How do we marginalise local activists? Are activists really somehow inferior to development workers? Some people argue it is unfair to deny activists the opportunity to train as a development workers but why so little training for activists? There are no equivalents to community development National Vocational Qualifications for activists and this devalues their role in consequence.
By all means, provide training for activists who want to become development workers but most activists do not become development workers and their unique and central role should be recognised. Vocational qualifications for activists are perhaps inappropriate as activism is essentially a voluntary role. However, activists use the same skills in paid employment and so there is a vocational dimension to activism. Activist training should not focus on vocation but certification can bear vocational applications in mind.
It is important to recognise activists’ unique and central role in communities. I’ve been an activist for most of my life and did not stop being an activist when I practiced as a development worker. I found it important to understand they are different roles and you can’t effectively be both at one time. I found my performance improved as a development worker when I dressed differently in the role. My jacket and tie reminded me and the activists I worked with that my role was different. In my home community I was an activist. working alongside other development workers. This works for me, other development workers find different ways of being clear about the role they inhabit.
Training
Training for activists includes:
- situation and power analysis
- campaigning
- how to negotiate
- funding sources and how to manage them
- organisations, how to develop and manage them
- group dynamics and officer roles
Training for activists should be developmental, by which I mean “learning by doing”. It may be necessary to pass on some theory but the topics and approach should be as close as possible to real life experiences. Activists in training plan, execute and evaluate their activities. This way they set their own agenda without the need for outputs many professional trainers bring to community work.
Activists effect change. They’re hands on people; paid or unpaid entrepreneurs. Some may legitimately use their activities to generate personal income. So, for example, a café owner might encourage local groups to use their café for their meetings. I appreciate this may seem to be heresy but I do want to emphasise that running a community group is only one way activists can effect change. We have overlooked the role of small businesses, for example, in bringing about change.
Do we really need more than one community development worker per city? Perhaps it depends upon the size of the city but a small team is all a city needs to provide the necessary support. And they should never talk to funding bodies on behalf of the groups they support.
It would be interesting to work out how a small development team might be supported without direct grant aid. In the States, they fund organisers through dues paid to citizens’ organisations. This never took off in Britain. But buying in development support could be part of any grant application. Community organisations could then pay a central team for the services they receive.
Administration
We need activists and we need a few development workers to support activists. Another important type of support activists need is administration. Many community workers, dedicated to a particular neighbourhood, end up doing administration for activist groups. It is a waste of resources to pay a development worker to do administration. I suspect the reason this happened so much is funding bodies are reluctant to fund administration and so fund more expensive development workers who spend most of their time doing administration because that is the work that needs doing.
It is incredible that it is so difficult to fund administration. If there is one thing that would transform community work in the UK, it would be ready access to admin support. Even if there are people willing to take it on voluntarily, there is always plenty more people can be getting on with and a good administrator can enable a lot of work simply by being there. A central development work team could provide administration as a part of their services. This might at least bring costs down, by removing the need to employ an administrator directly but it is not immediately obvious how they would be paid.
Activism as the Central Role
My ideal model would recognise activists as central to neighbourhood regeneration. They need some developmental support and a small central team in any urban area should be adequate to provide it. When activists organise they need administration support. This is cheaper than development support and funding bodies should recognise it as a valid response to local needs.
This puts activists at the centre, recognising their central contribution. They need development support but by relieving development workers of the burden of doing their admin, most places could manage with smaller teams over larger areas. Administration can be found in creative ways. A neighbourhood with a delivery organisation could perhaps dedicate time to supporting the representative activities of the local activists and perhaps the planning activities of a local partnership. Anything else is a project and needs to be run by a delivery organisation. My model for community development helps clarify the support activists need for their activities.
So, what do you think? Do we undervalue activists? What support do they need?
