CAPIR

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• Core Modules
  • 1. CAPIR Introduction
  • 2. Community Entry
  • 3. Values
  • 4. Rights and Responsibilities
  • 5. Community Snapshot
  • 6. Community Mobilisation
  • 7. Accountability
  • 8. Fields of Action
• Library Modules
  • 1. Participation
  • 2. Negotiation
  • 3. Group Skills
  • 4. Decision Making
  • 5. Strategic Questioning
  • 6. Health Development
  • 7. Leadership
  • 8. Cultural Safety
  • 9. Internet Skills
  • 10. Funding Applications
• Process Drivers
  • 1. CAPIR Introduction
  • 2. Community Entry
  • 3. Values
  • 4. Rights and Responsibilities
  • 5. Community Snapshot
  • 6. Community Mobilisation
  • 7. Accountability
  • 8. Fields of Action
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Core Module 3 - Values

The real goal of development is the creation of a values-based 'human ecosystem'. That is, a community with the ability to reshape itself in response to political, technological, social, environmental and economic changes through collective effort.
John Wise

Planning change

When we start to make plans for the future, we stop being victims of change and begin to be makers of change. When a community or a group sets out to make change, a lot of energy can be wasted in arguing about the direction change should take. After all, people who have taken the time to be involved are doing so because of a set of beliefs and the energy to put them into action.

It is often said that 90 per cent of the people agree on 90 per cent of the issues. It is the remaining 10 per cent where conflicts often occur and change is difficult.

Levels of change

Change can occur on three levels:

1. changing what we do because of a situation eg. providing mental health services to take care of more people with mental illness.
2. changing the situation eg. changing the environment in which people live to reduce stress and therefore the number of people with mental health problems.
3. changing the way we think, see and act eg. Are we prepared to look at our assumptions and beliefs? For example, can communities examine the way they think about and react to the causes and effects of mental illness. Can we challenge our assumptions and beliefs about mental illness and put in place some strategies to produce real change?

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The importance of values

When we think about our future, we should think about the possibility of producing real change - change at the third level. Only when third level change occurs will the change be enduring.

Obviously, if we embark on a journey of such fundamental change, we need to base our actions on a firm and ethical footing. Thinking about and sharing our individual and community values sets up common ground.

Values can be:

• common to individuals, eg. we can value our freedom to make individual decisions
• common to communities, eg. the community can value the friendly way of life in their community
• common to the world at large, eg. we value human life and honesty.

However, actions speak louder than words. Planning based on values should produce actions which reflect those values. Often what we say does not match what we do.

See the table below for an example of this.

An illustration of actions reflecting values

Stated value	What happened	Implied value	What should have happened
Participation	Those who are always involved turn up and grumble about those who never come to meetings, then make decisions for the community.	There are acceptable and unacceptable ways of participating.	The group that attends the meeting makes a conscious effort to find out and include the opinions and support the preferred ways of being involved, for all sectors of the community.
Partnership	Decisions about community priorities are made using statistical profiles, solutions are designed around the "evidence base" and communities are asked to help action the programs.	Co-option of community resources is OK to meet policy needs.	Communities help set priorities using their own experience and are actively involved in developing and implementing the solutions.
"Young people are this community's future"	A group of community leaders gets together to "do something for the young people" and decide to build a skate park.	Young people need to be told what's good for them.	Community leaders include young people in the planning and doing of young people's programs.

Using our values to evaluate the decisions we make and the action that occur will help to safeguard the intent and direction of change.

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The values for CAPIR process

The values for CAPIR process:

• are community driven
• value community diversity
• support community capacity development
• utilise networks through both strong and weak links
• support learning by doing
• are participant appropriate
• are sustainable.

Process driver

Use the Process Driver to think about and record the values of your planning process.

This can be done by an individual, who will take on the responsibility of facilitating a community process, or can be done as a group.

Group values and CAPIR values will reappear in the evaluation section of each module to help assess the actions that occur. Group values can be replaced by, or expanded, to include the community value set identified in the Community Mobilisation module.

Tools

Link to useful tools on this module.

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