Chapter 2 - Work With Community Partners: Introduction

Culture Counts: A Guide to Best Practices for Developing Health Promotion Initiatives in Mental Health and Substance Use with Ethnocultural Communities

Partnerships can bring many benefits. They allow people to share resources, knowledge and skills. By sharing the work, partners can produce a greater impact than they might have done working separately.

When developing health promotion initiatives with ethnocultural communities, partnering with a community-based organization or agency already working with the communities can greatly improve the effectiveness of both the initiative itself and the development of it.

Community-based organizations serving ethnocultural communities bring qualities, resources and knowledge that would be difficult or time-consuming for someone who is not a member of the community to get, such as:

• credibility and trust within the community that will help encourage participation by community members.
• bilingual, bicultural staff or volunteers who can act as facilitators and liaisons between you and the community, overcoming language and cultural barriers
• awareness of the community’s assets and needs.

Community-based agencies will usually be interested in partnering with other organizations to help their communities but may be wary due to past experiences where the “partnership” turned out to be only a token gesture towards community involvement in decision-making. If you are going to partner with an agency, make sure it is a true, equitable partnership in which everyone shares both responsibility and recognition, and there is a genuine commitment to community participation. 

“Sometimes mainstream organizations seem to base their knowledge of a community on what they have heard or read in books and newspapers. They end up with stereotypes or information that is out of date and out of context. For instance, arranged marriages are no longer the rule in our community here and are getting less favored-people meet and date over the internet. Our community is changing” --Naga Ramalingam, SACEM (Society for the Aid of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) Minorities)

 To learn more about partnerships

• Strategic Partnering Task Force: Assessing Strategic Partnership: The Partnership Assessment Tool. PDF. (UK)
• Carol Lukas and Rebecca Andrews: Four Keys to Collaboration Success. The Fieldstone Alliance. (USA)

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