Multicultural Community Organizing: A Strategy for Change.

The article focuses on how multicultural organizing can help improve the lives of individuals, families and communities. What does social work's knowledge of multicultural organizing suggest for influencing growing income inequalities and the shift from federal to local administration of social welfare services? The objective for organizing diverse ethnic groups in a community is to achieve reciprocal empowerment so that together the groups can work toward social justice. Given the social situation in the United States, this effort implies a complete transformation of the social structure, constructing equitable and just political, economic, and intergroup relationships. In this process, diversity must be understood and respected and its strengths put to good use in forging unity. Through unity in diversity and social change, multicultural community organizers can be instrumental in promoting greater equity. This promise of multicultural practice will remain unfulfilled if social workers continue to only react to societal changes and maintain the current structure of profession and education. Multicultural community practice will require redesigning social work education and practice. Significant changes must occur in how social workers educate students for collaborative, empowerment-based practice. It also requires the participation of social workers in nontraditional settings as activists, advocates, and mobilizers of community potential.