Community Engagement

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While the very concept of community may evoke singular feelings of hope or despair, the reality of our communities is complex and fragmented.

Community Engagement Continuum (2005)

The community is one of the most powerful tools of the anti-violence movement, for while communities can shame, victim-blame, or prescribe harmful gender roles, they can also empower women, collaborate on prevention and intervention, and collectively shape new norms of gender democracy. Asian and Pacific Islander communities in the U.S. are embodied in high-rise public housing units and sprawling suburbs, corner groceries and rural farm lands, Christian churches, Buddhist temples, and Muslim mosques. Our attempts to engage the community are, not surprisingly, as diverse as these places and spaces in which we live and work. And as practitioners, advocates, leaders, and activists, our own relationships to the communities within which we struggle are equally varied.

The Community Engagement Continuum

We envision community engagements as anchored by four points:

    • Community Outreach and Education raises community awareness about the issue of violence against women and children and anti-violence resources.
    • Community Mobilization aims for active community participation and engagement supporting the anti-violence organization or addressing the problem of violence against women and children.
    • Community Organizing involves longer-term strategies meant to increase sustained community-based capacity to address violence against women and children.
    • Community Accountability develops the capacity of community members to support survivors and hold abusers accountable for their violence.

Resources on Community Organizing