Who were the pioneers of our profession and movement? As hundreds of people once more gather together for the annual World Community Development Conference, we will have much to celebrate as we learn from and share together the work going on around the world by community developers from a range of disciplines.
The multi-disciplinary nature of community development practice owes its origins to the early pioneering work of people like Paulo Freire, a community educator, Saul Alinsky, a community organiser, Sherry Arnstein, a health planner in the 1960s. It was from their pioneering work and that of many, many others working in the fields of health education, urban design and planning, environmental work, culture, local economic development, human rights, peace work, social work and much more that led to the convergence of participative approaches that we now call community development practice. From the 1950s, when IACD was set up to the current day, we have seen the contribution of many inspiring people, organisations and movements that shape how we go about our work today.
Take a look at some of these pioneers here. We have gathered together over 60 proposed by IACD members.
You can find them here, in this Special Issue of Practice Insights magazine.
You can download the full magazine here:
