SSE launches Sustainable Paths to Community Development report

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SustainablepathsjpgSSE is launching a new report today, called Sustainable Paths to Community Development: Helping Deprived Communities to Help Themselves. It’s been authored by our chair of trustees, Charlotte Young and her husband Don, and makes a passionate and timely case for a radically different approach to tackling exclusion and regenerating deprived areas.

To boil down the report into some key points, it really argues that large, complex top-down governmental approaches to regeneration have not worked, and that providing learning and support to those creating change in communities from the bottom-up will have much more impact over the long-term.

It also looks at why government (national and local) focus on getting people to engage in the democratic process, and with political institutions, rather than actually giving them power and ownership to drive their own change. It also draws on national and international research to place the argument in a strong and coherent context.

I’ve found it a really interesting read (having proofed it several times!), and one that has far-reaching implications which stretch beyond the SSE and its work, and should interest policymakers across government (and opposition). It calls, as much as anything, for a shift of mindset: from teaching to learning, from top-down to bottom-up, from imported expertise to building capacity and (social) capital within communities and so on. As per this illustration from the report:

Assumptions

Obviously, this won’t be an easy shift; nor will it be short-term. But something radical is needed: a fresh approach to tackling exclusion and inequality that will endure and sustain. The monograph we’re publishing today doesn’t contain a panacea, but it does show how people-powered change, alongside place-based regeneration, investment in health + education and so on, can make a significant difference in reducing the ever-widening gap
 between rich and poor.

 

[Download a sneak preview exec summary SustainablePathsSummary.pdf
; see also Social Enterprise Magazine’s take on it
]

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4 thoughts on “SSE launches Sustainable Paths to Community Development report”

  1. Sounds good Nick, timely stuff. It all feels like another, unattainable world, but that’s the whole point of report like this – we really do need a big shift in thinking. Small anecdote – last night, in a rush to get to an event, by mistake we drove the wrong way up a quiet street. By chance a policeman was there. He talked to us like all policemen do – as if we were naughty 7 year olds. Completely alienating – and it got me thinking how do the police see their community – if this is how they speak to them? Changes in mindset like the ones outlined above are vital if we’re going to create a society worth living in and fighting for.

  2. Yes, Rob. It does all feel quite big picture, I’ll admit. But I think we need to think big to start changing how we view these approaches, and to start influencing what the next 10 or 20 years of regeneration activity will look like from a government (and sector) perspective. And it is that long-term: as you say, it’s cultural and mindset shifting that are the real challenges, and that will take consistent and persistent efforts and leadership to occur.
    Let me know if you’d like a copy to review.