It is indeed a special privilege and honour for me to write my first President’s report as we enter our 65th anniversary year as a professional association. The role and responsibility that all of us share as members of this organization is truly great, particularly at this most critical time in history with social unrest, political change, economic volatility, and environmental uncertainty. In many nations, budget cuts and neoliberal policies threaten the social safety net that many of us rely on to design and implement our community development work; nativism and nationalistic priorities put pressure on the most vulnerable among us; the decision of U.S. President Trump to withdraw from the Paris Climate Change Agreement will further exacerbate the effects of climate change and ability of communities to respond to current impacts and future crises.
As I reflect on this past year and discuss the year ahead, I would like to start by thanking all IACD members – past and present. We are a member-driven organization and rely on individuals and organizations for financial support through membership dues to bolster our operations and in providing resources and feedback on the work we do. I would also like to acknowledge the Scottish Government for their most recent grant to help us continue our work in FY2018; we are grateful for their continued support of the Association. Last, I would like to recognize our Board for all the tremendous accomplishment of the last year; from organizing regional and international conferences, coordinating practices exchanges, recruiting members, and creating innovative platforms and resources for us all to learn, share and grow; I am truly grateful for their time, energy and commitment to the IACD.
Our goals have been strategic and our accomplishments deliberate and directed. Below is a list of work and accomplishments from the past year (since our last AGM in July of 2016 in Minneapolis, USA) in no particular order.
Regional and International Conferences:
Most recently, we organized an international/Oceania conference in association with the Aotearoa (New Zealand) Community Development Association. The conference took place in February 2017 and was titled Sustainably Yours and focused upon the implications and opportunities of the UN SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) for community development. Several hundred international participants and delegates attended with a very impressive and compressive Proceedings of Conference materials published. We organized a European Region conference in association with the European Community Development Network on the SDGs. The conference, which we organized jointly with EuCDN (European Community Development Network), CDAS (Community Development Alliance Scotland) and CWI (Community Work Ireland), took place in November 2016 in Glasgow. Around 60 attended the full day conference with several panel speakers and workshop breakout groups. Lastly, we organized an African Region conference in association with the National Community Development Practitioners’ Association of Nigeria. This IACD Africa Regional conference was held in Malete, Nigeria in partnership with the National Community Development Practitioners’ Association of Nigeria. Around 70 participated in this three day event, including plenary and workshop sessions.
Publications:
We published three issues of our magazine Practice Insights. Issues were published in July, September and April and articles covered a wide range of issues and parts of the world. In addition, the IACD Publications Committee has been in discussions with the Oxford University Press Community Development Journal in order to prepare a Special Issue on community development and sustainability.
New Website and Social Media:
Our new website (www.iacdglobal.org) was launched on April 1st 2017. The new website is easier to use and navigate, already with over 7000 visits, and we thank IACD past-President Charlie McConnell for his time and assistance spearheading this effort. During the year we also published e-newsletters and have greatly increased the use of the IACD Official Facebook Page (www.facebook.com/IACDglobal) as the main medium of news from around the world on community development. Our Facebook site now has over 3,500 members. We have plans to further our presence using other social media so stay tuned.
Practice Exchange Planning:
Practice Exchanges are organized by IACD for small groups of community developers from around the world, who come together to meet with host practitioners and visit field projects. They form a part of IACD’s Professional Development Programme. Following on from our Practice Exchanges last year in India and Nepal, we have been actively planning our next Practice Exchange Chile in October of 2017 with active marketing now taking place.
Global Community Development Exchange (GCDEX):
We continue to partner with the ACDA (New Zealand) to establish a repository of CD teaching and learning resources from across the world via the GCDEX (www.globalcommunitydevelopmentexchange.org). The repository can only be accessed by IACD members and is a place where community development teachers, practitioners and learners can share their teaching and learning approaches, tools and resources.
Advocating for the discipline and promoting regional and country fora:
This work was led by the IACD Training and Policy Committees and began with a four-month member consultation on producing a new IACD global definition of community development. This definition was adopted at the July 2016 AGM and we are pleased to report that the new definition has since been adopted/adapted by several national community development associations. Furthermore, our Training and Policy Committees agreed to the proposal to then produce an international set of occupational standards and ethics for community development practice. We have to date identified numerous National Occupational Standards and Codes, from which we will be producing and disseminating a set of international standards and code of ethics in 2017/18.
We have partnered closely on organizing events with the members of the European Community Development Network, the Aotearoa Community Development Association and the USA-based Community Development Society. We have publicized events, meetings and publications from a couple of dozen national networks and associations ranging from the Philippines Community Development Society and the Mongolian Community Development Network, to the Australian Association of Community Workers. We continued to work closely with Community Work Ireland, the Scottish Community Development Network, Community Development Alliance Scotland and the Scottish Community Development Centre, to which we transferred our HQ office.
New Board members:
We were proud to welcome 5 new board members at the last AGM; Connie Loden and Greg Wise representing North America, Dee Brooks representing Oceania, Warren Dollente representing South Asia, and Ursula Harman representing South America.
New Office Staff:
We are very happy to welcome our new part time Administrator, Colette McClure. Colette took up her post on 1st September. The new year also the move of our Scottish Head Office from Falkland, Fife to Glasgow, where it is now based at the Scottish Community Development Centre and thank their director Fiona Garvin for being so supportive.
Finances:
We remain fiscally sound and at the end of the financial year the carry forward funds were £32,337.
The field of community development faces immense challenges in the year ahead. For IACD, this next year is also an exciting one with many activities and initiatives. Our work plan priorities continue to follow and support our IACD 2016-20 Strategic Plan. Among them:
To organise a World Community Development Conference in 2018.
2018 is IACD’s 65th birthday year and we want to use this to celebrate the importance of community development around the world. The conference will be taking place in Ireland in June. Our intention is for this conference to exceed the numbers that have attended in previous years.
To expand the Global Community Development Exchange.
Our goal and challenge now is to fill this unique resource bank and to encourage practitioners and trainers from around the world to share their work freely, providing practical learning and teaching resources for community developers to use and share across the world and making it the largest repository of such resources in the world.
To continue to develop the new IACD website and related social media.
Our priority is to continue to provide relevant and timely information on the new website and social media sources with regularly updated news and information about the Association and community development policies and practices around the world.
To publish three issues of the IACD magazine Practice Insights.
Practice Insights magazine is intended for the busy practitioner and receives very positive feedback. Our next issue will be focusing on community development practice in Asia with Board member KK Fung serving as the issue coordinator. Later this winter we will focus the issue on practice in North and South America, followed by an issue in the Spring of 2018 on North and Sub-Saharan Africa. Our last issue of the cycle will feature papers from the 2018 World Community Development Conference.
Additional events and opportunities.
These include organizing a 2018 Practice Exchange, refining our work creating international occupational guidelines for the community development field, to support at least three events in IACD’s global regions, to design and deliver an IACD international learning programme for community development practitioners around the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and to continue to enhance UN awareness of, support for, and influence of community development and practitioner and project engagement with relevant UN agencies and instruments.
Lastly, I have asked our Board members and I would like to request you, our membership, to assist the IACD in three areas:
- Please do your part to market the IACD to your colleagues and recruit new members to IACD (and ask lapsed members to renew) in your region.
- Provide information and new resources to us via our Facebook pages, our email exchange, or on our website; we welcome ideas for new Practice Exchanges, themes to our Practice Insights and Policy Statements, among others.
- Identify and notify the Board of regional and international funding opportunities. We are a mainly volunteer-led organization and your assistance in securing funding is critical to our collective longevity and success.
With sincere gratitude, I thank you for your interest in and support of the IACD this past year and look forward to a productive and prosperous year ahead.
Paul Lachapelle
IACD President
