From a community-based perspective, all that is known about a community is obtained through intersubjective engagement. But how, exactly, is knowledge socially constructed and revealed in community-based projects? This article addresses this question by focusing on the use of narratives to understand a community. First, the importance of stories for gaining insight into a community’s reality is presented, followed by an examination of how this information should be accessed and engaged. The principles of Community-based Participatory Research (CBPR) that are consistent with this narrative approach are then discussed. Next, reflexivity is described to be the key for reading properly a community’s story. Finally, the conclusion points to the cooperative component of knowledge creation.
The purpose of this article is to bring to the forefront the inconsistency of so-called “grassroots” organizations that operate by using traditional structures. The case of Educate Everyone, a nonprofit organization in the Dominican Republic, is utilized to illustrate this incompatibility at the organizational level, and identify the ways in which this issue plays out in a project. Additionally, possibilities for the organization to employ a community-based framework are discussed. The accounts that are presented to explore the central theme stem from two months of fieldwork that were spent carrying out a participatory action research project with volunteers who support Educate Everyone’s annual academic camp.
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