Activity 30 – Community Mapping
Learning objectives: You will learn about the context in which you want to implement any activity and will improve your analytical and critical thinking skills.
We are asking you to create a shared visual map of your local community and city areas of concern, with broader community engagement if possible. You have to make a giant map of their locality on a large sheet of paper drawing a very rough map of the city/area of interest: roads, towns, hills, borders – whatever is right for the scale of the area you are working in or live in. The map doesn’t have to be too detailed. You can use any kind of images (taking from magazines or newspapers) or drawings to represent different features of the community. Then identify some of the good things about the local community, the local assets and resources:
- what services and facilities do the community have?
- what skills does the community have?
Then also write on sticky notes some of your emotions or feelings for different parts of the area, as well as for the different buildings and facilities you have identified and placed on the map. These can be positive or negative. You should place these sticky notes on the map.
Then identify issues or concerns in the community and mark them on the map.
Then identify where there are gaps in knowledge and further research is needed.
At the end of all these steps, please discuss this work with another mentor p to understand the difficulties and strengths of the areas represented and with what tools and strategies they can intervene as mentors.
Additional Remarks: It is highly recommended that mentors reflect about their community maps and share their observations with other mentors. Moreover, mentors are invited to send their community maps to the Mentors‘ training trainer.