Building Capacity, Building Community

Posted on April 24, 2018
By Liz Weaver

Casual Group 53Inspiring Communities is a New Zealand capacity building leader and partner of the Tamarack Institute.  For the past 10 years, the leaders of Inspiring Communities have been working across the country to build local leadership and inspire community-led development and have documented their work in a series of resources called Learning by Doing.  Inspiring Communities has the vision that all communities will flourish. 

Inspiring Communities recently released A Capability Framework to Guide Community-led Development Practice in Aotearoa.  This practical resource is designed to build community-led development skills, recognize and value the different roles that individuals play in place-based community change efforts. 

Community-led development is about working collaboratively to positively impact change from a place-based perspective.  This includes bringing all voices to the table including business, citizens, organizations, funders and government.  The principles driving a community-led development approach include: 

  • Shared local visions drive action and change
  • Using existing strengths and assets
  • Many people, groups and sectors working together
  • Building diverse and collaborative local leadership
  • Working adaptively, learning informs planning and action

The Capability Framework identifies three community change leader roles including:  street leader; community activator; and CLD (community-led development) Enabler and provides ways of being and acting to maximize the role and relationship with community. 

While the Capability Framework is written for the New Zealand context, it is a useful Framework for anyone involved in community-led development.  By articulating the core capabilities and how these might be expressed across different community-change leader roles, communities can move from ideas to action to outcomes. 

Through the Capability Framework to Guide Community-led Development Practice in Aotearoa, Inspiring Communities continues to add significant value to the field of place-based and community change. 

Topics:
Liz Weaver, Blog, Community Change, Community Development


Liz Weaver

By Liz Weaver

Liz is passionate about the power and potential of communities getting to impact on complex issues. Liz is Tamarack’s Co-CEO and Director, Learning Centre. In this role she provides strategic direction to the organization and leads many of its key learning activities including collective impact capacity building services for the Ontario Trillium Foundation. Liz is one of Tamarack's highly regarded trainers and has developed and delivered curriculum on a variety of workshop topics including collaborative governance, leadership, collective impact, community innovation, influencing policy change and social media for impact and engagement.

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