COMMUNITY ORGANIZING AND PARTICIPATORY
ACTION RESEARCH (CO-PAR)
Community Organizing-Participatory Action Research has been the strategy used by the Human
Resource Development Program Ill (HRDP III) in implementing the Primary Health Care delivery in
depressed and underserved communities to become self-reliant.
The HRDP Ill describes community organizing as a continuous and sustained process of educating the
people to let them understand and develop their critical awareness of the existing conditions; it is
working with the people collectively and efficiently, discover their immediate and long-term problems
and mobilizing the people to develop their capabilities and readiness to respond and take action on their
immediate needs toward the solution of their long-term problems.
The Philippine Center for Population and Development (PCPD) identified the objectives of Community
Organizing:
1. To make people aware of social realities toward the development of local initiative, optimal use
of human, technical and material resources, and strengthening of people's capacities.
2. To form structures that hold the people's basic interests a: oppressed and deprived sectors of
the community and a: people bound by the interest to serve the people.
3. To initiate the responsible actions intended to address holistically the various community health
and social problems.
As applied to Primary Health Care Community Organizing is defined as the process and structures
through which members of the community are tapped to become organized for participation in health
care and community development activities. They organized them. selves to get better health care and
improve their health as part of a larger effort, to increase their power and achieve greater social and
economic equality within a larger social system.
As a process, Community Organizing is the sequence of steps whereby the members of the community
work together to critically assess and evaluate community conditions to improve these conditions.
As a structure, it refers to the particular group of community members that work together for common
health and health- related problems.
It can be culled from this definition that it is the people who organize themselves into a working team
who can effectively solve their own health problems.
EMPHASES OF COMMUNITY ORGANIZING IN PRIMARY HEALTH CARE
1. The community works to solve their own problems.
2. The direction is internal rather than external.
3. The development of the capacity to establish a project is more important than the project.
4. There is a consciousness-raising to perceive health and medical care within the total structure of
society.
, PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH
Participatory Action Research is an investigation on problems and issues concerning life and
environment of the underprivileged by way of research collaboration with the underprivileged whose
representatives participate in the actual research as researchers themselves, doing research of their
own problem. The objective is to encourage consciousness of the suffering and develop competence for
changing their own situation and helping in the organization building by harnessing both human and
natural resources in responding to community needs.
(PCPD 1990)
PAR is a community- directed process of gathering and analyzing information or an issue for the
process of taking actions and making changes.
(Partners in Action Research 1997 p.3)
The essential element of PAR is participation. The beneficiaries of the research are the main actors in
the research process. It enables the community to experience a collective consciousness of their own
situations. PAR involves research, education and actions to empower people to determine the cause of
their problems, analyze these problems and act by themselves in responding to their own problems.
In PAR - there is an outside researcher, a professional one who through immersion and integration on
the community becomes a committed participant and learner in the community.
CHARACTERISTICS OF TRADITIONAL AND PARTICIPATORY
ACTION RESEARCH
TRADITIONAL PAR
1. Research for purpose of identifying and 1. Research seek social transformation.
meeting individual needs within existing
social system.
2. Community problems or needs are 2. The research problems are defined by the
defined by experts or the external community members themselves who
researchers to community group and are viewed as “experts of their own
considered neutral or non-biased. reality”.
3. The research problem is studied by the 3. The community group undertakes the
researchers who control the research investigation or research process from
process. data collection to analysis. External
researchers work alongside the
community group.
4. Recommendations for the community are 4. The community formulate
based on the researcher’s findings and recommendation and action plan based
analysis. on research outcome
Partners in Action Research 1997 p.7
ACTION RESEARCH (CO-PAR)
Community Organizing-Participatory Action Research has been the strategy used by the Human
Resource Development Program Ill (HRDP III) in implementing the Primary Health Care delivery in
depressed and underserved communities to become self-reliant.
The HRDP Ill describes community organizing as a continuous and sustained process of educating the
people to let them understand and develop their critical awareness of the existing conditions; it is
working with the people collectively and efficiently, discover their immediate and long-term problems
and mobilizing the people to develop their capabilities and readiness to respond and take action on their
immediate needs toward the solution of their long-term problems.
The Philippine Center for Population and Development (PCPD) identified the objectives of Community
Organizing:
1. To make people aware of social realities toward the development of local initiative, optimal use
of human, technical and material resources, and strengthening of people's capacities.
2. To form structures that hold the people's basic interests a: oppressed and deprived sectors of
the community and a: people bound by the interest to serve the people.
3. To initiate the responsible actions intended to address holistically the various community health
and social problems.
As applied to Primary Health Care Community Organizing is defined as the process and structures
through which members of the community are tapped to become organized for participation in health
care and community development activities. They organized them. selves to get better health care and
improve their health as part of a larger effort, to increase their power and achieve greater social and
economic equality within a larger social system.
As a process, Community Organizing is the sequence of steps whereby the members of the community
work together to critically assess and evaluate community conditions to improve these conditions.
As a structure, it refers to the particular group of community members that work together for common
health and health- related problems.
It can be culled from this definition that it is the people who organize themselves into a working team
who can effectively solve their own health problems.
EMPHASES OF COMMUNITY ORGANIZING IN PRIMARY HEALTH CARE
1. The community works to solve their own problems.
2. The direction is internal rather than external.
3. The development of the capacity to establish a project is more important than the project.
4. There is a consciousness-raising to perceive health and medical care within the total structure of
society.
, PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH
Participatory Action Research is an investigation on problems and issues concerning life and
environment of the underprivileged by way of research collaboration with the underprivileged whose
representatives participate in the actual research as researchers themselves, doing research of their
own problem. The objective is to encourage consciousness of the suffering and develop competence for
changing their own situation and helping in the organization building by harnessing both human and
natural resources in responding to community needs.
(PCPD 1990)
PAR is a community- directed process of gathering and analyzing information or an issue for the
process of taking actions and making changes.
(Partners in Action Research 1997 p.3)
The essential element of PAR is participation. The beneficiaries of the research are the main actors in
the research process. It enables the community to experience a collective consciousness of their own
situations. PAR involves research, education and actions to empower people to determine the cause of
their problems, analyze these problems and act by themselves in responding to their own problems.
In PAR - there is an outside researcher, a professional one who through immersion and integration on
the community becomes a committed participant and learner in the community.
CHARACTERISTICS OF TRADITIONAL AND PARTICIPATORY
ACTION RESEARCH
TRADITIONAL PAR
1. Research for purpose of identifying and 1. Research seek social transformation.
meeting individual needs within existing
social system.
2. Community problems or needs are 2. The research problems are defined by the
defined by experts or the external community members themselves who
researchers to community group and are viewed as “experts of their own
considered neutral or non-biased. reality”.
3. The research problem is studied by the 3. The community group undertakes the
researchers who control the research investigation or research process from
process. data collection to analysis. External
researchers work alongside the
community group.
4. Recommendations for the community are 4. The community formulate
based on the researcher’s findings and recommendation and action plan based
analysis. on research outcome
Partners in Action Research 1997 p.7
