Sociology

Part I
As I look forward to my placement, there are quite a number of areas my learning and development needs that that I will endeavour to meet during my placement. These include                                                                                                                                         
a) Promoting team building. During the first week of my course, I learnt many things to do with how to relate with other people. Many activities were carried out by teamwork in which we all had to cooperate in order to get the work done. I learnt to listen, I learnt how to be tolerant after realizing how different people are, and I also learnt to listen to others. There are times when one needs to be assertive. During my placement, I look forward to encountering situations that will require me to be assertive.  People need support and motivation in everything that they are doing, and nothing good can be done by a team if cooperation lacks in the team.

b) Communication skills. Another area of development that I will try to meet during my placement is using the communication skills that I have learnt. These include speaking effectively so that the person(s) that Ill be speaking to will understand the message that I will be intending to convey and try to express my ideas clearly. I will also try to give the suitable feedback when required. Whenever there will be need for negotiation, I will try to use the negotiating skills that I learnt during in the initial days of my course, especially when we were planning our teams project. Another thing that I will try to observe is the non-verbal communication. As I have learnt during my training. Sometimes people communicate more non-verbally than when they talk. During our project, I learnt that whenever my team-mates got tired, I could easily tell from their behaviour, though when asked, sometimes they could deny the fact.

c) Management skills. In all cases when one becomes in charge of a project, the success or failure of the project depends on the management skills of the person in charge. During our teams project, we held the managerial position in turns by rotation and I will be trying to meet a high level of competence in this area.

Time management is a very important factor, both at a personal level, as a team member or as a team leader. All tasks are to be completed within a specified time frame. I have managed to acquire time management skills through practice as a member of my team because the delay of a team member always causes the whole team to be late. During our project planning, we had to schedule our time and make sure that everything was done according to the schedule. I know during placement, this will be a vital skill that I have learnt and will need.

d) Presentation. In real community and youth situations, the social worker will meet many situations in which heshe will community leader forums, management committees, local leaders as well as colleagues. In these cases, presentation skills will be very important. These skills have been acquired during the community work project and throughout the period of my training as each and everyday I have had to deal with my colleagues, thereby having to demonstrate and practice my presentation skills. During placement, the knowledge that I have acquired will be tested in community and youth real situations.

e) Transferable skills. These are the skills that I have learnt in everyday life through interacting with people and during my training, which will be handy during my placement and intimidiary skills. These include being sensitive, conveying feelings, sharing credit, counselling, delegating with respect, representing others, perceiving feelings, listening attentively, facilitating group discussion, persuading, reporting information, describing feelings, interviewing, editing, forecasting, creating ideas, identifying problems, imagining alternatives, identifying resources, gathering information, solving problems, setting goals, extracting important information, defining needs, analyzing, developing and evaluation strategies, coordinating tasks, selling ideas or products, managing conflict, implementing decisions, setting and meeting deadlines and others.

Although it will be a absolutely fascinating to put everything that I have learnt into practice during my placement, there are some areas that I think require more emphasis than others. These are the areas that I feel are more important to me or that I feel I did not get enough chance to practice during the course. These include

Presentation. This is because I am not used to addressing crowds. Although I am not xenophobic, I feel that having more practice would help in furthering my presentation skills.

Management. Most of the skills required for management are sharpened with practice. During my training, I feel that the role I played as a manager was not done for an adequate length of time.
Communication skills. Practice makes perfect. An opportunity to practice my skills in this particular area will help me develop in it.

In order to develop further in these areas, Im planning to enrol in a public relation evening class. I am also planning to take each and every opportunity that comes my way to address the youth (Irish Youth Centre Handbook, 2008).

Part II
Need
Most of the young people in the area have been idle and are slowly by slowly engaging in organized crimes as well as doing drugs. This attracted my attention and decided that i need to do something about the many young people that are idle in the community, in a bid to keep them safe and away from these activities that may completely ruin their lives, I decided to establish a project that will involve them and save them. As the saying goes, an idle mind is the devils workshop. For a period of several years, statistics show that the rate of drug use in our community has been increasing. The most important factor was to save them from these activities and also involve them in an a project that could be of help to them now and in future.

In the recent days, there have always a confrontation between local authority and young people because they would do anything provided it within their capability. This has made the area so insecure and no young people would be trusted. All young people were being associated with crimes, drugs and other problems the community are facing. There was a great need to save them from all these problems.

Aim                                                                                   
The main aim of starting this project is to have all youths involved in community development and have them engage with a project that rhymes with their interest. I organized a clean up project around the fire station so as we may have a field to do some other activities. This would help the youth from being idle as well as participating in the community welfare activities. This was found to be the most important activity because its of great benefit and will also help youths in exchanging ideas as well as meeting other people who works in the fire station. This will in the long run keep the youth busy and away from unfavourable behaviour.

Since these youths have different talents as well as likes, I decided to involve them and each and every person to do what heshe can do best. This is aimed at attracting more youths and motivates them to always participate in the project. Al long run, there would be a youth sports club that will include, football, volleyball, athletics, hockey and table tennis.

Every individual matters. I had to make sure that all youths have achieved through the application of every child matters theory.

Healthy- its my aim that all participating youth will be healthy physically, mentally as well as psychologically. This will be achieved through engaging them in exercises as well as minimizing their idle time. This will also reduce the time a youth could be using to think of other things.
Safety- This will ensure all participating youths are safe, that is, they will not be engaging in drugs, will have reduced commotion with authority and will not be committing crimes since they wont have time to organize.

Enjoy and achieve-They will be enjoying through playing games, exchanging ideas and through lectures from qualified motivators. This will plant a feeling of confidence and hope in them.
Positive contribution- Youths will be contributing positive to the society and will also increase the communitys trust in youths. This will be dont through clean ups, litter collecting as well as tree planting.

Economical achievement- Its aimed that this project will attract some donations in future. This will help the youths and also through improving their talents, they will in future attract some donations.

Outcome
Improved relationship. There will be enhanced relation between the youth as a result of them meeting and sharing jokes frequently as they work in the field and also as they compete on who would complete a bigger potion fast.

Enhance social integrity. When members of the community come together for a good course, it brings about wholesome habits which tend to attract other members, and in the long run, the unifying factor becomes the trendy thing to be identified with. This is more so with the youth, as they are known to always want to go with the trend.

Healthy youth. Unlike what drug use and other unwholesome behaviours do to the youth, participation in the community project will help the youth to relax and be of sound health and mind. Youths will have an opportunity to engage each other in the work and have an opportunity to discuss important issues as they are not idle.

Orientation. Many youth do not know what career they want to pursue. When they fail to meet other people and engage in no social activities which can help hem interact with others, the result is that they remain enclosed in their own cocoons and never get the chance to stretch their wings.
Information. Through participating in the clean up project, many people including leaders will be attracted and will pay attention to what the youths are doing and in turn they will come in and help them move on and build their lives and work for pay. This will also help the youth will stop being ignorant of the happenings in their community.

Methods
Physical fitness. Before they start on any game, they will be required to do some physical exercises. With time, enough space will be provided for the youth who will be interested in carrying out physical fitness exercises for competition, like weight lifting, muscle building and wrestling. Included too will be basic equipments and a shower tents.

Playing space. After cleaning the area around the fire station, there will be enough space for use by all the youth who will be interested in involving in different sports and developing their talents. This space will also be a youths meeting point and it would be hard for criminals to carry out their crimes in other areas in the name of youths.

Lecture sessions. There will always be a lecture session three days a week. Each session will last between 45 minutes to one hour. This will be of advantage because youths will be advised by different people who I will be inviting. Each session will be unique and will address all maters regarding youth development and issues relating to the community at large. 

Membership. Interested youth will be required to enrol for membership. This will help the management in budgeting and setting up time-tables. The registration will take 5 days and will be carried out be 9 people. The reason behind this is to know our members and will easy the managing of youth affairs and also in planning for them. Each member will have a tag beating his name and age as well as his residential address, this will ease the connection between the management and the youths as well as getting statistics of every street in town. This will also help in locating the youth easily y if needed.

Workers. There is no provision for anyone to be hired for salary in these activities. This will be a non profit project that will be aimed at helping and motivating youths. All members will be required to be participating in all activities of the project including, clean ups around the area, collecting garbage and planning of trees.

Leadership. The members will elect their leaders. However, leaders will go for a period of one year. All members will expected to elect their respective group leader so as it would be easy to know what problems they are facing. These leaders will be my vices and I will be dealing with them in managing this project.  Implementation

This project will take a period of five years. During this period, all youths would be fully reformed and would have adapted to the projects terms. In this regard, they will be entitled to register though at no cost in order to have the statistics of the youths and monitor each and every member. This will also help the youths in establishing their clubs which might also help them in planning for other activities. With well organized youths, it would be easier to send proposals to different organizations to help me purchase working tools and other amenities they may require to help them work for the community.

Youths will be entitled to determine what they would need in carrying out their daily work in the project. This will involve them directly as they would be entitled to raise their views and concern so as I can be able to distinguish what would be important and urgent before we look for means to get it.

I would be working with youths would be elected as leaders of different groups. They will be helping me manage and balance the groups needs not to favour some. They will also be helping me manage the groups as they would be having a direct link with individual youths.
For a better and organized work, I shall require some working tools including, books, files, pens, a laptop and a desk. Other resources that would be required are for helping youths carry out their tasks. These tools would be slashes, shovels, hoes, wheelbarrows, sports costumes and shower tents.

Evaluation
According to Donals Schon, (1997), there are different ways for self evaluation and in determining whether the work that has been done will have benefits to the youth. According to his theory of self evaluation, use of technology would be one of the best ways for self evaluation. Though its surrounded by bias, there is not specific technology that would fit this.

Voluntary is another theory used by Schon. When there is an increase in the number of members and volunteers, there is a sign of success. This is one of the most used techniques of evaluating youth work success. In some cases, the already registered youths may leave the project and fall back to their former activities. This show there is no success and needs an argent action to cater for this.

According to Schn, Donald (1983), inviting social work experts, we will be able to evaluate our work.  These experts will be able to assess the work and probable strings and weaknesses of the projects and this will determine whether the strengths outweigh weaknesses. When strengths are more than positive, it shows that the project is on success tread and vice versa.

Part III
During my placement, I worked with a group of youth in a clean up exercise. The work involved clearing for a firestation a large area full of bushes, trees and rubbish in order to facilitate the fire station to use it as a training area. In this part of the paper, I will analyse my ability to challenge oppressive behaviour and attitudes using relevant theories, my knowledge and experience gained during my placement when I worked with a youth group. First, when young people come together for a particular purpose, this gathering can be referred to as a group. Any experiences and outcomes that arise from such a gathering can be termed as group work.

Group development
Many different theories have been brought up about group formation, but one thing in which they have all agreed on is that group formation takes place in stages, which are predictable. In his 1965 paper, Tuckman came up with a model in which he proposed that during the development of a group, it passes through several stages. I had the opportunity to see the development of the group and the different stages during my placement and the presence, absence and degree and seriousness of oppressive attitude and behaviour at the different stages of the development of the group (Irish Youth Centre, 2008).

Stage 1 A this stage, the members of the group come together. At this time they are not used to dealing with each other and are therefore not open with each other, there is no togetherness or cohesiveness in t he group and the members do not share feelings and experiences as they are still new to each other. This stage is characterised by anxiety, isolation, inadequacy and frustration. Members feel emotionally challenged by other members who are perceived to be stronger or to possess better qualities.  The group tries to maintain the status quo, as it feels more comfortable. At this stage I didnt notice any oppressive attitudes

Stage 2 at this stage, it is unlikely that oppressive attitude and behaviour can take place because as I have just mentioned, none of the members wants to change the status quo. At this stage, only individuals who differ at a personal level may portray aggressive behaviour.

Stage 2 This is called the storming stage and at this stage the members start to confront each other as they begin to compete for roles which they perceive will give them position in the group, or make them feel wanted in the group. At this stage the members start to assert themselves, and the cool of the joining stage starts to disappear. At this stage, oppressive behaviour starts to surface.

Stage 3 This is called the norming stage in which the members are allocated roles. Some members fail to appreciate the roles they are given and this leads to subdivisions in the group, mainly between those who are satisfied and those who are not. The dos and donts are laid down and the group gets structured. The group that I was working with took some time to settle. This was because during allocation of duties, none of the members wanted to do the work of collecting rubbish. There were those who argued that the work ought to be done by rotation during the four days, while others thought that it might be beneficial if the same person did the same duty throughout the period of four days as he would be better owing to gained experience. This was however thrown out and the group settled for rotation. It was clear that at this stage, two sub-groups had already emerged-those who had been allocated what was viewed as better duties and were satisfied, and those who were not supportive to the situation and wanted a change. Oppressive behaviour was evident in this stage as the pro and anti establishment groups attempted to dominate each over the other.

Stage 4 This is the performing stage in which the group performs effectively with well defined roles, with each member feeling part of the team. At this stage, members start to define roles according to talent and so on. I remember that during my placement, when it came to cutting trees, there were some members who were strong and experience and I noticed everyone encouraging them and giving them all the support they needed. The weak members were given lighter jobs out of consideration.
Stage 5 mourning At this stage the life of the group finally and inevitably comes to an end. When this stage came during my placement, I noticed the group exhibit the following characteristics
Denial- wanting to assume that the time had not come for the group to disperse.

Need expression- showing signs of hope that the group will continue.
Evaluation- discussion of the groups experience.
Oppressive behaviour may target many different areas of an individual including racism, xenophobia, classism, sexism, homophobia, heterosexism, and ageism. They are aimed at humiliating mostly based on stereotypes which cause much pain and humiliation and have far-reaching consequences. These behaviours are usually aimed at humiliating the person to whom t hey are directed and also to deny equal opportunities. The perpetrators of these behaviours also use it to gain control over other people, usually by making these people feel inadequate. At institutional level, oppression is perpetrated by discriminating some people on the basis of any of the above stated reasons. In challenging this negative behaviour, the first thing that I would do is to recognize any situation where such practice is taking place. These may include

Passivity. This occurs when people fail to care about this behaviour, thereby accepting its perpetration. Minority groups who are likely to be victims of oppression are not taken care of.  It comes about when staffs fail to notice oppressive practice.

Lack of action. This is when the staffs notice oppressive attitudes but fails to do anything about it.
Active oppression. This includes toleration of insults, snide comments, name calling, insulting graffiti, failing to give required services etc.

Violence. This comes about as bullying (including cyber-bullying), threats, domestic violence, slavery etc.

Internalised oppression. This is when oppressive attitudes are taken in by the victim who then directs the practice to himherself and to others with the same characteristics or in the same circumstances (Schon, 1997).

All practices with the objective of reversing negative messages concerning skills and abilities that young people may have taken in during their life in society. In order to challenge oppressive behaviour, one thing that I did was to create awareness to the targeted individual and gave them a different way of looking at the situation, encouraging them to view themselves more positively. In order to achieve this, I discussed the available possibilities with them. In addition I encouraged them to participate in different and new experiences involving community and youth (Schn, 1883).