Rosa María Cueto

Sense of Community in a Context of Community Violence

The following study analyzes the concept of sense of community of a group of people living in a shanty town in a district in the eastern outskirts of Lima, characterized by processes of community violence. With this in mind, a mixed methodology and a concurrent design were chosen, applying the Scale of Sense of Community, SCI-2, a question to measure the perceived level of danger through a Likert scale, and five individual interviews with the population. The results show that the higher the level of danger perceived in the zone, the lower the sense of community is. Likewise, in this group of people their sense of community is based above all on an emotional shared connection and on a strong feeling of membership. On the contrary, the difficulty to satisfy their collective needs through organization and the weak relationship that exists between the population and its leaders, decrease and deteriorate the sense of community in this group.

Community Participation and Strengthening in a Reconstruction Context After a Natural Disaster

During the first academic term of 2010, participatory action investigation processes were conducted in three communities affected by the 2007 high magnitude earthquake that occurred in the province of Chincha (Ica, Peru). In the process, members of the communities identified, as core problems, aspects related to the community coexistence, emphasizing the attention of the most vulnerable segments (children and adolescents) in the context of economic constraints and problems aggravated by the earthquake. Results include an analysis of the needs and reactions following the earthquake, the leadership and the power relations visible in the post disaster context and, finally, the community participation throughout the reconstruction process. This article also proposes some topics resulting from the analysis, aiming to contribute to interventions focused on community participation and strengthening of local resources in contexts of great vulnerability to natural disasters.