Practice Experience and Participation

Recently, I began my first day at my practice experience with the Ethiopian Community and Cultural Center. I knew I would be meeting with the volunteer coordinator and expected a run down of what my responsibilities would be through the span of my work there. If the time came to share my own original ideas that the Ethiopian Community and Cultural Center (ECCC) should take on, I had already prepared a list of ideas I would like to see implemented. The list highlighted a number of action plans that would serve a sector of the population that tend to be overlooked as a result of their financial limitations.  Such programs that target the refugees, elderly, and youth segments could serve to fulfill their needs in terms of support.

The Ethiopian Community and Cultural Center (ECCC) in Oakland was founded with the purpose of assisting the growing population of Ethiopians resettling in the Bay area as refugees. The underlying basis for the output of services of the ECCC is clear in their mission statement to “coordinate educational and social services that empower and support Ethiopian immigrants and refugees to become self-sufficient.” Thus far the center is more known in the Ethiopian community for the Ethiopian New Year’s Celebration that they host, elder services, refugee case management, housing assistance services, and translation and interpretation services. The ECCC also hosts a number of outreach events that span from protest to toy drives. Located on Telegraph Avenue the apex of Ethiopian restaurants

Upon meeting with the volunteer director, conversation flowed many of my ideas were well received and our hopes for the organization were similar. The question of how to implement our goals for future success was the question of how to implement these goals into a formidable action place takes into consideration the issue of participation. “Have Participatory Approaches Increased Capabilities?” discussed the elements of the Capability Approach that has evolved the agents of development to include participation from people. Cernia defined participation as “ empowering people to mobilize their own capacities, be social actors, rather than passive subjects, manage the resources, make decisions and control the activities that affect their lives.” This growing transition to the bottom up approach would be more fruitful to the implementation of many programs now in place. One of the programs that the ECCC is further developing immigrant/refugee training that is limited to computer and language skills training at this point.

While learning English and computer skills training are going to serve measures in an acculturation process, there are many effective options that branch away from these two efforts. In the case of expanding immigrant/ refugee resources need to come from “effective involvement of people in their own development requires a clear understanding of the requirements for effective participation, and the limitations of this process.” (Duraiappah. 2) The ECCC could decide to launch programs related to employment training, but there needs to be an incorporation of both opinions and stated needs of the immigrant/ refugee community. By definition the bottom up approach uses the target community to formulate the most effective program plan in order to effectively create a participatory development process. This format of participation is important in this case since it allows the ECCC to become “good facilitators and catalysts of development that assist and stimulate community-based initiatives and realize their own ideals.” (Duraiappah. 26) With the utilization of techniques found in the participatory development process the ECCC is bound to implement more programs with the greater support and participation from the target immigrant/ refugee group.