A Community-based Organization

Since the reform and opening-up, China's NGOs(non-government organizations) have been developing rapidly. Researches about NGOs have also been getting popular. Many scholars are concerned about the living situation of NGOs, difficulties they have encountered in development, relations with government and the development strategies NGOs have employed. But little attention has been paid to their social functions, especially to the changes they have brought about to a community of any scale.What does this paper want to study? In short, it is an attempt to find the social functions of a case NGO. That is, whether there are some changes in community because of the existence of the NGO, and if so, what these changes are. Based on the description, an explanation will be offered to these changes.The theory of social capital is the guiding theory in this study and its three dimensions will be used to measure the changes. Participant observation and interviews are employed to describe and analyze the data collected from a private service organization for people with disabilities.The research finds that the NGO has brought about some changes to the community since its set-up. The residents who connected with the NGO can be generally divided into three categories, that is, ordinarily residents including college students who live near by the case organization and who often do volunteer there, civil servants, residents who believe in religion, especially Christianity. The community has witnessed a change in the attitude, recognition and behaviors of all these three categories'towards the case NGO, a change from indifference and exclusion, to recognization and acceptance; and their contacts with, their care for and the reciprocity with the case NGO, along with their engagement in public affairs in the disability sector, have improved to some extent. That is, there is indeed some development in the so called structural, cognitive social capital and civic engagement in the community in which the case NGO exists.The existence of the case NGO is an important driving factor for the changes of the community. As a bridge between residents and people with disabilities, "JA" plays an important role in creating a link with residents and the disabled, fostering trust, caring and reciprocity between the residents and people with disabilities, and advocating civic engagement. But the changes are not monumental, both horizontally and vertically. The primary reasons for the limited changes in social capital are that most of the relevant residents have developed a rational way of thinking, and there is an absence of trust in the target community.Finally, in the discussion sector, the paper discusses methodology, social construction and research ethics.