Community Psychologists as Agents of a Social Change

NB: We do not resell your papers. Upon ordering, we do an original paper exclusively for you.

NB: All your data is kept safe from the public.

To begin with, community psychology is mainly focused on enhancing people’s quality of life by tackling various social issues. As a result, being engaged in an activity of a social change agent is highly crucial for a member of organizations strongly related to community psychology. Furthermore, agents’ responsibilities are based on providing a positive enhancement around the world, and “the impact they make depends on how many people they can influence to think and act in ways similar to them” (Walden University, 2021). Therefore, I aspire to become an agent of social change to provide people with the help they indeed require.

I have an asset of skills that seems beneficial and useful in my desired activity. For instance, I believe myself to be a person with highly developed communication skills that will assist me in creating effective social interaction. I will be able to easily find an approach to self-aware adults from the community, willing to be allies in my goal to enhance the neighborhood’s residents’ quality of life. In other words, my strong connection with the community will ensure respect and support from its members.

However, social change agents tend to face challenges related to political and social aspects of human life. To be more exact, when a member of community psychology aims to improve a specific area, one might have a problem with political restrictions imposed by a local or domestic government. Furthermore, sometimes a social factor might serve as a severe problem of an agent’s activity as some people might be opposed to accepting enhancement or believe it to be unnecessary or simply not efficient. Consequently, workers are forced to find approaches to such community members to prove to them that their main aim is to improve their quality of life and make their lives better in general.

Nevertheless, sometimes agents might actually be wrong regarding their methods of work, and precisely from such individuals, they can learn their mistakes and opt for seeking a more effective solution. Still, it seems highly crucial for me to be engaged in reflective practice and learn from one’s mistakes, and I, personally, intend to do so by cooperating with community members. This way, I might acquire valuable insights and work on advancing my strategy according to helpful feedback from people.

It is highly crucial to consider the thoughts and ideas of every community member regarding social changes to reach fruitful outcomes further. To ensure practical cooperation with the group of people, social change agents opt for employing participatory action research, which according to Organizing Engagement (2021), is “a community-driven approach to research, evaluation, and social change.” Consequently, I believe it seems incredibly productive to apply such a method to any social issue since I can understand the desires and needs of members and further cater to them.

In addition, to ensure the maximum efficiency of the mentioned approach, I would include surveys and questionnaires for community members to quickly estimate the urgency of tackling social issues in an area or a neighborhood. Having concluded my research, I will be able to employ its results for creating a strategy to enhance people’s quality of life and eliminate any discomfort they feel in the community. Overall, I reckon that participatory action research is indeed efficient in realizing individuals’ disturbances and preferences for further productive usage of removing and fulfilling them, respectively.