Personal Challenges In Social Action And Community Advocacy

My biggest personal challenge in social action and community advocacy is in learning with the community, gathering its history, and having the passion to build relationships with others. I learned this while working within a recovery setting, which proved to be very challenging. But helping women at the program gain a new outlook on their own recovery, for the better, was a challenge I was up for. Understanding the importance of community and relationship is the key to success.
Keywords: challenge, community, relationship

================ Ten years ago I was working for Fresno First. Fresno First is " a gender responsive residential substance abuse treatment program in Fresno County that serves female parolees and their dependent …show more content…
But as time went on I found I wanted to know more about political figures targeting substance abuse, or not targetting substance abuse in their policies—since these individuals effected the people I was helping recover, with their policies I wanted to know whatlocal organizations I could work with to get policy makers involved in social action. I became more passionate about change, and about serving my community. I became more concerned with changing society view of people with a substance abuse as individuals who never change. If an individual has the support system and resources—change can occur. My biggest personal challenges in social action and community advocacy have yet to come. They will all require ways of thinking about problems, and posing new solutions people have not thought of to solve them. I will meet with new challenges, with new people, in new situations. Social action requires people politically think about the " causes " of their (or another’s) overall place in the community. It also requires getting others to think politically about their place in the community. And if can see the causes of their problems in the community, they can better recover.