Developing A Social Innovation Concept For Action On Poverty

Social Innovation and Community Engagement Theory

Community engagement theory is a theory that talks about the way the residents or the people of a certain organization takes part in the welfare of any vulnerable part of the society. In other words, it is an initiative taken by the people of the community to extend their helping hands for taking care of some of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged sections of the society. There is actually no clear definition of this theory but it can be termed as an endeavor that is taken up by the people of the society to make sure that they are being able to help out the ones that are in danger. Some of the examples of the disadvantaged or he challenged sections of the society are the poverty-stricken people, the refugees, the victims of some of the other natural disasters and many other such sections of the community (Voorberg, Bekkers and Tummers 2015). In other words, there have to be joint efforts given by all the people of the society so that the work becomes much more exciting. There has to be a joint effort by all the members so that there can be a lot more innovative ideas (Sam 2016). If more people are joining in then it is an obvious fact that all the people will be able to give many new and innovative ideas.

One of the major aspects of this community engagement is the connection. However, in this context, it is important to note that the people who are taking part in this collaborative effort for the community engagement may or may not be connected to each other by the geographic location or by any other kinds of interests. They are not really concerned about all this issue; the only thing that these volunteers are concerned about is promoting the overall welfare of the organization. The shift or the transmission of the word from the community to engagement is also a shift in the concept (Abbott et al., 2018). This is actually taking the concern of people from the individual level to the collective level. In other words, this initiative can succeed with the involvement of a large number of people. As the very name suggests, the community engagement can be successful only when a large number of people from society. The community is agreeing upon terms to help out the poor and the challenged parts of the society.

One such community engagement group is the Action on Poverty (Action on Poverty. 2018). As the very name suggests, it is basically an effort of the Not For Profit organization to take care of the poor and the need sections of the society. It is basically an Australian non-governmental organization that helps in providing security to the poor and the needy. The social innovation has to be such that it brings the poor people from the margins of the society to the center (Han et al. 2014). The innovation must make people self-sufficiency. This is because they cannot depend on any organizational aid for their entire life. So they must be given the chances of getting a proper education and finding good income opportunities (Vanwesenbeeck et al. 2016).

Action on Poverty: A community group helping the poor and needy

Action on Poverty is one of the most important community groups that help in the poor and the needy sections of the society. One of the most important principles that they are working upon is the inequality present within the society. They are mainly working for the purpose of giving a better social and economic standard of living for the people. They basically try to make the poor and needy people of the society become self-sufficient. They are trying to make those societies find better employment opportunities and educational opportunities.

I am really very thankful to my University that they gave me this opportunity of becoming a part of this community welfare organization. My main task was to suggest some innovative ideas that would help me in promoting the general welfare of the company. I realized that many people who belong under the BPL category are living in the remote and unhealthy places. They do not have any idea about the basic health and hygiene. They also do not get any education. As a result if this they resort to the ideas like child labour in order to run their family. This makes them produce more children and the stress over the family increases. So, I decided to educate those people by conducting free classes. I gathered funds from our locality and went to those remote areas. I also took some of my teachers and classmates to help me in this aid. I set up the open air classes for those poor people. I taught them the effects of over population. I also taught them that this degrades their standard of also taught them that child labour is not a solution. This is illegal. Instead they must educate themselves in some activities like making handicrafts, farming and other such things. This would help them to get a good flow of money and earn a living for them. I contacted the local counsellors of those places and arranged for living a bath to all the children. I was really supported by my entire team and together we arranged for some monetary donations along with free medical and food packages for those people.

They have to provide the support like food security, economic facility, disability support, and other such facilities so that the poverty-stricken people can stay by getting the minimum acceptable standard of living (Butcher et al. 2018). None of the other social support can help the poor people properly if they are starving. So, they have to make sure that they are providing proper food to all the poor people particularly the children and the women. It has been seen that there is usually a large number of children who are actually malnourished. As a result of this providing proper food security is one of the most important issues.

The social innovation that must be taken is to engage the workers in some agro-based employment activities that will help them to work (Joshi, Kaur and Jain 2016). One good social initiative in the remote areas is to educate the poor and the needy people through social campaigns. The other important social innovation can be helping the households to grow and become economically self-sufficient.

STRENGTHS · One of the important strength is the mission and vision of the organization that motivates them to work against the prevailing inequalities among people. · Experiences that they gain through their work over all these years. · Good and active partnerships that will help them to carry on their work properly.

WEAKNESS · One of the major problems that might come in their way is the availability of enough amounts of fund and resources. There can also be some quarrels or issues with the partners. All together this might create some issues that hamper the overall operation of the organization. · There can also be a gap in the communication among the employees who are working for the organization. Apart from this, there can also be a lack of enough amount of training. · Lack of proper management can also be one of the major problems in the sound working of the organization.

OPPORTUNITIES · They must be active enough to gather the support from the support groups and from many other sponsors. This will help them to gather the good amount of fund for the sound working of their activities. · Try to gain good support from the media for advertising about their organization and the kind of work that they do. This will help them to extend their helping hands to all the people around.

THREAT · Lack of enough amount of funding might result in the poor performance in some of the areas of the organization. Apart from this, the lack of enough amount of motivation is also one of the major problems.

Proposed Social Innovation: Educating BPL category in remote and unhealthy locations

Political- The political forces like taxations or others might result in the lack of the inflow of a sufficient amount of funds. If the tax policies become much higher then it might be a major problem in getting the sufficient amount of resources for the proper functioning of the organization.

Economic- The rise in the cost of doing business might create a problem for the organization as it might have to bear a huge amount of expense in paying the utility bills, household bills and others. This might make them tighten their budget in some other areas.

Social- The social, factors like change in the standard of living, the social mobility, and other such factors. For instance, they can anticipate that there will be a number of consumers in the upcoming years. In such cases, they have to arrange for more amounts of resources.

Technological- They must be using the technological methods like integrated software system and others for getting a more accurate data. This will help them to reach out to the targeted groups properly ( Kandachar and Halme 2017).

Legal- They has to abide by the proper legal framework while working. They have to abide by the laws like product safety, employment laws, educational acts, environmental acts.

Environmental- They have to take care that they are not harming the environment while disposing of the waste from the slums or other such areas. They have to use proper eco-friendly methods.

As far as the funding is concerned they have to be self-sufficient. In other words, they must keep their funds or capital ready.  They must not depend solely on any external source of funding like the partnerships or the sponsors.

The question remains that whether all the employees are skilled enough to render the support to all the vulnerable people of this group. There can be issues of racism or cultural differences.

The social innovation strategy suggested is developing a long-term anti-poverty solution by making the people self-sufficient. In order to impellent this strategy pr this social innovation theory they have to work very hard. They have to work for the educational and the voting rights of these people. The poverty-stricken people are often illiterate and do not realize the importance of education. So, they have to be made alert and they need to be informed about the importance of this matter. However the problem does not end here, there can be many people among this section who belong to the Aboriginals or the tribal sections of the society. So, this will surely have a problem in getting the voting or the education rights sanctioned for these people.

Apart from this, there can be a problem if the number of poverty-stricken people increases. There can be the problem in giving proper housing, food, educational and income opportunities to all these people. Some people might not understand the need for this education. They might think that satisfying their primary and basic need for the clothing and food and shelter are the prime objectives. So they have to be properly educated by running the educational campaigns. Here can be some funding issues that have to be solved by gathering a good amount of funds from the sponsors or from the partners.

Importance of food security and proper education for poverty reduction

Too much media intervention can also bring the problem of negative publicity. This will be bad as it can create a bad reputation for this organization (Ifijeh et al. 2015). As a result of this, the partnerships with the important partners might break. This will have a direct effect on the capital fund of the organization. They will not be able to contact any educational boards for conducting the educational campaigns for these poor people. Media can be both useful and very harmful for the growth of the organization.

Conclusion

So, it can be concluded that Action on Poverty is already doing a good work by helping the poor and the needy sections of the society. However, they might prepare themselves for the unforeseen expenses. They must have their own capital resource a good fund that can be used for their business purposes. They cannot depend on the partners or on the sponsors for carrying out their business. They have to careful dealing with the media so that they do not become the victims of any false rumors. They have to develop training and educational facilities for the poverty-stricken people so that they can actually find some good employment opportunity.

References

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