Step into the Community Posted on January 16, 2008 Darrell P. Wheeler (bio) describes specific ways to develop substantive relationships with community members.

If you're really interested in making a change in people's lives, then one of the ways that you do it is stepping into the community and using your five senses as a researcher to ask yourself, "What are people doing in this geographic space or in this Internet space?" Whatever affinity group that you're calling a community, what are they doing, and what are their struggles?

Developing organic relationships with people that allow you to listen. That time that you spend listening up front helps you. I think it has been invaluable to me being able to more accurately articulate what I need to, in written form and in public venues, what I need to articulate about the significant issues and barriers that are facing African-American men in HIV prevention, as opposed to rolling out the same rhetoric about what we as scholars think these men need to do. Because clearly, that hasn't worked, as the epidemic data is evidence.

So I think, again, for the young scholar, the time spent critically asking themselves, "What is it that I want to do with this community?" And then thinking about, "How does that work with what the community members are saying?" and developing organic relations. Going out to lunch with people, participating in civic organizations as you could. Being volunteers in organizations early on can give you a very up front and personal experience of a community's activity.

So it could be a child welfare agency. It could be HIV and AIDS, that's the area I'm doing. It could be a community health center. There are many places in which our time and effort could be well spent, just spending time working with, elbow-to-elbow is a cliche, with community members to get a sense of, “What are the struggles?”

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