So how are you going to do that? What are your strategies?
The Nature of Problems
You must understand the problem before you decide where to intervene. (I love that word. It sounds so intellectual.) Every problem has some causal factors or enabling factors. Each of these factors has its own causal factors and enabling factors. Look at the Cause-Effect Chain example.
In this example, you see the problem as poverty in your neighborhood, so your vision is of a neighborhood without poverty and your mission is to eliminate poverty. You examine the Cause-Effect Chain. One of the causes of poverty is that people don’t have jobs. One of the causes of a lack of jobs is a lack of skill; then no skills because of a lack of basic secondary education, due, in part, to a lack of engagement in school, due to discouragement from an inability to read at grade level, due to a lack of personal attention in the early elementary grades.
Pick Your Strategy
You can choose to intervene at any level. The closer you are to the left in this diagram, the closer to root-causes, the more effective and permanent will be the outcome, but the outcome may take years to be realized.
You could choose to operate an employment agency. You could provide skills training. You could mentor kids through elementary school and high school. You could provide volunteer readers for 1st through 3rd grade. You could operate after-school or summer class programs. It’s your choice. These are all potential strategies that can lead to the desired outcome (your vision.) Finding jobs will work today, but don’t last long. Teaching kids to read will have a permanent effect, but will take decades to to reduce poverty. Welfare works today. Building infrastructure can last for a century.
You will need to consider your own skills and resources. Do what you are good at.
You will need to look at what others are doing. Don’t duplicate. Instead, figure out and articulate what makes your strategy unique.
Finally, take a long hard look at obstacles. What is keeping you from doing this today. Just name the things holding you back. Lack of time is not an obstacle, as time is a constant for all of us. Having other priorities looks like lack of time. Don’t even use the words “lack of” in naming the obstacles. Then, for each obstacle, ask, “What causes this?” You will then have a new set of more fundamental obstacles. Then ask again, and again, up to five times.
Now you have insight into your strategies.