Community Learning Development Resource 402 – 02
A RATIONALE FOR A COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
(LEARNING) CURRICULUM
SUMMARY
If we want local people to be active in making changes in their lives and their communities, we may need to find ways of empowering them to do so. We know of individuals who seem to be quite confident and motivated to manage their own lives successfully and who are able to contribute to enriching and improving the lives of others. However we believe that these people are a minority within the general population. It is also likely that these, who are currently existing community leaders, change agents and volunteers, are not representative of the diverse communities and people that live in local areas.
Rationale for a Community Development (Learning) Curriculum
Much of the training currently offered to the public within the field of community development and regeneration, offers opportunities to the people who are already able to self-refer themselves and can be readily recruited for particular roles. Such roles include – voluntary and community group organisers; community volunteers; learning ambassadors and mentors, community representatives, local development leaders and energisers, community organisers, etc.
One of the key principles, which is evident within current thinking and legislation nationally (e.g., the ‘Big Society’), is that people should seek to become active participants within local community development planning and actions. Therefore, if we are right in assuming, that at present, the individual capacity to participate and contribute, is limited to relatively small numbers of people in neighbourhoods and communities, there is a challenge for us to develop that capacity in others, building social capital and community capacity.
Accredited training programmes which engage workers in learning about community development, already exist nationally in the UK, organised and validated by the Federation for Community Development Learning (www.fcdl.org.uk). We believe that in this training there is less emphasis, on the role of learning and building individual capacity. As a result there may be a tendency for workers to build community capacity through those people who already have the individual capacity and are ready to engage and participate in community development activity. Therefore this approach might not be inclusive and whilst empowering some people – the softer target, could leave behind, to be brought on later, the ‘unready’ hard target people.
Some community development practice approaches, with deprived communities and neighbourhoods deliberately seek out the ‘street leaders’ – the already empowered, to act as intermediaries, ambassadors or organisers. This method of engagement can reinforce power differentials, whilst achieving some success on the ground, often through a recruitment strategy of forming community groups and seeking members.
The Community Learning Development (CLD) approach is to seek to make contact and connect with everyone in a target community or neighbourhood – seeing and using every connection, no matter how fleeting, as a learning experience, relationship-building and empowering opportunity.
The CLD approach is to train workers within community development work to support all local people, regardless of their readiness to participate in community development activity, with a particular concern to encourage, enable and empower those who are non-self-referring, less-able, less-confident, excluded adult learners to become effective participants. The CLD curriculum for community development is fundamentally about identifying the learning and the processes, which will increase the capacity of any individual within any local community to successfully participate in and contribute to Community Development.
The CLD approach seeks to have the individual learner (client/resident/community member/ person) as an equal partner in every engagement, encouraged and supported to participate effectively. The learner should be enabled to gain from learning opportunity she/he experiences. The achievement of learning success and benefits really only matter in the perception, understanding and consequent experience of the learner, underpinning their personal development and increasing individual capacity.
Three purposes for a CLD curriculum for community development
1. To build individual capacity and collective capacity– the learning that will enable local individuals and groups of people to participate effectively in community development activity. For many individuals in the community this may mean:
- turning round an individuals’ negative perceptions of themselves and of their life
- enabling individuals to recover their ‘learning soul’
- supporting individuals to choose to push the boundaries of their comfort zone and take on new interests and challenges
- creating opportunities in which individuals can feel successful
- being concerned to understand and address the needs and wants of every individual who shows the slightest inclination to engage
- being concerned for equality and equity through hard targeting and inclusive working.
2. To enable individual and collective capacity to contribute to community capacity-building by bringing learners together to successfully participate and collaborate in community development activities through:
- learning, which is about how to work together for change within communities and neighbourhoods
- being prepared to build from the individual
- learning about culture, behaviours and relationships, and the use of power, which support equality and inclusion.
3. To enable local people to understand the nature of community development – a curriculum area about what they need to know and understand that will equip them to achieve success within the reality of a wider community development world
Example: if you want local people to come together to tackle environmental issues, then they need to understand these issues. This understanding may be about the environment, the work of environmental agencies as well as how to participate and contribute, in order to make a difference.
PROMPTS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION
IMPLICATIONS FOR WORKER PRACTICE?
- People learn as individuals and it is in this way that we need to support them as learners – what are the implications for how we work with them?
- When working with a group of adults, why does the worker need to be aware of their individuality and their individual learning needs, learning styles and learning achievements?
- Why does the learning need to be relevant and useful to the learner?
IMPLICATIONS FOR LEARNER PARTICIPATION?
- Why should learners be encouraged to participate actively in regeneration?
- Why do learners need to be able to work collectively?
- If learning empowers people, can this lead to problems and if so, how can these be addressed?
IMPLICATIONS FOR REGENERATION LEADERS?
- Do regeneration bodies and agencies also need to consider and plan for ways in which active participation by local people can be achieved successfully and how they can be accessed to the relevant knowledge and skills within regeneration themes?
- Is there learning for agencies and responsible bodies about the empowerment and participation of local people?