Immersion

Spring Houston Community Immersion Project

1. Introduction

Community immersion is a learning experience. It is designed to help integrate students learning abilities, identify passions, interests, and take part of something to a different level that is related to a community with continuous changes. Scholars and researchers have defined community in several ways. The definition used closely relates to their field of study. When looking at communities we can give many descriptions of what it consists of. The description is based on our opinion of what a community is. Netting states a simple definition from Warren that a community is a “combination of social units and systems that perform the major social functions relevant to meeting people’s needs on a local level” (Warren 1978).

To social workers, it is important to look at the community. It is the direct line that reveals how people are living, growing, observing the values, understanding differences from person to person, and ultimately observing what changes could possibly influence greater opportunities (Netting et al., 2013). Communities should not be based off of geographical locations by itself, because there are many other components that are included. For example, members of a certain area who have the same interests. This can include religious groups, gender, sex, people who have gone through similar experiences, or even sexual orientation. Knowing the size of a community and how each neighborhood is different is important. Is one neighborhood older or newer? Is one area cleaner or kept in better condition than others? To understand the community we must first learn the demographics of the community.

2. Community Demographics

The demographics that will be mentioned are important because they help build a foundation for learning, understanding and finding out if there were any increases and decreases of residents or reoccurring problems in this geographical location. The data that is mentioned are...