Prepare To Mobilize

Initiating contact with the community

In most cases you will want to supplement what you can learn about the community from documents with interviews with various informants (see the tools section for a sample interview questionnaire). It is at this stage, if not sooner, that you will begin to have significant contact with the community, and you and your team may want to give some thought to how you can make a good first impression.

First impressions are based on a whole set of cultural values, personal beliefs, and prior experiences. While our first impressions may be proven right or wrong later, they have a lot to do with whether and how relationships begin. A bad first impression is difficult to overcome. All this is to say that it is important to consider the type of impression that you would like to create when you enter a community. What you wear, how you act, which language you speak, what you say and how you say it, even how you arrive—in a car, which almost no one in the community owns, or on public transportation which almost everyone uses—all these things will be noticed and discussed by community members when you leave.

If you are not familiar with local community protocol, it is important to learn about it early on. You can talk with people who are working in the community or who know about local protocol to find out which people you will need to contact first and what will be expected of you during the first visit.

Some things to consider when entering the community:

• Know local customs and protocols for meeting leaders and others, and follow them.
• Ensure that someone on the team speaks the local language and dialect.
• Prepare materials before the visit (a short description of the project/program, information on your organization, questionnaires, or interview guides).
• Be honest and don’t promise things that you can’t deliver.
• Be respectful of people’s time and schedules.
• Decide what type of first impression you want to create.

When community mobilization is initiated by an external organization, the objectives of the first meeting with community leaders are usually to determine whether the community is interested in participating in the project, to begin to establish a working relationship, and to set a tone for the project. You may also want to discuss how you propose to learn more about the community to help the team determine how best to work with the community. Your team should be prepared to clearly present the project goal and how it was determined. It is often helpful at this point to share national or regional data with leaders to show why this particular health focus was selected and to put the community’s health into a broader context. You should also be able to explain your organizational capabilities and your team’s role in this project.

Gathering Information About The Health Issue
Gathering Information About The Community
Sources of Information
What does my information mean? Looking for underlying themes.