Anna is Director for Communities at Prospect Community, a community interest company that specialises in the design and accreditation of learning, awards its own qualifications and provides development solutions and services in Community Development, Learning, and Governance underpinned by national standards. The organisation works towards achieving its vision – of learning for everyone – everywhere, and mission – to make everyone’s learning journey a joy through working with partners to make learning as flexible, accessible, enjoyable and beneficial as it can be.
Anna’s early career was shaped by involvement with student politics, the women’s movement and the 1984 Miners Strike, during which she became involved in local community organising. This lead on to the completion of a postgraduate diploma in youth and community work at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Anna has worked in the field of community development practice for over 30 years across Northern Ireland and England in various roles with councils and voluntary sector organisations. While still in Liverpool, England this included neighbourhood youth/community work, refugee and immigration support and cooperative, economic enterprise development. Along the way, she also completed a post-graduate diploma in Women’s Studies and a Masters in Human Rights and Equal Opportunities. In June 2017 Anna also completed an MSc in Governance and Community Planning from Ulster University. Her research examined how models of participation informed the development of community planning engagement processes implemented by Councils in NI.
1996 brought a move to Northern Ireland which coincided with the implementation of the first EU Peace and Reconciliation funding programme. Anna spent 2 years managing one of the 26 District Peace Partnerships, then in 1998 joined the Rural Community Network – a regional voluntary organisation promoting and supporting rural community development across Northern Ireland.
While with RCN Anna coordinated a NI wide Rural Networking Infrastructure programme before moving into the newly created post of Community Development Training Coordinator. In this post, she established and co-ordinated a NI wide annual training and learning development programme for practitioners focussed on the development of standards based practice. This included an annual CD Summer School drawing participants and input from across the UK, Ireland and further afield.
In 2007 Anna left RCN and began working independently, providing specialist community development consultancy services including design and delivery of learning and training programmes, group work and facilitation, provision of strategic organisational development and governance support, community engagement and consultation processes, community based research, and programme evaluation.
Anna’s interest in and knowledge of national standards for community development lead to her becoming the NI representative on the technical review teams for the 2009 and 2015 Standards, coordinating engagement and collaborating on the technical writing. In 2011 she was commissioned to write a Resource Guide on How to Use the CD National Occupational Standards.
On a personal basis, Anna has been actively involved for many years supporting the integrated education movement in Northern Ireland which promotes an education system and schools that bring children from all backgrounds and communities to learn together. Working collectively with a group of parents she helped to set up Sperrin Integrated College www.sperrinintegrated.org and was Chair of the Board of Governors for 8 years. More recently she has been working with Integrated AlumNI, www.integratedalumni.org the network of past pupils from all integrated schools across Northern Ireland to expand its membership and activities.
