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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 enterprisin
g communitie
s...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....