BIPX202 Community Engagement: A Reflective Essay on Northside Care

This essay is a reflective account of a student's community engagement experience at Northside Connected Care Community, an organization supporting individuals with disabilities. The reflection covers personal reactions, skill development, and challenges encountered during the service. It includes a SWOT analysis of the organization, highlighting its strengths in intellectual capacity building and community unity, weaknesses in financial dependency and service balancing, opportunities in policy influence, and threats from regional planning and community judgment. The essay further reflects on the personal impact of volunteering, emphasizing personal growth, skill acquisition, increased self-esteem, and a sense of belonging. The student concludes that volunteering had a positive impact, fostering confidence and providing a sense of purpose. Desklib offers a variety of similar documents and solved assignments for students.

Running head: community engagement 1
Community engagement
Name
Course
Professor
Date

Community engagement 2
Reflecting on self
The community programs are in most cases managed by non-government organizations.
These organizations are non-profit making organizations which are managed on a local or
international basis and consists of voluntary individuals who manage them. During my
community service program in my organization and interactions with the physically disabled
people, we had different connections. We spent so much time helping them do their work,
helping them in their daily lives and making their life better. I had different reactions to different
instances. Community service may seem a different work to different people taking into
considerations that at the end of it all it is a voluntary service but to me, it meant something
different (Lough, 2014). It is always wise to do something that leads to a better environment for
those who are disabled.
For the better part, it ends up giving them confidence in their lives and has the sense of
belonging. The also feel motivated in life and as a result, they enjoy having people around them.
Before I engaged myself in this community service I had a different impression of the physically
disabled. Having them around and helping them out was the best feeling that even changed my
thinking. This service facilitated the development of different skills which includes; timeliness,
the ability to interact with different people, managing time, leadership, work ethic, the ability to
interact and work with people who are physically different from me, customer service and self-
confidence among many others. The skills added value in my personal experience and made me
a better person.
On the other hand, this community service had its own challenges that were
differentiating the community service from the other specialty of work. In my case, it was always
a challenge to effectively articulate the changes that were supposed to be made in their daily

Community engagement 3
lives for a positive change (Milbourne, 2013). This is because before making any changes there
had to be a consideration on the effect to their lives and also the impression it would give and
how it would help us to accomplish the services program by delivering to the physically disabled
and fully satisfying them. Given that the service program had a time frame that was limited, it
was also a challenge to fix in all the required improvements to enhance service delivery.
Basically, I can say that the service program was limited to execution time thus making it a
challenge to me to incorporate all the necessary changes in the respective areas (Maughan,
2014. ).
Reflecting on the organization
The organization had some strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and also threats.
Strengths
The Northside Connected Care Community organization enhanced individual intellectual
capacity on the higher level, therefore, improving and facilitating its development, it also upheld
the history of collaboration which enhanced togetherness through taking care of the people who
are disabled, in served as an experience in community development programs thus setting a good
example on how such programs should work, it became the pride in its neighborhood, therefore,
enhancing community development besides growth and also brought unity to the neighboring
community in the same manner.
Weaknesses
Community development programs need a lot of time to be fulfilled and this was one big
weakness that the organization had since it requires a lot of money and the respective resource
for its accomplishment, therefore, being a burden to the Northside Connected Care Community.

Community engagement 4
This made the Northside Connected Care Community depend highly on financial support from
external sources (Groves, 2013.). This organization also experienced difficult balancing of
services to the community due to the fact that different people have a different disability with
different intensity, therefore, they require different service. As a result, this brought about the
difference in advocacy of their rights and also the services to be enjoyed by the disabled people.
The Northside Connected Care Community had a hard time to evaluate genuine partners and
funders, it also had a big challenge for the volunteers in the community development program;
this being a voluntary service, it requires people who are committed to helping the disabled and
having in mind that there is no pay for the work, not enough people were ready to work for the
organization.
Opportunities
It served as a sieve in the community to always put the right people in the right place.
This was basically assured through taking people who are committed to community service as
volunteers to the community development organizations, therefore, providing quality service and
helping the organization to achieve its long-term goals. Being the best community development
based organization, it created attention to the internal and external visitors, therefore, increasing
the rating in accordance with the sponsorship of the community development service (O'Grady,
2014.). The Northside Connected Care Community is based on the community service, had an
opportunistic moment to influence the respective policies.
Threats
The organization will at some point have to do the regional planning in order to enhance
development in its operations and this will be a threat to the community. Gang violence among

Community engagement 5
youth is one of the eliminations that the organization needs to work on but it turns to be a threat
to its operations since there is no connection between disability and gang violence. In
maintaining the community service, there have to be a measure of proximity where the
community will have to judge on the success of the organization, therefore, the organization is at
stake if judged by its weaknesses (Min, 2014.).
Reflecting on volunteering
Volunteering is one of the best decisions that I have ever made in my entire life. It
changes an individual life with respect to the experiences and the challenges met in the line of
duty. For the better part, it is rewarding in that after making some accomplishments, you will
always feel satisfied emotionally despite the fact that the services are not paid for. This volunteer
work facilitated my personal growth; by engaging in different services, different skills are
acquired in that process which facilitates personal growth. This type of voluntary work also
facilitates and enhances self-esteem and courage with the different challenges experienced in the
community service. The emotional involvement that’s was achieved through personal
interactions with the disabled helped me to sustain my emotional involvement with individuals
(Williams, 2014.). Volunteering also provided me with health improvements benefits; engaging
in physical activity and positive outlook facilitated a health stability in my body, being involved
in different activities helped my mind to relax and relieved my stress as well.
Final reflection
Volunteering had a positive impact on me. It made me gain confidence on myself; seeing
that I was part of a big community service program became the best feeling in my life and seeing
that everything that I was doing was the contribution towards the success of the program made

Community engagement 6
me feel successful too and I gained confidence in everything that I do. This has facilitated my
personal life success and good things happen as a result of personal confidence (Osborne, 2013.).
The service program has given me a sense of belonging and has facilitated in learning the new
skills from the volunteer work. Making a difference has also been the best part of the impact
since I see my work and also evaluate the changes that I have made while in the program and
finally they are an example to other volunteers. The biggest impact that I got from volunteering
was challenging myself; I had to set new goals that I worked on achieving. This was after I saw
that I can change the life of another person and I decided to challenge myself (waterman, 2014).

Community engagement 7
References
Groves, L. a. H. R. e., 2013. Inclusive aid: Changing power and relationships in international
development. s.l. Routledge.
Lough, B. S. M. M. A. a. X. X., 2014. a systematic review of the effect of community treatment: social
science research. s.l.:s.n.
Maughan, D. M. A. R. J. a. B. T., 2014. A systematic review of the effect of community treatment orders
on service use. In: Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology, s.l.:s.n., pp. 49(4), pp.651-663.
Milbourne, L., 2013. voluntary sector in transition. s.l. policy press.
Min, F. X. L. a. X. L. .., 2014. Analysis of Community Health Service Development for Longgang District in
Shenzhen. In: Chinese Primary Health Care, 11, s.l.:s.n., p. pg .010.
O'Grady, C. e., 2014. Integrating service learning and multicultural education in colleges and
universities.. s.l.: Routledge.
Osborne, S., 2013. Voluntary organizations and innovation in public services. s.l. Routledge.
Park, T. a. S. J., 2013. Turnover rates and organizational performance: a meta-analysis.. s.l.:s.n.
waterman, A. S., 2014. service learning: applications from the research. s.l. ROUTLEDGE.
Williams, S., 2014. The Role of the Black Panther Party Social Service Programs in Community
Organizing.. s.l.: Sociology.