Global crises and hopefulness in community practice?

Abstract

In this first issue of the Journal of Community Practice (JCP) for 2023, we find it challenging to write an editorial that balances hopefulness for the future while also looking realistically at the wide range of current global crises. The crises are numerous, and we risk the appearance of minimizing those we do not name here. We know that they all need and deserve our editorial, scholarly, and professional attention. In this editorial, we focus on three global crises that are among those with the most urgent need for community practice in 2023. Here we discuss natural disasters, war, and the related dislocation of families and communities; climate change and the critical need for renewable energy; and poverty. We believe that teaching/learning, research, and social action in these crises areas need to be informed by a realistic view of the challenges ahead as well as examples of recent scientific and social breakthroughs that may help us balance the need for continued social change with something akin to cautious optimism about the future of our work with the people and communities of the world. In this editorial, we also offer three related thoughts on community practice in times of social and economic crises. First, these crises are negatively affecting individuals, families, communities, and nations in increasingly interrelated ways throughout the world. We are not able to successfully respond to social and economic crises as though the challenges we face are bound by local, regional, or national borders. Second, crises like those we highlight here require social workers and allies from related fields who have the education and training needed to respond effectively at all levels of practice. None of the serious social and economic challenges in the world today can be resolved exclusively at the individual and family levels. Our challenges require community practice, policy practice, and research to guide needed structural changes. Third, we will be better equipped to continue the work of averting and responding to crises if we keep our eyes open to research breakthroughs and examples of positive social change from a wide range of disciplines. While it will not help to create a sense of false hope or willfully ignore emerging threats to social wellbeing, the importance of balancing our view of what is wrong with the world and what is going well in the world is essential to the future of community practice. Without such a balanced view we risk not being able to recruit new generations of the best and the brightest to seemingly “grim” professions and condemning those currently in the field to burnout, cynicism, and ultimately abandoning the fight for social justice. JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY PRACTICE 2023, VOL. 31, NO. 1, 1–10 https://doi.org/10.1080/10705422.2023.2196967