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Following is the Ladder of Community Participation, including a brief explanation and examination. In this Ladder, Community Members are "insiders" from any community of people who have been historically been "others" in the United States. Volunteers are "outsiders" who have traditionally come into communities to provide "service." They may include non-profit staff, AmeriCorps Members, teachers and others.
The Rungs of the Ladder
8) Community-initiated, shared decisions with volunteers is when projects or programs are initiated by community members and decision-making is shared among community members and volunteers. These projects empower community members while at the same time enabling them to access and learn from the experience volunteers.
7) Community-initiated and directed is when community members initiate and direct a project or program. Volunteers are involved only in a supportive role.
6) Volunteer-initiated, shared decisions with community members is when projects or programs are initiated by volunteers but the decision-making is shared with community members
5) Community members consulted and informed is when community members give advice on projects or programs designed and run by volunteers. The community members are informed about how their input will be used and the outcomes of the decisions made by volunteers.
4) Community members assigned but informed is where community members are assigned a specific role and informed about how and why they are being involved.
3) Tokenism is where community members appear to be given a voice, but in fact have little or no choice about what they do or how they participate.
2) Decoration is where community members are used to help or "bolster" a cause in a relatively indirect way, although volunteer do not pretend that the cause is inspired by community members. <
1) Manipulation is where volunteers use community members to support causes and pretend that the causes are inspired by community members.
Exploration
While many community organizations seek to "fix" or "heal" the wounds in our society, it has been often noted that rarely are these works more than band-aids. The after school basketball program I ran for young people in my neighborhood when I was 21 did help keep kids off the streets. However, it didn't help their parents get better jobs so they didn't have to work two shifts; it didn't help their grandparents strengthen their parenting skills so they didn't feel so frustrated; ultimately, it didn't help the young people learn more skills or become more involved in their community so they felt a sense of hope and purpose.
Volunteerism oftentimes serves to perpetuate the worst of these characterizations, often with negative effects on both the volunteers and the community members themselves. Instead of engaging community members on the top rungs of the Ladder, at most some organizations relegate them to the bottom rungs. How many homeless shelters do you know of that are operated by homeless people? How many after school programs for young people do you know of that are operated by young people? In some programs, when the recipients of rehabilitated homes help carry out the framing, plumbing and painting of their homes, are they actually learning about places the water lines and helping to choose the colors, or are they just finishing the nailing?
The challenge of reaching higher rungs on the Ladder of Community Participation is one that faces all individuals and organizations committed to validating and uplifting the skills and abilities of the people who are served, whether they are young people, people of color, or others. However, the reality is that all organizations cannot all be at the top rungs. Sadly enough, when reliant on dysfunctional trends to justify their existence, some groups actually work to keep communities from being on the Ladder at all. That is reality.
Washing ones hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.
- Paulo Freire
Conclusion
When considering community members' empowerment in Brazil, Paulo Freire once wrote "those invaded became convinced of their intrinsic inferiority." The implication that volunteerism is an engine for a degrading, delineating social design is not new, but the challenge that faces us is: to make volunteerism a relevant, purposeful engine for democracy and sustainable communities today, and by doing so, to create a vibrant, purposeful society tomorrow.
In his book, "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community," published a year before his assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. talked about what he called the world house. "This is the great new problem of mankind," he wrote. "We have inherited a large house, a great 'world house' in which we have to live together -- black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Moslem and Hindu -- a family unduly separated in ideas, culture and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace."
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Adam Fletcher
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