Week 4

Community Organizations Community organizations are systems set up to help the members of a particular community. In essence, these systems have goals and strategies, which when appropriately laid out, improve a community’s well being. The community organization, therefore, mainly focuses on the ills of a specific community. This includes the minority or disenfranchised members of society. Community organizations, therefore, have different features. This essay seeks to compare and contrast three community organizations, which include community in schools in San Antonio, united African organization in Illinois and habitat for humanity. It mainly focuses on the type of work they undertake, where they get finances and the target community.
The united African transition is one community organization that has a focus on African Americans. The target community for this organization is quite different from the habitat for humanity and communities in schools. The habitat for humanity has a focus on any member of the society who cannot afford a home. Communities in schools, on the other hand, focus on at-risk school going children. It is to this respect that the united African organization does not solely relate the whole community. This is a key difference from the other organizations, which are not specific to other members of a society (Marshall et. al., 2007). The habitat for humanity organization, for example, avails cheap, non-profit mortgages to the disadvantaged members of society. This means that their focus is across the board. The communities in schools also do not have a direct focus on a particular school going children.
Community organizations mostly have the non-for profit system in terms of their finances. Similarly, the habitat for humanity, community in schools and the united African organization share the same system. The united African organization accepts donations and sponsorships to help the needy African American community. In terms of their workforce, they use volunteers from the local communities. In this sense, they provide jobs for the locals. This is a similar strategy applied by communities in schools. They focus on volunteers and community partners. This helps them become very cost effective. The habitat for humanity, as a non-for-profit organization, acts a center where individuals interact with the aim of viewing the world as a common habitat for humanity. It is this respect that they gather donations and grants to help the disadvantaged community members.
Each community organization has a target society. This means that each of them has goals to help a certain group of society members. To begin with, the united African organization focusses on the African Americans. Their goal is to help them access better health and education, which leads to a better life. The communities in schools, on the other hand, have the goal of keeping children in school. They believe that through this they can make the children have brighter futures. Lastly, the habitat for humanity has the goal of providing good housing to all members of society. Through building better houses, the homeless can get a roof over their heads.
These three community organizations share the goal of empowering the community members. Apart from sharing the goals, they also have a common system whereby they get finances from donations. Through this, they are able to coordinate their community activities. The major difference among these community organizations is the target societies. Each of them has different community members which they help.
References
Marshall, K., Van, S. M. B., & World Bank. (2007). Development and faith: Where mind, heart, and soul work together. Washington D. C: World Bank.