Community development
CommunityBuilders.NSW
"This site is an interactive electronic clearing house for everyone involved in community level social, economic and environmental renewal including community leaders, community & government workers, volunteers, program managers, academics, policy makers, youth and seniors."
Five step engagement planning cycle (iPlan)
A guide to designing, organising, implementing and reviewing plans and development assessment programs in NSW. It also includes information on engaging the community (iPlan)
Community engagement techniques and tools (iPlan)
Community Engagement: Stories and Resources (iPlan)
Directory to examples of best practice.
Towards whole of community engagement: a practical toolkit (pdf)
Success factors in community engagement (pdf)
Community Tool Box (USA)
"Our goal is to support your work in promoting community health and development. The Tool Box provides over 6,000 pages of practical skill-building information on over 250 different topics."
Building Community Participation
Building community participation and involvement is likely to ensure community 'ownership' of a project, suit local circumstances, and increase a project's sustainability (Stronger Families Learning Exchange)
The Seven Doors Social Marketing Approach (Les Robinson, Social Change Media)
Education
Designing local community education campaigns (NSW EPA)
Making your local education program successful
A community education program can take many different forms – but all successful programs rely on the same principles of planning and strategy. This guide discusses the key steps and provides guidance for your urban water program (Department of Environment and Conservation)
Promoting Public Education and Participation (html)
Evaluation of case studies that comprehensively addresses stormwater management and includes a section on education that provides a useful summary of the purposes of such education and how it fits with management overall. Whilst it covers expected elements it can be useful as a check on one’s understanding (National Resources Defense Council US)
New Tools for Environmental Protection: Education, Information, and Voluntary Measures (e-book)
see also Facilitating Community Decision-making
Catchment Management
We suggest taking time to explore your intuitions, uneases and gut feel about how your community development or community education program should be designed. You may already have the roots of of significant strands of the design, in what you already feel about what might make sense ...
This is a practical application of 'listening to ourselves' - allowing our tacit, implicit, knowledge ... our 'feel' for what is going on to inform what we do ... As Polanyi, Gendlin and others have underlined, we each know more than it is easy to say. For more on how to 'use gut feel skillfully', see Listening to ourselves.
Does the ecological scope of your community education or community development approach make sense? Are you directing people's attention appropriately? |
Catchment audit |
Are you connecting with the stakeholders who need to know? |
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Have you considered how to help citizens to listen to others' points of view, and take them in, and how to help them listen to themselves better, as they do so? Skills in listening (to ourselves and others) play a foundation role in all community development and education. |
Listening to others |
Are there ways you can help citizens in your community be more influential, in appropriate ways, to help shape their own future? Could your current project contribute to that, by building in links to current decision-making processes? |
Catchment planning |
