ABSTRACT
Community organizing is the process of helping communities work together to identify and solve problems. Most organizing approaches focus on empowering and strengthening communities to solve their own problems. Locality development is a neighborhood based organizing approach to engage a broad range of key stakeholders in developing goals and taking civic action. Consensus organizing focuses on five key strategic principles and nine basic steps. There are several examples of how consensus organizing has been used to engage residents and build their capacity to create community change in community development, family services, violence prevention, and equitable development. Consensus organizing is a vehicle through which social workers can address contemporary issues that continue to impact the individuals, families, groups, and communities with which we work, including racial injustices, police brutality, as well as health, housing, food, and other equity issues exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Consensus organizers engage in advocacy and peaceful protests around inequity and racial injustices. However, they also work to create mutual interests and solutions around these long-term problems, authentically engaging residents and those affected by problems to lead the creation of solutions to some of society's most pressing issues. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)