Reaching Out to the Community

What do a gang of militant pensioners in South London, a group of traditional Tamils in Newham and a bunch of young anti-drug campaigners in Fitzrovia have in common? They have all received training in community research from ARVAC. The Community Research Project has now been running for over 5 years and has helped hundreds of community organisations to use research as a way of becoming more effective, responsive, and community-centred. I have been guiding groups through the research process for over two years now and have found the experience both rewarding and frustrating; inspiring and amusing.

As many readers will no doubt be aware, the Project offers places for small community groups based in London to undergo training and aims to help small community groups design and plan a piece of research as well as acquire essential research design, management, analysis, and reporting skills. Up to four days training and on-going follow up support are offered, and all for free.

The Community Research Project has helped organisations to undertake many different kinds of research. For example, when an Asian organisation based in Croydon approached ARVAC for help finding out whether the leisure and career services were adequate for local youth, ARVAC helped them to put together a survey investigating the needs of Asian youths in Croydon. The organisation is currently planning the next step based on sound evidence of youth needs. When Sure Start NW Kensington approached ARVAC for help in finding out what parents and children thought of local play areas, ARVAC trained a group of local parents to design and carry out the research. When a pressure group called OBJECT was recently set up to campaign against the objectification of women in the media they realised that the first step in their campaign should be to consult their members about what sort of projects to undertake, and approached ARVAC. We helped them to design an online / email questionnaire to be sent to their members.
It is very satisfying to see innovative, locally relevant pieces of research happening and also to see groups learn and grow in confidence. Often the groups we help are new and under resourced. The project has helped groups to improve and develop their services, impress funders and at the most fundamental level give back a voice to a silenced majority.

Of course not all groups actually do the research that they have planned: running a small voluntary sector organisation is a game for the multi-taskers and miracle workers; conducting a piece of research whilst handling the normal everyday tasks of running an organisation can be extremely difficult. If a member of staff or volunteer leaves, or more pressing tasks present themselves the research can be indefinitely delayed or shelved. This can be disappointing particularly if I’ve spent days with the group helping them to design a beautiful relevant piece of research that has the potential to be a positive force for change. There are of course times when it all falls apart because I’ve bitten off more than I could chew: attempting to teach questionnaire design skills to a group of Somali women, none of whom speak English or write Somali, was perhaps unwise.

Despite the fact that groups sometimes struggle to get a piece of research designed, conducted and analysed, there are undoubted benefits to handing control over the process to the groups. We will not do research for an organisation but we will give them the support and know-how to do it themselves. When they make mistakes they learn from them; when they have successes they grow in confidence and stature. The strength of the project lies in the fact that it is people who are working at the grassroots who design these pieces of research and it’s these people who can most accurately pin point the research need. What’s more they bring all their knowledge about a community to the research process.

Giovanna Speciale is ARVAC's outreach worker. Stefan Simanowitz is ARVAC's information officer.
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