602-03 A VALUE SET FOR COMMUNITY LEARNING

Community Learning Development Resource 602 – 03

VALUES FOR COMMUNITY LEARNING  AND CAPACITY BUILDING

 

SUMMARY

An appropriate value set is crucial to underpinning and informing Community Learning,Capacity Building and Community Development work with people in communities and neighbourhoods. The value set provides a framework for consistency and continuity for an organisation and its workers throughout their work. In this resource a specimen value set is outlined with a commentary.

VALUE SET DRAFT:

 

  • Equality underpins and informs all other values in our value set

 

  • Mutual trust and respect characterise our relationships

 

  • Learning is the core process in change and quality of life improvement

 

  • Interventions must be people-centred and people needs-led

 

  • All individual have the capacity to learn and to choose to change

 

  • Inclusion is a requirement

 

  • There is  potential for learner options, choices and progression

 

  • Effective partnerships support effective working

 

  • Learner empowerment with responsibility is a key outcome

 

  • Individual capacity building contributes to collective capacity building, community capacity building and community development

 

  • Quality Improvement is an essential strand of work

 

  • Sustainability comes with people empowerment and ownership

 

 

NOTES :

If our own beliefs become set as the ideas, which shape and direct our work, they become our value set. The Value Set informs and underpins our work.

We have difficulty if our personal beliefs and values are in conflict with the values of the organisation we work for, with colleagues, or the people we seek to relate to and work with.

The nature of our working relationship with people needs to be founded on the core value of Equality and works best as a partnership with trust and mutual respect.

Our value set needs to be shared and understood by those we work with, so that our separate expectations are shared and understood. Our value set provides the guide and the parameters of how we should be within our work, how we should be perceived by others, and how they can expect us to behave.

Successful work with clients relies on consistency that they can depend on within their relationship with us. We may not have the same values as the clients we work with and how we manage the differences is crucial. Having a consistent value set that we believe in and relate to, enables us to be confident in our performance and in particular supports us when we find that we are in conflict or crisis.

Having the consistency of our beliefs and values, does not mean that they can never change, however it does mean that any change needs to be through a reflective thoughtful process, with time given to weighing up the implications and effects of change, on ourselves, as well as those we work with and for.

PROMPTS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

  • Do you have a value set agreed, shared and understood throughout your work – what are the value statements?
  • Identify your own fundamental beliefs. Are these in accord with the core values of your organisation?
  • Assess the value set of your organisation against the draft. (above)
  • Discuss and agree a set of core values, for capacity building work with local people in the community and with other workers / agencies.