To view the case study areas please follow this link - http://tinyurl.com/87wlbp
Community Empowerment in Scotland
Our Brief
The project involves:
• an initial overview of what each case study was set up to achieve, how it has organised itself and a timeline of its progress
• a description of how each case study has been funded and particularly the balance between internal resourcing/volunteering and external grant support; and how this has changed over time
• detailing each case study's main achievements, identifying what has contributed to them
• exploring the challenges and barriers that each case study has faced, how these have been overcome and what could usefully be passed onto others in terms of learned experience
• drawing out lessons from any internal or external evaluations that have been completed or are in progress
• discussing and recording where each case study intends to go next and how they feel they might get there
Reporting
Reporting will involve three specific outputs:
• a short, tightly written summary of each case study for inclusion in the forthcoming Scottish Government Empowerment Action Plan
• a more detailed and highly accessible document about each case study, written in an engaging and attractive style with an emphasis on high quality visuals and graphics
• a short research summary, highlighting learning points and good practice from across the case studies
The intention is to enable each of the case studies to tell a story, as far as possible in their own words, about how their community empowerment project was devised and implemented, the barriers they had to cross along the way and the lessons that could be passed on to other communities.
The principal aim of the project is clearly to highlight some inspiring stories which can encourage others to look at the community empowerment agenda and respond positively, spreading the message across Scotland and developing a broader base of successful initiatives.
The Research Background
Community empowerment is a developing policy theme, not only in Scotland, but across the UK and beyond. And rightly so.In our view, the best experts and advocates for communities are often local people themselves. Public and private sector investment in capital projects and local services is always improved by actively involving local people in the both the decision-making process and in delivery. There is often more common sense to be found amongst ordinary residents than there is in a host of professional seminars and workshops.
Community empowerment is about devolving responsibility for decision-making from the centre to the local; giving ordinary people an opportunity to plan their own future and take some measure of control of their collective lives. It is an immensely positive process and one which Government’s across the developed world now recognise as increasingly important. The long-term sustainability of neighbourhoods and communities is significantly enhanced by a positive emphasis on community empowerment.
Governments can enable, encourage, support and legislate, but communities will not be empowered unless they want to be and are prepared to take the initiative themselves. Some of the most successful examples of community empowerment are those that have grown from the bottom up, where communities have set their own agendas for change and have achieved them by a combination of determination, hard work and building a support base amongst key partners.
Only rarely is this achieved without a supportive policy environment, and it is encouraging that this is now developing strongly in Scotland, as it elsewhere in the UK. The National Standards for Community Engagement provide a sound base within which the community empowerment agenda in Scotland can be developed. The joint statement of commitment to community empowerment, issued by the Scottish Government and COSLA earlier this year Is now being developed into a Community Empowerment Action Plan.
This Action Plan needs to be informed by best practice. This is partly promotional and partly evaluative. Local communities need to know what works and what does not; they need to adapt best practice elsewhere to their own circumstances – in our experience, no two communities are ever the same. There must be investment in capacity building and strong support for successful initiatives. Developing appropriate individual and collective skills, promoting responsible community leadership, prioritising peer group learning and encouraging networking will all be important.
Above all, communities need to be enthused; they need to see that taking some control of their villages and neighbourhoods would be worth the effort and would make things better. To many, becoming empowered can seem to be a daunting task and one which may be beyond their capacity. Seeing and hearing how others in a similar situation have overcome these hurdles is often a catalyst for a step-change. We see this project as contributing to such a step-change across Scotland.
Our Timetable
Our team will be visiting each of the case studies during January and early February 2009, producing the summaries by the end of February and the other reports by mid-April.