Community Learning Development Resource 401 – 06
CAPACITY BUILDING WITHIN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT TRAINING
SUMMARY
Exploring community learning and capacity building as key concepts and areas of learning within any generic training and development programme for community development students and workers.
The contributions of Learning and Capacity Building to Regeneration and Community Development
- Successful and sustainable changes within regeneration and community development are more likely, if within these, local people choose to change their own behaviour – in ways that take on board and support the desired changes in their neighbourhoods and communities.
- An individual’s behaviour is collectively all that they have within them, to think, feel and do. Learning is the main process by which their behaviour changes during an individual’s lifetime. Their behaviour and behavioural changes shape and build individual capacity. All individuals have the ability to learn and build their own individual capacity.
- When people contribute from their own individual capacity, within relationships, families and groups, collective capacity is created, and participants can learn from each other. This collective capacity can become community capacity if it is directed into bringing about neighbourhood regeneration and community development changes. There is a progressive link between individual capacity building, collective capacity building and community capacity building, leading to neighbourhood regeneration and community development
- Learning is therefore seen as the fundamental and essential process, which underpins and drives successful regeneration and community development. Workers engaging in regeneration and community development work need to be able to understand how to enable and encourage local people to change their behaviour and shape and build their own individual capacity.
- Learning is the key process at all stages of building the individual, collective and community capacities, which regenerate neighbourhoods and develop communities. Such learning is natural and universal in people.
Learning confusions and understandings
- Building individual capacity through learning does not simply mean putting people onto courses! Learning within formal education and training is only one way in which individuals may build their capacity. For those adults who are not experienced, confident or skilled in formal learning, or have had bad prior learning experiences, the formal education and training route, often fails to attract them, retain them or fulfil their needs. Before this can happen these learners need build their own individual capacity to feel able to choose to learn more formally.
- The formality and organisation of education and training may cause us to forget that ‘learning’ is a natural process, which people do daily throughout their lives. We learn and change our behaviour daily as we are presented with new experiences. We constantly seek to make sense of our world and make it work for us, and to do this we change our behaviour, building our capacity. This natural ‘learning from experience’ is what we should seek to connect with and encourage first, when we engage with people in neighbourhoods and communities. Only occasionally, if and when it is right for them, should we seek to use formal education and training ‘learning’ methods.
- Trying to understand what is meant by ‘learning’, in relation to regeneration and community development, can be confusing. Learning is a word that is used to describe both what is to be learned (the learning) and how it happens (by learning).
- Much of our common understanding of the term – ‘learning’, comes from its use within the learning industry of education, training and teaching. Here we tend to see ‘learning’ as both material and process, in quite a formal sense – people are educated, trained and taught and they learn the learning in particular formally organised ways. People are ‘learners’ who learn things which we recognise commonly as pieces of knowledge, understandings and skills. Here the importance of ‘learning’ is in what is to be learned – the learning content, syllabus or curriculum. Primarily this is what the education and training business is about and what teachers and trainers do!
- Our ways of using learning within regeneration and community development work, should be informal and non- formal, connecting with people on their terms, in their surroundings and by their choice.
- Many of the people within neighbourhoods and communities that we seek to engage with, may have had negative previous experiences of ‘learning’ within the formal education and training field – at school, etc. The memories of many may be of failure, and therefore whilst we want them to learn, change behaviour and participate in regeneration and community development, we will need to develop ways of working which do not overtly declare that learning is intended.
- Learning may have to wait to be out in the open, until individuals feel, recognise, value and announce that they have learned successfully and benefited from this!
Practical implications
Our understanding and use of learning within regeneration and community development work is essential for our success as workers and as such it needs to have several key strands:
- Seeing learning as a natural, and universal process that we all access and experience daily in our lives
- Needing to focus on the learner and not the learning – starting from the position of the learner and their needs and wants, and seeing relationship building based on equality, mutual trust and respect as the way forward
- Being more concerned with how the learner feels rather than what the learner now knows or can do
- Enabling and encouraging learning, which not only gives learners options in their lives, but also builds their individual capacity to make informed choices
- Seeking to enable and encourage individuals to empower themselves through behavioural changes, to take control of their lives , gain benefits from their learning experiences, and improve their quality of life and that of their neighbourhood and communities.
- Developing ways of being and working, that encourage individual learner capacity building towards collective and community capacity building, neighbourhood regeneration and community development
- Learning from our own work and learning experiences in order to develop our own individual capacity as workers and the collective capacity of our teams, agencies and organisations, to deliver neighbourhood regeneration and community development outcomes.
These views of the relationship between learning and Neighbourhood Regeneration and Community Development must underpin and inform the curriculum and learning of participants within a Community Development Foundation Degree programmes.