A systems approach is one of the critical elements to effective community capacity building. It is a collaborative effort to analyze, define, and design a solution for a community issue, opportunity, or challenge. It is most effective because community level issues, opportunities or challenges are complex in their nature and rely on multiple sectors with interdependencies, thus requiring a systemic solution. It is a holistic, rather than a reductionist, approach which provides the community with an opportunity to build on its unique strengths in a focused way. Increasingly, community networks are either interim or permanent structures used to engage in community capacity building because they rely on social capital to achieve more synergistically than individual community members or organizations can do alone. This segment of the training provides:
- An introduction to System Planning
- An introduction to Network Analysis: Concepts and Practice
- Practice activity
Systems Planning & Networks in Community Capacity Building – Handouts
