Supporting Community Action:Lessons from Australia

Ingrid Burkett, IACD

Quick overview of community development in Australia

- History: Adoption of frameworks from elsewhere, but a fundamentally different context- Much more stark urban / rural practice differences- Disadvantage / Poverty: locality based, but also identity based- Vast distances makes for some diversity in practice traditions across states- CD workers predominantly in community organisations rather than government

Towards An Ecology of Organising

- Not only about ‘big’ and ‘small’ organisations;- Different functions within a broader ‘development’ agenda- Valuing the difference rather than quashing it

Social Service Organisations

Community Organisations

People’s Organisations

Illustrating the ecology of organisation:the case of working to address financial exclusion

People’s Organisations are at

the heart of real change

• Informal learning from and with peers

• Relationship development is as important as ‘hard’ outcomes

• Leadership development and confidence building is transferable

• People’s organisations are not ‘for ever’ but the relationships and effects can be

Lessons from supporting emerging people’s organisations

- POs need a strong ‘connecting’ point, catalyst, or need to form

- POs built from existing relationships are easier, stronger and longer lasting than if there are no existing relationships- In economically focussed POs, money isn’t the best ‘glue’

on its own- Strengths and assets of groups need to be identified and

valued from the get-go- Ongoing engagement with POs is a delicate art - there has to be an internal heart beat for a group to really keep going

But people’s organisations

need to be connected to pathways...

We don’t always know what we don’t know....so community action doesn’t

always naturally emerge out of

POs

How much of the struggle can we juggle?

Image Source: Atelier Populare, http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2008/april/may-1968-a-graphic-uprising

The case of enterprising

communities...if the

pathways are not there,

people can’t move out of

disadvantage

Work with us to find pathways

Work with us to find pathways

It wasn’t just about working with grass-roots enterprises, it was about ensuring that they could thrive in the system and actually lead to impacts.

The pathways had to lead out of

welfare...Building stronger networks of people’s

organisations or linking POs to COs did not change the viability of enterprises....what was needed was horizontal and vertical

linkages to different habitats / ecologies...

Micro-enterprises

Small Businesses

Local Government

State and Federal Government

Medium-sized Businesses

Big Businesses

Stretching the Ecology for Community Economic Development

Mapping the system...

Visual Mapping and Engaging People in Mapping Systems can not only help to build on community assets....it can

create a picture of possibility for everyone involved.

SEE how parts link to the whole...SEE gaps and opportunities.....

IDENTIFY challenges.....START to design innovative responses....