Skip to Navigation

Linking & Learning

Home ›

Learning & Linking

Study Visits

IACD organises study and site visits for IACD members to interact with and learn from one another.  If you are interested in participating in any of IACD’s study visits, contact us at info@iacdglobal.org

Upcoming Study Visits:

India Exposure 2010

IACD Board Members Mini Bedi and Ingrid Burkett will be coordinating in conjunction with local IACD members a study visit to India during November 2010.  The study visit will be limited to 20 participants and will cover two states: Maharashtra where intense work on community development processes is seen on the ground and in the second part of the trip participants will visit either Gujarat or Rajasthan where there is some element of history/tourism and development. For all internal travel Indian Railways will be used and for shorter trips travel by car.

More information including costs and a full itinerary will be forthcoming.  To lodge your interest in this study visit, please contact us at: info@iacdglobal.org

New Orleans Conference Study visits 2010

In July 2010, IACD will be co-hosting a global conference with the Community Development Society on the theme of ‘Community Rebirth and Renewal: Five Years Post-Katrina’ in New Orleans, Louisiana.  As part of this conference, participants will be able to choose from a range of pre-conference site visits called Mobile Learning Workshops (MLW).  Each MLW will feature local flare and fare.  Potential MLW’s include:

•    Redevelopment Tour of the Lower Ninth Ward and St. Bernard Parrish
•    Local Arts Tour
•    Renaissance of New Orleans Jazz
•    Ground Zero Development – A Tour of the Mississippi Gulf Coast
•    Cajun to the Core – Local Foods, Local Flavour

View past site and study visits here…
 

Global Village Residencies (GVR)

IACD coordinates members to learn from each other through a series of study visits, learning exchanges and through our new Global Village Residency (GVR) project.  The GVR is a platform to bring highly skilled expertise from the global South to work with groups in United Kingdom and Ireland.  The GVR is a powerful way of reversing the standard paradigm and sharing the often-invisible experience of Southern community movements, which are driven by people with highly effective strategies and responses to very difficult challenges.

The GVR programme is supported by Carnegie UK Trust.  IACD will work with two ‘hosts’ in 2010 for the GVR.  Hosts will be IACD members located in the UK that would like to host several international ‘visitors’ from the Global South on a learning journey related to a specific community development topic.

 

Interested hosts are expected to: 1) be anchored in the community and have the ability to reach wider audiences, 2) be willing to take part in the recording of the ‘learning journey’, 3) be willing to make a contribution to the GVR through either match funding or grassroots fundraising, 4) be willing to share and disseminate learning from the GVR to others, 5) understand that the goal is to bring specific expertise to rural UK and Ireland so that we can have policy and practical influence here, 6) be willing to work from an asset-based approach, 7) be working in a well-defined community development topical area that is connected to a larger, global hot topic, and 8) be willing to engage in discussions about how the local project relates to global justice issues.

IACD will provide support for IACD member ‘visitors’ to participate in the GVR.  Visitors from the Global South will be matched to host communities based on the topical area of practical community development work.  Visitors are expected to: 1) have relevant community development experience on the topical issue, 2) have excellent communication skills and be able to communicate easily in English, 3) be committed to intercultural learning, 4) be willing to take part in the recording of the ‘learning journey’, 5) be willing to work from an asset-based approach, 6) be able to travel to the host country and stay for an agreed upon amount of time, 7) be wiling to share and disseminate learning from the GVR to others, and 8) be willing to engage in discussions about how the local project relates to global justice issues.

2010 GVRs
IACD will coordinate two GVRs in 2010.  The first GVR will be focused on local food and bioregional responses to food security.  The main hosts for this GVR will be the Falkand Centre for Stewardship and the Rural Regeneration Unit.  Read more here…

If you are an IACD member interested in being a visitor or a host, contact Debi Fry at debi.fry@iacdglobal.org.  Also, if you are an IACD member outside of the UK and are interested in exploring hosting a GVR in your country, please get in touch.
 

Fife Food GVR: Expressions of Interest Now Invited

The Centre for Stewardship in Falkland, Scotland will host a GVR focused on the One Planet Food project. The Centre will be joined by several visitors, who are also working on regional sustainable food systems, to engage in dialogue and learn from one another. If you feel you or your organisation could be that international visitor (or could be involved in some other way) then please download, complete and return this form to ben.williams@iacdglobal.org. Expressions of interest are being sought from IACD members only. If you would like to become a member then please get in touch to request an application form. Please note that if we are unable to work with you on this occasion, we will keep the information and get back in touch if a future opportunity arises.

Global Village Residencies- New Project at IACD

It is often said that the world has become a global village. Experiences from
our conferences and events show us that Community Development
practitioners from the UK and Ireland are often impressed and motivated by
face to face meetings with international partners. This is especially true where
an international visitor might offer insight on approaches to a relevant
problem. All too often however the visitor has to leave before the implications
for the idea can be discussed in the UK or Irish context. Our experience tells
us that there is a hunger for deeper learning and exchange between
community development (CD) practitioners here and overseas.

To develop this model we will organise ‘global village’ residencies in 2008/9.
We will support communities in the UK or Ireland to host an international
visitor or small team of visitors who might undertake the following activities:
share dialogue and experiences, tackle practical problems, run
workshops/training sessions, undertake community arts work or be part of the
development efforts in that community.

The pairings will initially focus on matching interested Carnegie Rural
Programme partners with relevant and stimulating international partners.

Some of these pairings will include additional practice and policy seminars at
partner organisations and some will stand-alone. The costs of the residency
will be part-funded from Carnegie UK Trust funding, with the remainder
levered by IACD and host village fundraising. We have had positive
discussions about this idea with Rural Programme partners (and possible
hosts) in Ireland, Cornwall and Scotland and expect that our first pilots will be
in partnership with communities in three of these jurisdictions.

Asset Based Approaches to Rural Community Development

Literature Review, Website and Resources

Asset Based Rural Community Development has emerged globally as a rejection of deficit regeneration models, where communities have to demonstrate all the things they lack in order to win resources. A community that inquires into problems will keep finding problems. A community that attempts to appreciate what is best in itself will discover assets.

Asset Based Rural Community Development takes as its starting point these existing assets, particularly the strengths inherent in community based associations and social networks, and mobilises these, alongside tangible assets such as land and buildings, to create new economic and social opportunities.

Carnegie UK Trust commissioned (IACD) to undertake a literature review and to collect case studies of Asset Based Rural Community Development as it is used in different contexts around the world.

The work is part of a team looking at Œ Sustainable Management of Community Assets¹ which met at Falkland in Fife in March. This group of action researchers include New Economics Foundation (looking at money flows in rural economies), Communities on the Edge (three large estates in the south of Scotland working with their immediate communities to diversify economic activity), Aviemore Partnership (a community tourism initiative) and Wessex Reinvestment Trust (pioneering Community Land Trusts as a way of securing affordable housing for local people).

New publications

New publications in the RARP can be found on rural.carnegieuktrust.org.uk/publications

These include the Mapping Rural Needs - an assessment of poverty in rural areas of the UK. This analysis identifies the latest trends in migration, demography and income generation but also considers the less tangible and sometimes unexpected consequences of what is largely urban policy making on rural areas.

IACD is now developing a web resource for ABCD. If you have a good example of internally driven community development which you would like to share with us please contact me for further information at
tara.oleary@iacdglobal.org

Links: 
Further reports in the series
More information about the project

For more information on IACD projects or any aspect of IACD work contact:

Tara O'Leary, Development Officer,
(IACD),
PO BOX 23680,
EH6 6XX,
Scotland, UK
Email info@iacdglobal.org