Blog Archives - Community Psychology

Blog

We invite Community Psychologists and those engaged in community work to write or re-post their ideas and stories from their work.

Towards Action in Community Psychology: Using Intersectionality to Promote Youth Development

Posted in: Blog, Inspiration
Published in: The Community Psychologist
Intersectionality theory is particularly relevant in working with youth given that they are systematically disenfranchised due to their age. Youth is an opportune time to promote leaders advocating for social justice. Structural systems affecting youth can benefit from critical examination to inform more equitable systems.

Blog: The Evolution of a Career: from Social Services to Community Psychologist

Posted in: Blog, Inspiration
Published in: The Community Psychologist
My path to Community Psychology was long and winding. Many of the complex situations in my day-to-day job include working with mentally ill clients in dire situations, but there were always more questions than answers. The desire to learn more about my interest led me to research about the concepts of a sense of community […]

Blog: Community Psychology Principles for Asset-Based and Citizen-Driven Actions Can Help Immigrants Thrive

Posted in: Blog, Immigrant Justice, Marginalized Groups | Tags: Video
Acculturation includes attitudinal changes that take place after contact with culturally dissimilar people, groups, and social influences. The process of acculturation invites host society members to adapt through contact with culturally dissimilar people. Communities thrive when they actively welcome immigrants and proactively assist with their acculturation.

PAR and Photovoice: Using a Decolonized Lens Working with Communities

Posted in: Anti-Racism, Blog | Tags: Featured Content
Published in: The Community Psychologist
Given the ubiquitous polarizing gap that has been dividing and driving U.S. political affairs, we have an opportunity to use participatory approaches and listen to those most impacted in innovative ways. Aspects of Participatory Action Research (PAR) can be utilized to support engagement, organizing, and conversations around community issues.

Beyond Diversity Statements: Necessary Considerations for Designing Health Equity Approaches

Posted in: Anti-Racism, Blog, Healthcare | Tags: Featured Content
Published in: The Community Psychologist
What does “anti-racism” look like in healthcare? It is early intervention, affordable, integrated, trauma-informed, and strengths-based.

Youth Can (and should) Lead Movements to Support Environmental Work

Posted in: Blog, Environment, Inspiration
Generation-based priorities lead youth to promote environmental sustainability, health, and social justice. Youth are capable of unique problem-solving and deserving of authority related to environmental sustainability, the built environment, and health, while showing that certain communities are disproportionately impacted by climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss.

Voices of the Youth Climate Justice Movement

Posted in: Blog, Environment
Published in: The Community Psychologist
How do youth view and categorize success? How do they deal with the burnout and frustration that inevitably comes when those most interested in changing the status quo have the least power to fix it? We explore questions regarding youth climate justice successes and challenges, posing them within an intersectional framework.

Community Reclamation through Urban Gardening as a Liberatory Praxis

Posted in: Blog, Environment
Published in: The Community Psychologist
Land reclamation can empower communities, reconnect people to land, and grow towards community liberation and autonomy. Communities are able to partake in revolutionary acts of autonomy and reclamation through the actions of physically reclaiming land in urban landscapes by eradicating colonizer plants with those plants that are Indigenous to their environments.

Figure 1: considerations for pronoun circles based on student input and trans scholarship related to the practice, with quotations related to the experience described or references to further discussions of the topic.

Drawing on the Experiences of Trans Students to Inform Pronoun Disclosure in Higher Education Settings

Posted in: Blog, Marginalized Groups | Tags: Featured Content
Published in: The Community Psychologist
How pronouns are addressed can seriously impact a student’s well-being. I provide some considerations for how an instructor or mentor might approach pronoun disclosure with the goal of increasing comfort and decreasing coercion, based on the experiences of six trans undergraduate students who advised these recommendations through qualitative interviews and text submissions, and my own […]

Don’t Throw It Away – Give It Away: Recycling Electronic Tech to Underserved Communities

Posted in: Blog, Poverty and Socioeconomic Status | Tags: Featured Content
Published in: The Community Psychologist
Increasing technology access for all is a crucial issue affecting vulnerable populations. Specific interventions focused on increasing access to knowledge about technology, technological skills and development, and technological infrastructure are important for creating a more socially just world and workforce.