Do we need a campaign for real community development?
Do you know why our neighbourhoods are poorly organised, how they can do better and how to promote real community development online?
You can read about how community development has lost its way in my free ebook, “Community Development is Dead!”. Find out how to sign up for it at the end of this post. If you are in the UK, you’re sure to disagree about some things I write about. So, write and tell me what you think! You can comment on the ebook by visiting the post I’ve provided for that purpose. If you’re not based in the UK, please comment about how your country compares with community development in the UK.
The Central Role of Activist
This sequence of posts, complements the ebook. I wrote it as an email sequence about a year ago. My aim at the time was to share some practicalities. What is real community development; the best way to support community activists?
Not everyone who works in the community is a community development worker. There are other equally valuable roles; many agencies provide local workers in the community. So, we need to be clear about what community development is and how it supports the other roles.
In the ebook I explain how we confuse the roles of activist and development worker at our peril! Activists need support from development workers and so confusing the two roles tends to devalue the work of activists. Community activists actually do the work and need the support of development workers.
So, I’ll start by exploring four topics, key to understanding community development and how it differs from the role of activists:
- Meetings
- Mutuality
- Mentors
- Models
These might not look exciting but together they define some of the problems community development has encountered in the UK. So next week it’s “Meetings, Meetings, Meetings” – won’t you be glad when they’re over?