WELCOME TO THE LATEST IACD NEWSLETTER
Greetings! As the cool autumn winds begin to blow in the northern Hemisphere, we are reminded of life’s transformations and need for preparation. October was a busy month for the IACD Board with our quarterly Board of Directors meeting and a full set of committee meetings. Much in IACD’s 2016-20 Strategic Plan is being taken forward and we are reporting on this in the Members’ newsletter.
I’m especially happy to announce that following the highly successful Practice Exchange visits to India and to Nepal this year, the IACD Board is looking at organising future Practice Exchanges in South America (focused on Peru or Brazil) and South Korea in 2017/18. Practice Exchanges are a key feature of IACD’s continuing professional development program, where we are able to offer members a discounted rate in order to spend up to two weeks in a country, meeting with community development practitioners and field projects, as well as holding roundtable sessions sharing ideas from across the world.
We are also excited in our preparations to co-host upcoming conferences in New Zealand in 2017 and our 2018 international conference in a yet to be determined venue. We hope to be able to announce this in the New Year.
As always, thank you for being part of the IACD and our global network of community development practitioners!
Paul Lachapelle, President
Reports from the IACD Board and Committee meetings.
1. The Communications Committee is chaired by Connie Loden, one of IACD’s North American Directors.
The Comms committee spent some time discussing the IACD Website and the need to resolve some technical issues that came to light in October concerning on-line payments for new members. We apologise to prospective members as this has been affecting payment via Paypal, Western Union and Bank Transfer. This issue is being dealt with and may lead to IACD moving to a new web server. The committee felt that the current website did not require a fundamental change, however it was recognised that we need to increase the Members Only sections. An example of this being the new Global Community Development Exchange repository which was added to the site in September https://globalcommunitydevelopmentexchange.org/ The Comms committee will be consulting members over the coming months as to changes we might make to the website. To begin with we shall be introducing a new Members’ Directory.
The Committee also reviewed the IACD Facebook Pages https://www.facebook.com/IACDglobal/ (official site) and https://www.facebook.com/groups/IACDglobal/ (Members’ site).
The former site has seen greatly increased posting of news from around the world on community and international development, with a large increase in reach and response. The office was now using this site as a daily newsletter updating and networking the community development field internationally.
The second, Members’ site is not administered by the office (although we do remove any inappropriate posts), but is an open site for IACD members and others to post information about events they are running, new publications etc. It was reported that there had felt to be some confusion with IACD having two sites, and it was now more clearly stated on both sites which was which. The Comms committee is very keen to receive feedback from IACD members on our Facebook sites.
2. The Membership Committee is chaired by Muhammad Bello Shitu, one of IACD’s Vice Presidents and Directors for Sub Saharan Africa
The Membership Committee noted that membership numbers had remained pretty static over the first six months of the 2016/17 financial year. It was felt that the main reasons for this were that there appeared to be more individual members joining and less organisational membership. In addition our growth in individual numbers was largely in the global South where the fee level is lower than in OECD countries. The Committee also discussed the technical on-line payment problems highlighted in the Comms Report.
A key challenge for any membership association is how to encourage members to renew membership and to encourage new members to take out a three year subscription for the price of two. This offer was introduced for the Minnesota conference and has led to a membership growth in North America and will be continued. The committee agreed to have a Membership Recruitment push in the New Year aimed at subscribers to the ENewsletter and to lapsed members. This will highlight that from January 2017, we shall be restricting a wider range of services only to fully paid members. We shall be writing personally to all lapsed members in the New Year. If you are a reader of this ENewsletter but not yet a fully paid up member of the association, this will be the last newsletter you will be receiving from IACD. We do hope that you will want to stay involved with the association and take up our three for two years offer. We shall be posting our new Member Only Deals on the IACD website in January https://www.iacdglobal.org/join-now
3. The Policy Committee is chaired by Tony Ssembatya, one of IACD’s Directors for Sub Saharan Africa
Over the previous twelve months, the Policy Committee had worked on three IACD Policy Position Statements – On Climate Change (December 2015), The Sustainable Development Goals (July 2016) and the Global Definition of Community Development (July 2016) https://www.iacdglobal.org/position-statements
Proposals for Policy Statements can come from Board members and from the IACD wider membership. The 2016-20 Strategic Plan had highlighted that the association would be giving priority over the next period to work related to strengthening the profession, following the adoption of the Global Definition of Community Development by the Board in July https://www.iacdglobal.org/news/iacd-board-approves-historic-global-definition-community-development
This followed a request from the IACD Training and Professional Development Committee to publish an IACD Statement on International Occupational Standards in relation to community development and a Code of Ethics in light of the New Paradigms work IACD and others had been working on in relation to the Sustainable Development Goals agenda and hoped for expansion in the community development workforce in the coming years. This work would build upon existing national occupational standards and codes that existed in different parts of the world. The committee felt that it was critical not just to transpose standards from one country onto another but that it would be helpful to the field globally if IACD looked at these national standards and distilled what might be transferable to practice in any country. The Policy and Training and Professional Development Committees will be working closely on this project over the coming months and will be consulting members. IACD will be working with Montana State University-Bozeman in the United States on this project. We are especially keen to receive examples of national standards and codes and would ask that these be sent to Paul Lachapelle paul.lachapelle@montana.edu
4. The Training and Professional Development Committee is chaired by John Stansfield, one of IACD’s Oceania Directors.
The committee received an update on the work led by the New Zealand/Aotearoa Community Development Association – in partnership with IACD. GCDEX is now live and open for members only. https://globalcommunitydevelopmentexchange.org/ There was a need for Editors to assist in reviewing material deposited on the site. If IACD members are interested in being considered as a GCDEX Editor, please contact John at the email below. The committee expressed huge thanks to Amber Frankland-Hutchinson who had helped develop the site and was moving jobs. Amber will be replaced as lead staff member.
2017 International Community Development Trainers’ Workshop. Following the well attended half day international trainers’ workshop organised in the USA in July, the committee agreed to hold another half day workshop as part of the February 2017 international community development conference in New Zealand. This international CD Trainers’ workshop will take place on 15th February and is open to all IACD members with an interest in community development education and training. The workshop will focus upon designing an international post graduate blended learning program on CD and the SDGs.
As Paul Lachapelle has highlighted, IACD’s Practice Exchange Program is a major part of the continuing professional development offer we organise for members. Following approaches by IACD members and from the Board it was agreed that we would explore the feasibility of offering two Practice Exchange programs in 2017/18. It is hoped that these will be in East Asia (probably Korea) and in Brazil or the Andes Region of South America. Further information on these programs will be posted on the IACD website https://www.iacdglobal.org/practice-exchange/study-visits and sent to members in a few months time.
The committee also spent time discussing the proposal to produce an international statement on occupational standards and an international Code of Ethics. See Policy Committee report.
The Publications Committee is chaired by KK Fung, IACD’s Dirdector for East Asia
IACD’s magazine, Practice Insights 6 will be published in December 2016 and sent to all members. It has a strong focus upon the SDGs with articles from Iran, Nigeria, India, Peru, the USA and several other countries. This issue will also include a report from the European conference. Practice Issue 7, will be published in March 2017 and will include papers on CD and public service reform. Practice Insights 8 will have a focus upon CD work in East and South East Asia. If you are interested in writing an article in the IACD magazine, please contact the editor charliesmcconnell@gmail.com
CDJ Special Issue. We are still looking for more academic submissions again related to community development work around the SDG challenge. These articles are usually around 7000 words. At this stage we are inviting indications of interest only, by sending us a 200 word summary for consideration by the editors. Please send your abstract before the end of January to IACD’s Publications Chair KK Fung kkfung@hkbu.edu.hk
5. The International and National Networks Relations Committee, is chaired by Anastasia Crickley, one of IACD’s Vice Presidents and Director for Europe.
The committee reviewed current working partnerships IACD had with national/regional CD networks. Over the past six months we had been working most closely with the US Community Development Society, the New Zealand/Aotearoa Community Development Association, Community Work Ireland, the Scottish Community Development Alliance, the Nigerian Association for Community Development and the European Community Development Network.
Links were also being development with the National Association of Community Development and Extension Professionals and the Australian Community Work Association. IACD posts the newsletters and other publications from national/regional CD associations on the IACD website and Facebook Site. In recent months we have also highlighted the work of national associations in Central America, Mongolia, the Philippines, Canada, Pakistan, Thailand, Mozambique and India.
On the United Nations front we regularly post information on announcements, events and publications from the UN and related bodies on the IACD Facebook site, with special attention to news relating to the SDGs. Feedback from those attending the IACD Side Event at the UN SDG High Level Political Forum has been very positive and it was agreed that IACD should organise another Side Event, possibly at the forthcoming UN Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva in March/April 2017 (http://www.ohchr.org/en/hrbodies/hrc/pages/hrcindex.aspx).
IACD is a member of the SDG Global NGO coalition http://sdg.iisd.org/news/ and of Civicus http://www.civicus.org, but we do not have staff in either New York or Geneva, so the pro-active work IACD’s volunteer Board and members can do is limited. It was agreed that over the coming months we would meet with the International Federation of Settlements and Neighbourhood Centers (https://www.ifsnetwork.org/ifs/) and the International Federation of Social Workers http://ifsw.org/ to explore how we might work more closely together at UN level.
IACD Conferences
The IACD/NACD Nigerian conference was held at KWARA STATE UNIVERSITY, MALETE, KWARA STATE, NIGERIA October 11TH – 14TH with c70 participants. The conference participants have issued a Communique which can be found at https://www.iacdglobal.org/news/nigeria-members-meeting
The IACD/EUCDN et al European CD and SDGs conference on November 8th has been fully registered. We are especially grateful to the Community Development Alliance Scotland http://www.communitydevelopmentalliancescotland.org/ for supporting this event so that we are able to make it free. This conference forms part of the roadshow of conferences and Roundtables that IACD with partners is organising around the world. A report of the conference will appear in the next issue of Practice Insights magazine.
The IACD/ACDA New Zealand international conference on February 15th – 17th 2017 is registering well. Places are still available and further details about the conference can be found at http://www.aotearoacommunitydevelopmentassociation.com/2017-cd-conference
The 2017 INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT FILM FESTIVAL is taking place in Auckland, New Zealand as part of the IACD/ACDA conference. Find out more on www.aotearoacommunitydevelopmentassociation.com/2017-cd-con…
The 2018 international conference. The Board has agreed to enter into discussions with Community Work Ireland, to explore the possibility of holding the IACD 2018 international conference in Ireland. Further information will be sent to members in the New Year. Information about CWI can be found at http://communityworkireland.ie/
IACD’s 65th birthday is in 2018 and the Board will be making plans for this anniversary over the coming year. We will keep you all informed.
Country Correspondents
We are looking for IACD members to become news correspondents for your country (happy to have more than one!). If you are interested in becoming an IACD Country Correspondent, please let us know. Please contact info@iacdglobal.org and we will then send you a brief and connect you with the Regional Director covering your country. We have a section on the website where members can post local and national news. News from IACD Regions and Members Please send any news to Colette-Margaret McClure at membership@iacdglobal.org
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