To engage with the people with refugee backgrounds, I visited the community where many people with refugee backgrounds live and worked with a multicultural training centre. Though I made several attempts to dialogue with people in the street and in the multicultural training centre, I still had not made any progress to establish a shared agenda with the people. I reflected and found that I was not sensitive enough and to certain extent I was selfish. The intention to begin this project made me ‘wanting to do something’ in a hurry. I was a stranger to the people and how could I expect people to share their stories and issues with me. I had unconsciously assumed people with refugee backgrounds would have issues troubling them. Risks analysis was missing. What would be happened if people share their burning issues with me but I would have to leave Australia 3 months later. There was no measure to safeguard the people. As a result, I become a volunteer of a multicultural centre and a community organization working with people with refugee backgrounds from Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq. Later I realize that this move is called ‘first order change’. ‘A first order change means enabling the institutions in the society to do what they are already doing with regard to the community, better.’ (Andrews, 1996:140).
Reference:
Andrews, Dave (1996), Building a Better World, Australia: Albatross Books
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A good step to development from below where you do not impose your issues upon a community, but rather learn what they do by participating in their activites.Remember, real development is time consuming and needs patients of understanding the community's needs.
ReplyDeleteDorcas
Yes Dorcas. Real development starts when 'I' and 'You' towards building shared understanding, meaning and creating action as 'We'.
ReplyDeleteI totally understand you Ada. I felt the same way when I did some interviews to the Maori community. Because we are researchers and we need to find information sometimes we forget about the people and their real needs. Also we automatically believe they really want to share their experiences, but what we forget is that we are the outsiders and there is a lot of things and steps we need to follow to gain their trust and respect. I really find some things hard to talk about and I have to admit this subject is very difficult for me because I dont know what to ask or how to address it so actually I am learning a lot about the process you are following. And well the truth is we learn with our own mistakes...
ReplyDeleteThanks Lorena, we are all 'learning by doing' in community work. Knowledge is not static and is deprived by experience in practice and sharing. I constantly remind myself now to 'see what other see' when I learn from people to advance understanding of human being in order to 'do no harm'.
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