Community Work

MRCI Model

MRCI’s social justice and advocacy efforts are firmly rooted in community work theory and practice; theory informed by a critical analysis of the situation facing immigrants in Ireland, and practice underpinned by community work’s core values of participation, social justice, equality and anti-discrimination, empowerment and collective action for change.

This way of working is central to MRCI’s way of advocating for change: enabling and empowering immigrants directly experiencing injustice and discrimination to highlight the structural causes of their vulnerability in society and participate in bringing about positive change.

MRCI’s community work approach recognises that migrants have the right to participate in decisions and structures that affect their lives and seeks to build participation that is active and critical. Our community work approach creates spaces for participation, reflection and action, engaging those we work in a collective analysis of their situation, building power through the development of skills, knowledge and leadership, and collectively working for change.

Useful Links:

The Community Workers' Cooperative

Combined European Bureau for Social Development (CEBSD)

The Irish Journal of Community Work

Department of Applied Social Studies, NUI Maynooth

Pobal: Government Supporting Communities

Department of Environment, Community and Local Government

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Publications

Click any cover image to download a full PDF copy of that publication:

Tools for Social Change: A Resource Guide for Community Work with Migrant Workers and Their Families in Ireland

Mobilising for Social Justice: MRCI's Community Work Model

Towards Standards for Quality Community Work: An All-Ireland Statement of Values, Principles and Work Standards

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We have over ten years' experience of using community work to empower migrants and build collective action. Here are some of the resources we've developed over the years - please help yourself! Click the red title to view each document.

Toolkit 2016

These essential guides were developed after an MRCI campaign session with Siobhán O'Donoghue of Uplift in early 2016.

(Download full Campaign Toolkit as a zip here)

1. Campaign strategy & planning explained
2. A tool for power analysis
3. How to do a force field analysis
4. Minding the member's journey (the story of me, the story of us, the story of now)
5. A tool for measuring actions and tactics

Participation

Sample Sign-In Sheet: Sounds simple, but a sign-in sheet at meetings allows important follow up work with migrants when your building contacts and relationships

Outreach Meeting Agenda: Outreach sessions play an important part in enabling individual and sometimes very marginalised migrants to participate in a collective agenda and in campaigns. The Justice for the Undocumented (JFU) campaign shares a typical one here.

Participation & Leadership Framework: Check out MRCI’s participation and leadership framework, where we map the levels of migrant participation and leadership in our work and campaigns. This helps in organising opportunities and building leadership and participation.

Empowerment

Leadership Development: The sharing of skills, analysis and knowledge forms is a key part of MRCI’s empowerment work with migrants. This gives an overview of the leadership development content we use in training.

A Tool for Campaign Messaging: Leaders need to be on message. Click here to download a useful tool for getting on message and doing media preparation work.

Checklist for Choosing an Issue: Encourage leaders and activists to think before we act. This checklist helps with choosing an issue to campaign on.

Collective Action

MRCI Campaign Strategy Template: A good campaign needs strategy and coordination. We use this campaign strategy template to plan everything from people power to political engagement.

A Menu of Direct Actions: Coming up with ideas for public and strategic actions as part of a campaign? Choose from our menu of direct actions!

Principles for Planning Effective Actions: Good actions don’t just happen. See our principles for planning effective campaign actions.

Roles & Responsibilities for Actions: A good action needs delegation of roles and responsibilities. Check out our template here.

Top Tips for Messaging, Media & Strategy: Campaign strategy, messaging and communications - these are our top tips.#

For lots more on each of the three strands of our community work model, please see the Participation, Empowerment and Collective Action pages.