Abstract

Community development workers inevitably engage with communal wounding, inflicted over generations by systemic oppression and deprivation. By ignoring this complexity and focussing on surface-level activities, we can unconsciously inflict new wounds. Or, we can consciously engage with the wounds and facilitate healing. The latter implies a complex process, because a journey into the heart of community implies that the workers look into the mirror of their own lived experiences and thereby becomes a journey into the self. Careful preparation of the workers is thus critical. The complexity of in-depth work with communities receives limited recognition in the literature; with the result that there is gap in research on the deliberate and systematic preparation of workers for such work. The aim of the article is to identify critical aspects of such preparation. A family support programme in South Africa was used as case study. The article suggests the healing journey of the workers (‘start-with-self’) as the basis of the approach. Increased self-knowledge is used to guide content and facilitation and protect workers from projecting unconscious issues onto participants’ processes, conflating the different journeys and compounding the fear-to-risk. The benefits of reflection/mirroring, metaphors, integrating the insider/outsider roles and ‘healing questions’ are discussed. The mentor plays a critical role. The article concludes that communal wounds cannot be allowed to fester; instead it is possible and critical to prepare workers to engage with integrity with intergenerational wounding, thereby limiting the unconscious inflicting of new wounds to the community and the worker.

中文翻译：

---

为前往受伤社区和自我的旅程做准备

摘要

社区发展工作者不可避免地会遭受系统性压迫和剥夺造成的世代相传的社区伤害。通过忽略这种复杂性并专注于地面活动，我们可以在不知不觉中造成新的创伤。或者，我们可以自觉地与伤口接触并促进愈合。后者意味着一个复杂的过程，因为进入社区中心的旅程意味着工人看着自己生活经验的镜子，从而成为进入自我的旅程。因此，工人的精心准备至关重要。与社区深入合作的复杂性在文献中得到了有限的认可；结果，在有意识地和系统地准备工人从事此类工作的研究方面存在差距。本文的目的是确定此类准备工作的关键方面。南非的一项家庭支助方案被用作案例研究。文章提出了工人的康复历程（“从自己做起”）作为该方法的基础。增强的自知之明可用于引导内容和便利，并保护工人避免将无意识的问题投射到参与者的过程中，将不同的旅程混为一谈，并加深了对风险的恐惧感。讨论了反思/镜像，隐喻，整合内部/外部角色和“修复问题”的好处。导师起着至关重要的作用。文章得出的结论是，不能允许公共伤口溃烂。取而代之的是，有可能和至关重要的是使工人做好准备以代代相传地受伤，