Community Organizing Participatory Action Research (COPAR) - is a continuous and a sustained process of:
1. Educating the people - to understand and develop their critical consciousness
2. Working with people - to work collectively and effectively on their immediate and long term problems
3. Mobilizing with people - develop their capability and readiness to respond, take action on their immediate needs towards solving the long term problems
The process and structure through which members of a community are/or become organized for participation in health care and community development activities
Process:
- the sequence of steps whereby members of a community come together to critically assess to evaluate community conditions and work together to improve those conditions.
Structure:
- refers to a particular group of community members that work together for a common health and health related goals.
Emphasis of COPAR:
1. Community working to solve its own problem
2. Direction is established internally and externally
3. Development and implementation of a specific project less important than the development of the capacity of the community to establish the project
4. Consciousness raising involves perceiving health and medical care within the total structure of society
Importance of COPAR:
• COPAR maximizes community participation and involvement
• COPAR could be an alternative in situations wherein health interventions in Public Health Care do not require direct involvement of modern medical practitioners
• COPAR gets people actively involved in selection and support of community health workers
• Through COPAR, community resources are mobilized for selected health services
• COPAR improves both projects effectiveness during implementation
Phases of COPAR Process:
1. Pre-Entry Phase - is the initial phase of the organizing process where the community organizer looks for communities to serve and...