ON FARM COMMUNITY PROGRAMME
Community programme focussing on healthy community relationships, good housing management and implementation, including housing and community agreements.
The dynamics on a farm is unique in that the workers and their families are an ‘on farm community’ that has an impact on the farm’s general culture and wellbeing. This on farm community has the potential to strengthen the farm’s success or have the opposite effect as well.
Audits often point out the technical concerns of houses but are not able to pin-point the live-in community’s general wellbeing due to the complexities that each farm community experiences. Several social realities confront the community e.g. alcohol and drug abuse, broken family structures with poor relationships, children and teenagers isolated and not engaged, crime elements etc.
These needs are real and relevant for the community and when there are no mechanism or skills to start identifying and addressing the issues the fear and frustration grows and plays out in many negative ways e.g. poor housing upkeep, lack of interest and general sense of disempowerment. When individuals and a collective community do not stand up for what they value, they loose hope and pride and focus on the future.
The On Farm Community programme is designed to start a process where all the players on the farm could identify their needs and start playing a part, at how they could indeed, realistically, move towards their best and strongest community.
Overall goal of the On Farm Community Programme
Focusing on owner, tenant and community relationships and good management
The goal of the OFCP programme is to equip all the various stakeholders with insight and skills to incrementally move towards collaboratively taking ownership that lead to a sustained community effort and creating their best and strongest community for their farm. The outcomes of the OFCP work towards:
- The Community has a type of social compact – co-operation a shared and institutionalised
- The Community has a realistic view of what is possible and what is not
- The Community realise they need to take ownership for crafting a “good community”
- Where there is an understanding of what are the worker community’s responsibility, the producer’s responsibility and overall co-responsibility
- Where those living together in community will be courageous enough to manage themselves as a community and share problems and solutions and take joint decisions and shared responsibility.
This a medium term programme and will run over a period of minimum 6 months depending season and logistics for sustainable implementation.
COMPONENTS OF THE ON FARM COMMUNITY PROGRAMME
Interventions
2 Compulsory Programs for all living on farm: FPL (EK) and FHC (ONS)
Foundations of Personal leadership (FPL) | EK program
- 1.5 -day program at individual level
- The goal of FPL | EK is to start building personal self worth and confidence in order to responsibly and positively participate in community life
- Men and Women attend separately due to gender sensitivity, different roles played in/around the farm and around housing community itself and also topic focus and relevance, similar themes are addressed in both male and female groups
- Partners of working farm dwellers are also invited that live on the farm as well as those with right of tenure as they equally play an important role in the farm community
- Many of the discussions during this day and a half day speak to both personal and interpersonal (community) emotional intelligences, preparing for a more collaborative follow up during the Foundations of Healthy Community program | ONS program
- The key standouts from FPL will be used to drive home and illustrate some of the ONS concepts and conversations
- The key outcomes in the report from EK will be used to approach and highlight the main themes to be identified
- The key EQ drivers will be used to reference some of the discussions and take the full group to the ONS step
Foundations of Healthy Communities (FHC) | ONS program
- 1-day program at collective level
- The goal of FHC | ONS is to collectively design a blueprint for their own community that showcases the realities that would need to be addressed as well as their community commitment in order to start actioning their vision of a Strong and Best Community on their farm through their community conversations and subsequent actions
- This session combines the men and women from the previous FPL programs as they jointly contributed to the past dysfunctions and will jointly play a role in the future successes of a revitalised social farm system as well as leadership of the farm that play a vital role in the success.
- The session is purposed to start a process where the collective community proactively take on their needs identified through community coaching support.
- The process is based on the positive strategic tool of Appreciative Enquiry that allows the community to take their vision and identify their existing building blocks, dream about their outcomes and then identify their community charter and the specific themes from their dream. They complete the day by nominating and choosing the core team as well as all the people committing to at least one of the action groups that will address the identified themes. Finally a next date is identified and the process then kicks off when the Community meetings commence, driven by the community itself and all of the community participating in the solutioning and actioning of the decisions
- The core community leadership is prepared to take on their roles, as they will drive the process within community thereafter, with initial support from a seasoned community coach.
Coaching
What is coaching and what is the value and impact in this programme?- Coaching is a safe thinking space to stimulate and empower the person being coached to find their own solutions and actions to their challenges and opportunities. A coach is deliberately not part of the close community in order to stay objective and comes with expertise in coaching whilst the person being coached is the expert in their own environment and the solutions and next steps lie within them. The coaching process allows for the way forward to be identified and actioned by the person or group being coached
Coaching principles:
G – what are the goals you wish to achieve on the farm/workplace?
R – what realities are at play that could assist or block achieving the goals that will need to be addressed?
O – Options speak to what and how these realities need to be prioritised, addressed and achieved
W – which steps and actions must be taken to move towards the goals?
Who will be coached?
- Producer /Manager leadership team; to support the community process with appropriate guidance and support from farm leadership
- Community leadership; to set the core group up for a strong start with clarity on their roles and responsibilities and the Community conversation process (GROW) during community sessions
- Collective Community Coaching; during onset of Community meetings there is support to guide both community leadership and community to stay focused on their blueprint and solutions orientated with real actions
ALSO WITH Mentoring
What is mentoring and what is the value and impact in this programme?
Using local and relevant industry expertise a mentor is identified that can guide and share their successful experiences from similar type environments and journey with the manager and community leadership group during their community journey. Mentors share how they took on the challenge of transformation of their community and the purpose is to inspire, guide and share learning from their own experiences
Who will be mentored?
Producer/Manager of farm and the Community core group together; Mentoring will be encouraged and is highly recommended if possible. These mentors may need to be established and will be on a volunteer basis
- Additional support identified if relevant: some of the community themes during their discussions may wish to reach out to other support organizations that are active in some of the relevant fields
- e.g. Alcoholism: AWARE
- e.g. Domestic abuse: BADISA or ACVV or SAP: Victim support unit
Additional Support
Support via the WIETA website: