Our Approach

"Community development is about building active and sustainable communities based on social justice and mutual respect. It is about changing the power structures to remove the barriers that prevent people from participating in the issues that affect their lives."

(Strategic Framework for Community Development, Standing Conference for Community Development, May 2001)

The approach of WSA Community Consultants (WSA) is encapsulated in the extract above. Our work is based on the following values:  

• Social justice and pro-actively encouraging inclusiveness
• Community, individual and organisational participation
• Promoting equality and challenging inequality
• Informal education and personal development of individuals we work with on community projects
• Co-operation based on mutual respect and empowerment
• Knowledge transfer to support sustainability

The values create the foundation of how we approach community development.

To support us in our work we use a range of frameworks and models to support good practice and have experience of tools such as participatory appraisal, participative consultation, models where we train and work with community researchers and planning and evaluation tools.

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