Our Beliefs
• Any relationship and interaction between two or more people always engages them in experiential learning.
• Equality, mutual trust and respect are requirements for successful learning relationships.
• Learning as a learner-centred and holistic process, can build the individual and collective capacity of people, to empower them to be able to have and make choices to improve the quality of their lives.
• Learning is a core requirement in any form of community development, neighbourhood regeneration and renewal.
• Individual capacity building essentially underpins collective and community capacity building in neighbourhoods and communities.
• Learning opportunities must be inclusive and address issues of oppression and exclusion.
• Empowerment without a shared, agreed and understood underpinning value set can be unhelpful, counter-productive or even dangerous.
• The profile of learning as the core strand of community development needs to be raised, and more widely understood.
• The evidence of success of a community development strategy and the measure of the success of funding, where the evidence primarily comes from counting the numbers of people involved, will tend to force the strategy and funding into soft-targeting, reinforcing discrimination against those excluded or those who might seen as ‘hard-targets’.
• The importance of informal and non-formal experiential learning, in supporting learners to build their capacity, and in addressing issues of oppression and exclusion, is not yet generally recognised as contributing more than learning through formal education and training.
• The present national strategy, which focuses on economic drivers for education and training (and learning) within the UK, without greater attention to the social, cultural, health and environmental needs and well-being of people, is dangerously flawed.
• The dominance of capitalism and materialism underpinning and dividing our society, constrains the potential of many individuals to achieve success and quality within in their lives.
November 2013