An emerging theoretical framework among western scholars suggests that three facets of a community, namely: social structures, social processes, and culture, are equally important in keeping communities relatively free from crime, delinquency, and other negative behaviors. This framework also suggests that these three facets must be addressed simultaneously in community interventions to sustain behavioral changes since failure to improve in one aspect may negate the gains in the other aspects. While this theoretical framework had been utilized in community-based interventions in the United States, it had not been used to assess interventions in a developing country like the Philippines. This dissertation utilizes qualitative data collected in a slum area in Metro Manila, the Philippines, where residents partnered with the Gawad Kalinga, a Non-Governmental Organization that habilitates slum communities with new housing and a host of social interventions. This dissertation aims to determine the robustness of the above theoretical framework by assessing the social structures, social processes, and culture within a slum area in the Philippines before and after the Gawad Kalinga intervention. Using a phenomenological approach, this dissertation aims to understand the lived experiences of slum residents prior to the Gawad Kalinga program as their community underwent the Gawad Kalinga transformation. This dissertation finds through thick narratives of slum residents that the challenges posed by the structural conditions and the attendant social processes and culture of the slum setup prior to Gawad Kalinga contributed to elevated levels of crime, delinquency, and other negative behaviors. Narratives also indicate that changes in the social structures, social processes, and community culture introduced through the Gawad Kalinga program improved the behaviors of residents in the community. However, the experiences of rekals (residents who rejected the program) and the pendings (residents whose houses were not yet constructed) suggested that the rejection or absence of change in one aspect of the community may negate the gains in other aspects, as few of these residents continued to exhibit negative behaviors. These findings are congruent to the claims of the western theoretical framework and underscore the importance of incorporating simultaneously the three community facets of social structures, social processes, and culture in theory and policy prescriptions.
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