Over the past fifty or sixty years, since community development became a paid profession, community developers have organised themselves into local, national and international networks. Ironically for a practice that tends to work locally, the oldest of these networks is IACD, founded sixty five years ago next year. As far as we can ascertain it was not until the latter 1960s that national networks – sometimes called Societies, Fora, Associations or Alliances started to be created around the world.
If any member knows of earlier national networks please send us information about this.
A couple of years ago, we undertook a quick survey to try to find out how many national community development networks currently existed. We found less than thirty. Some of these on closer inspection were not networks in the sense of an association of community developers, but the name of an agency managing anti poverty programmes – examples being the Community Development Network of the Americas, working in central and south america and Community Development Network Pakistan. Others we found, such as Mongolia’s Community Development Network and the Scottish Community Development Network, appeared to be networks of individual practitioners, whilst others such as Community Development Alliance Scotland and the European Community Development Network were forums for agencies. Some, such as the Community Development Society of the Philippines had a checkered history almost closing down but now being reinvigorated. Others such as the UK’s Community Development Exchange and its Association of Community Workers had closed completely. However some, such as the Australian Association of Community Workers and the US Community Development Society, had an active continuity going back to the late 1960s. And we found new ones such as the Aotearoa Community Development Association being set up recently in New Zealand and the Institute of Community Development Practitioners Nigeria.
We are keen to find out more about how IACD members and community developers generally are organising themselves. These past few years have witnessed enormous cuts in community development posts as governmental and non-governmental funds have dried up. This we feel is the very time when ever isolated practitioners and agencies committed to community development need to be supporting each other locally, nationally and internationally and for IACD to be supporting them. As a profession at the heart of our praxis is being good at community organisation, yet community developers have a notorious reputation for being poor at organising ourselves. We are unsure why this is, but it has not done our field any favours in an increasingly competitive world, where poor organisation means you don’t have a voice.
