achievement of general
goals that make possible to modify the reality that we start from
without losing the direction and the essence of these elements.
The conception of a strategy must start form the reality, from
the daily life experiences of the community actors and to accede
to this reality constitutes the main challenge of this process.
However, the proposal of a strategy for the community
self-development elaborated by a group of researchers of the
Central University Martha Abreu de Las Villas" Community Studies
Center is a theoretical and methodological option through which
it is possible to accede to this purpose.

There is a theoretical coincidence in relation to the
importance of the diagnosis to develop the strategy and the need
to make this diagnosis the beginning a significant community
learning. This aspiration is only possible form a conception of a
participative diagnosis that makes possible to accede to the
structures of the social relations that are established in the
community context from the perspective of the very same
protagonists who at the same time will leader the strategy a
such.

It is on the base of this initial participative
diagnosis that would be created the conditions to determine the
nucleus or central idea that will transversalize every single
action that is generated. This will facilitate a higher precision
in the selection of the topic, the way in which it will be
developed, the techniques to be used in order to achieve a higher
participation and critical reflection in relation to the problem
that is analyzed.

Another important element in the communicative strategy
will be the design of the activities that are derived form the
central idea. It is necessary to take into account the
possibilities and potentialities of the community in odder to be
involved creative and actively in this design.

Finally, another important element in the strategy is
the evaluation of the very same strategy that will assure its
participative character where the analysis and critic will be
present as ways for the democratic expression of
people.

So it is possible to conclude that communication in the
community work plays a crucial role as mediator of the process of
building up of the community quality that facilitates or enhances
the processes of transformation from the substantive
participation of people. In this direction democratically
structures communicative process turns into a very important tool
for the work of the decision-makers to achieve the construction
of the Cuban Revolution project.

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Autor:

PhD. Griselda Sánchez
Orbea

PhD. Graciela Urías
Arbolaez