Advantages and disadvantages of community participation

[Writer's Name]

[Name of the Institution]

Advantages and Disadvantages of Community Participation

Introduction

It is the communal involvement of local people in order to assess their needs and organize strategies to meet those needs. The word has elevated to the must-have list of institutions, government, and universities. It is a crucial element to resolve health care issues of a society and is comprised of degree of participation ranging from minimal to the absolute ownership. Australia is a country where population is mainly composed of immigrants and refugees; this gathering of people from diverse backgrounds, cultures, religious and ethnic groups' makes Australian culture heterogeneous.

On the other hand, this societal composition is also raising big challenges and issues for the legislative departments and the government agencies. The indigenous community of Australia has been deprived of their basic rights that are enjoyed by their fellow citizens. For the sake of telling, Australia warm welcomes the communities even from the less privileged parts of the world; however, the policy makers are required to say much about what is happening insight.

This essay is aimed at addressing the importance of community participation and its impact on Australia. It highlights the advantages and disadvantages of the community participation and highlights the challenges faced by the indigenous groups in the wider Australian society. An effort has been made to highlight the factors of discrimination that are leading to inadequate community contribution. That has been the underlying sources of troubling the cultural adjustments for many ethnic groups in the Australian society.

Discussion

Community participation is a phrase that can be commonly used in the development, health and education sectors; accompanied with the terms of good governance, ownership, rights and accountability. Members of a community are a rich source of knowledge about their community; they are the source of energy and are committed to their community. If utilized properly, they can be the natural source of accumulating human capital that is the foremost requirement of today's advancing societies.

The genuine participation made by the community members, including youth, is the key because they control the projects at the same time that professional partners build the capacity of the community to make informed decisions. The research studies indicate that the community participations are dominated by the small group of people. They have suggested ways in which formal participation arrangements could be more effectively engaged in with informal social networks on a routine basis.

Even after decades of so called development in different parts of the world, the persistence of poverty and the occurrence of changes in the political, social and cultural life are making education once again a crucial issue that requires to be paid deemed importance. The recent transformation of the macro-political landscape, the increasing threat of narrow nationalism and fundamentalism and the rising issues of global warming- all these challenges are asking for the effective development of human resource and a well maintained balance for the better quality of education.

Advantages of Community Participation

Community participation is an aspect of the society that is repeatedly focused and heavily invested by the government to build stronger networks between people living in the same neighborhood. A relationship has been drawn that states that as the community participation increases, therefore, the community ownership and capacity increases. The degree of community participation starts from the co-option and extends to the level of co-learning and with the help of different tools these varied degrees of participation can be turned into plausible outcomes. The most widely used community tools include the community mapping and the community conversation. The typical advantages might be listed as:

Community participation provides lead to the better and more responsive services, and since the local people are aware of what works for them and what not, they are ready to contribute to the success of any health intervention.

It helps to tackle the political and democratic disengagement of people. Involvement of people in the community projects and planning would help to increase their commitment to the programme and hence, will help to develop appropriate skills and knowledge that would help them to identify and solve their problems on their own.

They are the means of building social capital, which is a source for collective actions like contact building, which might be accessed through membership in any social network. People involvement will help to increase the available resources for the project; it will promote the self-help and self-reliance and will lead to improved trust and partnership between the community and the health workers.

The use of the developmental approach enables the members of the community to work in partnership with the systems of health. So that, the resources can be employed to the health issues that might be of the community concern. It provides the policy makers with guidelines to set the rule of law that best represents the reservation of each community and brings a blow of equivalent rights for every citizen in the society.

Disadvantages of Community Participation

The word disadvantage is not just limited to the low incomes and high levels of unemployment, but it can be used to explain the cluster of factors that might make living hard for people in few areas of the society to accomplish good outcomes of life.

Community disadvantage is the result of the complexity of the interplay among the characteristics of those residents living in the community and the social and environmental effects inside the community.

One of the greatest disadvantages of community participation is that it is time consuming; it slows down the decision-making process because it is difficult to bring people on shared grounds quickly.

The effort to conduct community participation programme and arrive on a unanimous decision might be expensive for the local government because it requires additional hiring for the project.

Involvement of the local community might bring forward the covered conflicts that can serve like a source to frustrate the project implementation. Hence, the desired benefits of the community participation might not reach the intended recipients.

Community participations might encourage the majority subgroups to discriminate against the other ethnic groups or indigenous communities.

Poorly done process of the public participation may lead to the lack of public faith in the government agencies. The negative experience might discourage people to make future participation hence, making them less active.

The lower investment and little attention paid to the educational development of the Aboriginal people is directly or indirectly related with the areas of disadvantage for Australian economy that includes unemployment, income, health and crime.

Migrants and Refugees Participation

Since the foundation of Australia, around 740, 000 refugees and humanitarian migrants are settled here. The presence of people from diverse cultural backgrounds adds to the enrichment of the Australian society. The Australian economy and culture are particularly benefited from the immigration of people from around the world. These migrants arrived from Sudan, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the West African Nations.

Their presence is enabling Australia to demonstrate its solidarity internationally with the mostly poor countries which host the majority of the world's refugees. That is why; Australia focuses on the nondiscriminatory basis like ethnic origin, language, gender etc for immigration and has been emphasizing the humanitarian and legal obligations to accept the refugees and reunite families.

Challenges Faced by the Refugee Communities

In the past three years, the migration intake was focused on black Africans and migrants from Sudan. The studies show that the linguistically and culturally diverse Australian population are facing troubles in accessing the workforce, in particular the increasing number of the African community. The record findings on African experiences in Australia indicate the poor understanding of the locally prevailing work culture and job discrimination.

According to Udo-Ekpo, in Australia the issues of employment and underemployment among the migrants from African have been leading to the personal and integration issues. Other factors highlighted by the research studies include the dislocation, famine, overcrowding that has long lasting effects on the integration and adaptation of refugees' into the widespread Australian society. Most of the African refugees' are engaged in the pockets of niche jobs with low payments and lack of opportunities for a salary increase and job promotion.

Factors Contributing to Ineffective Community Participation

Despite of many success stories and statistical findings, it is a fact that the indigenous population of Australia is undoubtedly excluded from the extended life opportunities including the experiences and tangible amenities that are normally regarded by other Australian citizens as a vital part of life. The statistics of the HREOC conducted in the year 2006 indicate that the nonindigenous population has been facing the health inequality which is continuously growing across numerous indicators.

In Aboriginal population, violence is higher than the general population. A survey was conducted socially in 2002 highlighted the income inequality level by showing the average household income figures for indigenous persons. According to Hunter (2000), the effects of unemployment pronounce itself if the social, psychological and economic impacts concentrate among the long-term unemployed people and if these effects are spilled over the other families or community members.

The employment access is one of the critical ways to make adjustments for the community from Africa in order to integrate them into the local society. However, the issue of employment faced by the Sudanese and Liberian refugees has an impact on their adjustment to the Australian society. Discrimination on the basis of racism in the workforce is another important factor leading to ineffective community participation in Australia. The most affected community by this discrimination is the black Africans due to their physical appearance and cultural backgrounds.

Difficulties are faced by people who come into Australia on humanitarian grounds, which is another negative aspect of the Australian society. The ethnic communities have responded it by forming organizations and infrastructure within their own communities. They can assess to increase employment opportunities and create jobs themselves. In the long run, the unemployment makes indigenous people experience social exclusion in the form of high rates of police harassment and arrests, lower level of civic engagement and higher level of drinking related offences.

According to the official Review of the Aboriginal Education in New South Wales, the aboriginal students, in Australia continued to be the most educationally disadvantaged students in 2004. This was backed by the consistency in the lower level of academic achievements, and high rate of absenteeism and suspension, and the associated reasons of failure were described as cultural, social, environmental, economic and health factors.

Conclusion

Diverse culture in any part of the world has its own benefits and limitations. If it allows the government with a vast range of trade and occupational skills, it also poses the challenge of social harmony and equality of basic rights. The rate of increasing refugees and immigrants is creating challenges for the policy makers. They are asking them to be the rationale in their judgment of the living standards of all the residing communities in Australia.

Respecting and valuing the cultural and ethnic differences might help the Australian communities to engage in healthy and possible community participation. This would not only be of their own good but will also lead to the betterment of the economy and cultural heritage of Australia as a nation.

Equivalent opportunities for employment and education would enable people to put in their best and make an effective contribution in the local projects. It will bring prosperity for everyone in the country and helps to minimize the differences that lead to immoral community behavior.

No society has an ever green kingdom of happiness that is sorrow free or above the community conflicts. Joy and grief are the parts of a healthy life and make people strong enough to face the harsh realities of life. Nations that stand together in the difficult times by eliminating the regional differences are the one to lead the future of the world and will set examples for the rest of the nations.

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