Commnity Profiling

This lecture was different from the others; it gives you the hint that play is over and let's get to the serious business.

Sir Deocariza discussed community profiling. A preparation to all CWTS students before we embark on the journey of our own, to a community assigned to us.

It is not easy to go into a community and try to give them your service without the proper knowlegde of the said community.It involves a lot of planning. There are several things to be considered first:

What kind of service the community needs...

Give them a fish... they will eat the fish for a day
Teach them to fish, they will fish for a lifetime.

Their realities is different from yours.
What you think they need isn't what actually they need.

This where Community Profiling comes in.

Community Profiling is an inventory of information of the key features, needs and resources of a community.

This is very important because it gives you a better understanding of the community. It eventually helps you decide what projects are suitable for a certain community we are to render.


Community profiling is a rigorous process and involves a lot of steps to be taken.

1. Organization and Planning
2.Data Collection
3. Data Processing and Presentation

It would be much easier if a community already has an existing profile since you just have to update them. But take note, only few communities have the budget to do a community profiling, so most of the communities don't have their profiles which means one thing, one has to start in scratch.

It easy as said but far hard when you are actually doing a community profiling. A lot of issues and problems and arises and there are a lot of things to be careful about especially when it comes to ethical issues.


But at the end, only one things is important: Being able to render service and at the same time learning from it as well.

And I'm excited. :P