Journal on Community Organizing:The Role of Community Organizing in Poverty Alleviation in Tanzania

1. INTRODUCTION
This journal is on the role of community organizing in poverty alleviation in, the discussion is intending to show the Theoretical perspective, Empirical perspective, policy review and the conclusion. To start, let look at the meaning of Community organizing. Community organizing is a process by which people are brought together to act in common self-interest. While organizing describes any activity involving people interacting with one another in a formal manner, much community organizing is in the pursuit of a common agenda. Many groups seek populist goals and the ideal of participatory democracy.

In another way you can say, community organizing is the process of building power that includes people with problem in defining their Community, defining their problems that they wish to address, the solutions they wish to pursue, and the methods they will use to accomplish their solutions. The organization will identify the people and negotiate with them to accomplish the goal of the Community.

Community organizing is usually focused on more than just resolving specific issues. Organizing is empowering all community members, often with the end goal of distributing power equally throughout the community. In Community organization, organizers generally seek to build groups that are democratic in governance, open and accessible to community members, and concerned with the general health of the community rather than a specific interest group.
Therefore, community organizing is a power created association which comes directly from the fundamental need of humans to improve their lives (self interest), to helps one’s neighborhood to improve local conditions, and to be effective and self- actualizing in the world.
There are three basic types of community organizing, grassroots organizing, faith based community organizing, and coalition building. Additionally, political campaigns often claim that their door-to-door operations are in fact an effort to organize the community, often these operations are focused exclusively on voter identification and turn out.

2. THEORETICAL LITERATURE REVIEW
Community organizing starts when people sought to meet the pressures of rapid immigration and industrialization by organizing immigrant neighborhoods in urban centers. Since the emphasis of the reformers was mostly on building community through settlement houses and other service mechanisms, the dominant approach was what Fisher calls social work. During this period The Newsboys Strike provided an early model of youth-led organizing. Community organization was established distinct from social work, with much energy coming from those critical of capitalist doctrines. Studs Terkel documented community organizing in the depression era, perhaps most notably that of Dorothy Day. Most organizations had a national orientation because the economic problems the nation faced did not seem possible to change at the neighborhood levels.
Robert Fisher and Peter Romanofsky have grouped the history of community organizing in the United States into four rough periods:

1880 to 1900
People sought to meet the pressures of rapid immigration and industrialization by organizing immigrant neighborhoods in urban centers. Since the emphasis of the reformers was mostly on building community through settlement houses and other service mechanisms, the dominant approach was what Fisher calls social work. During this period The Newsboys Strike provided an early model of youth-led organizing.

1900 to 1940
Community organization was established distinct from social work, with much energy coming from those critical of capitalist doctrines. Studs Terkel documented community organizing in the depression era, perhaps most notably that of Dorothy Day. Most organizations had a national orientation because the economic problems the nation faced did not seem possible to change at the neighborhood levels.

1940 to 1960
The emergence of the distinctive approach of Saul Alinsky spurred new thought and new blood into community movements. Those influenced by Alinsky were (and still are) concerned with social justice without having socialist thought as their primary framework. Alinsky promoted greater awareness of community organizing in academic circles, and those affiliated with Alinsky trained a generation of organizers, including César Chávez.

1960 to present
The American Civil Rights Movement, the anti-war movements, the Chicano movement, the feminist movement, and the gay rights movement all influenced and were influenced by ideas of neighborhood organizing. Experience with federal anti-poverty programs and the upheavals in the cities produced a thoughtful response among activists and theorists in the early 1970s that has informed activities, organizations, strategies and movements through the end of the century. Less dramatically, civic associations and neighborhood block clubs were formed all across the country to foster community spirit and civic duty, as well as provide a social outlet.
Many of the most notable leaders in community organizing today emerged from the National Welfare Rights Organization. John Calkins of DART, Ernesto Cortes of the Industrial Areas Foundation, Wade Rathke of ACORN, John Dodds of Philadelphia Unemployment Project and Mark Splain of the AFL-CIO, among others.

3. EMPIRICAL LITERATURE REVIEW
A case study of Village Saving and Loan groups (VS&L) in Mvomero District. From this case study, community organizing through VS&L approach as rural financial services has helped poor to access loan and acquire business skills in District. The goal is to help women participants cope with the numerous responsibilities that they faced in a challenging economic and social environment. This is done by providing training in crafts production and other small economic activities to increase household income. In addition, participants contributed individual savings to a loan fund, which, in turn, made small loans to group members. Soon this came to be the dominant activity and craft training was dropped.
Community organizing through VS&L groups promotes local participants’ savings and loan groups that build on the traditional Rotating Savings and Credit Association (ROSCA) methodology. They enable poor people to save enough money to buy useful items for the household and make opportunistic business investments. But they have their limitations. While they provide a popular and simple means of savings, they tend to be rigid in the way that they work, providing either pre-determined or unpredictable access to accumulated savings. It is not very common that ROSCAs provide money at the right time and in useful amounts for micro enterprise development.

The VS&L group is a self-selected group of people, (usually unregistered) who pool their money into a fund from which members can borrow. The money is paid back with interest, causing the fund to grow. The regular savings contributions to the group are deposited with an end date in mind (usually between 8-12 months) for distribution of all or part of the total funds (including interest earnings) to the individual members, usually on the basis of a formula that links payout to the amount saved. This lump sum distribution provides a large amount of money that each member can then apply to his/her own needs. From this perspective a VS&L groups is primarily savings clubs, which have proven popular worldwide.

4. POLICY REVIEW
A cornerstone of democratic governance and constitutional liberalism is the freedom of association. This freedom enables people who share similar interests to come together and form organizations that represent their interests and views. For example, the freedom of association allows for the formation of political parties, trade unions, cooperatives, and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society organizations (CSOs).
In Tanzania, the freedom of association is deemed by the government to be a privilege, not a right. Soon after Independence, a government campaign eradicated most formal civil organizations, especially those with dissenting views and opposing positions. In 1964, for example, the government banned independent trade unions and formed the National Union of Tanzanian Workers Association (NUTA), a state controlled trade union. In so doing, it essentially outlawed strikes and the right to advocate for fair wages. In 1968, it passed a law curtailing the activities of Cooperative Unions.

For example, in 1973-75 the state resettled about 80 percent of the population in Ujamaa villages which resulted in famine and drastic reduction of crop production. To date, Tanzania has not recovered from the aftermath of this policy. These and other restrictions forced most Tanzanians to be passive watchers of state-sponsored initiatives, many of which had negative consequences on their lives. Citizens were denied the right to be shapers and masters of their own destiny. The situation was complicated by the absence of a Bill of Rights in the country's Constitution. The government had consistently argued that a Bill of Rights was a political luxury that a poor country like Tanzania could not afford. It saw a Bill of Rights as an impediment to rapid social and economic development.

Moreover, NGO Act of 2002 provide an opportunity for establishment of various community organizations such as NGOs, CBOs, FBOs and other community institutions.

5. CONCLUSION
Community organizing calls for the broad participation for neighborhood residents through work in multiple issue areas. One advertise of working on a number of issue is that, there is no lapse in action that would lead inevitably to flogging interest and reduce involvement. Single focus organizing has a weakness in maintaining the continuity of action that organization – building requires.

The ideal of grassroots organizing is to build community groups from scratch, develop new leadership where none existed, and otherwise organize the unorganized. It is a values based process where people are brought together to act in the interest of their communities and the common goal. It is a strategy that renews communities and allows the individuals to participate and stimulate social change. It empowers the people directly involved and impacted by the issues being addressed.

In order to improve the condition of the poor, caring and helping one another and ensuring that , government should work in the interest of all the people, building a network of friendship and mutual responsibility within neighborhood is simply something we must do for humanity’s good and not just for material or economic reasons. “By taking concrete action to improve local condition, individuals in possession of responsibility, strength and human dignity are formed”