IACD over the Decades
The International Association for Community Development was established in 1953 in the USA and has been promoting and supporting community development practice around the world for 7 decades. Over the years the organisation has changed its structures, moved locations and refocused its priorities. This section of our website offers some insight into the history of IACD with some associated links for further reading.
The Early Years
In its early days, IACD members worked closely with the United Nations on developing its policies and programmes, as an accredited International Non-Governmental Organisation. The U.N. set up a Regional and Community Development Section and in 1954 a global review of community development was published, to which IACD contributed. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0006/000611/061170eo.pdf
A further paper, published in 1956, offers insight as to how community development was being understood in the 1950s and how this understanding influenced emerging policy and practice across the world. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0017/001797/179726eb.pdf
Much of IACD’s membership and focus in the 1950s and ’60s was upon policy and practice in developing countries, primarily working in rural communities. In the 1960s and 70’s community development began to be more widely adopted as a policy within developed countries, especially around anti-poverty programmes such as the War on Poverty in the USA and against a backdrop of significant urban regeneration. There was also a growing awareness from the 1970s of community education work in Latin America especially in Cuba and Brazil. The USSR and China were leading proponents of community based health programs.
In 1967 members of IACD were involved with the setting up of the Community Development Journal published by Oxford University Press. Marjorie Mayo former IACD member and CDJ Board member reflects upon the history of community development and future challenges, including racism, migration, austerity, neoliberalism and the role of the state. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuchj3cXRWc
By the late 1960s a number of national professional associations had emerged, such as the Association of Community Workers in the UK, the Australian Community Workers Association and the U.S. Community Development Society. Subsequently national professional associations and networks have been established, (and in some cases have since disappeared), in many countries around the world.
Moving to Belgium
In 1978 the IACD Board decided to move IACD from the U.S.A to Belgium. By now membership from Africa and South East Asia was also growing. IACD launched a journal called Comm, established a Community Work Training Clearing House providing information on available training programmes, ran conferences in Asia and Africa and provided small grants to local community development projects on behalf of the Belgian Overseas Development Ministry.
From the late 1980s, and with the end of the Cold War, interest in community development grew in Eastern Europe, with IACD members beginning to make contact with practitioners and networks in Eastern Europe and the former USSR. During this period there was growing interest in the work of Freire, Alinsky and others, which led to calls for IACD to embrace some of the more radical community organising and community education practice. Aligned with this shift were also calls to open up the Board of IACD to a wider and more diverse membership that encouraged community organisers and community education practitioners to join, encompassed global representation, and reflected a better gender balance.
At an IACD conference in South Africa a decision was made to move the association from Belgium to Scotland. IACD moved its operational base to Scotland in 1998, locating in the offices of the then Scottish Community Education Council. Mindful of its origins emerging out of a post war, post-colonial era, the IACD Board was restructured and reformed to ensure more democratic control of the organisation by its members through a directly elected Board, more reflective of the wider membership. A formal relaunch at an international conference took place in Edinburgh in 1999, and IACD was subsequently registered in Scotland as a charity.
First IACD office in Scotland at Rosebery House, Edinburgh
In the intervening years IACD has worked hard to attract and maintain a more diverse and globally inclusive Board with greater regional and gender representation. This has also led to greater diversity among those holding office bearing roles.
The 2000’s – Raising the profile of community development
Moving to Scotland significantly helped to strengthen IACD’s independence and longer term sustainability. In the years following the move the Scottish Community Education Council and then Dundee City Council gave critical administrative support to the organisation. Between 2004-2012 financial support from the Scottish-based Carnegie UK Trust enabled IACD to employ its own part-time staff. This film made in the early 2000s highlights the work IACD was doing at this time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90yGW-W3YDc
Since 2014, core funding has come from the Scottish Government enabling IACD to maintain its operational base and continue to employ part-time staff.
In 2018, IACD marked its 65th birthday with a special anniversary issue of Practice Insights magazine. This issue explores the key contributors and movements which have shaped the community development profession over the past six and a half decades. Download the anniversary magazine here: Practice Insights Special Issue — IACD, the First 65 Years
The 2020’s
Adjusting to lockdowns and restrictions on travel during the Covid 19 pandemic, IACD moved its international conference hosting online in order to keep up the momentum of networking and practice exchange for our members and others with an interest in community development practice. In 2021 we hosted our first ever fully online 3 day international conference from Nairobi in Kenya, followed in 2022 by our 2nd online international conference hosted from Ureki in Georgia.
In 2023, we were delighted to be able to mark our 70th anniversary with a return to in-person international conferences which took place in June 2023 in Darwin, Australia. In our 70th year, IACD has been looking to our role in a future of multiple challenges that community development is more than ever relevant to meeting.
Anna Clarke, Anastasia Crickely & Michelle Dunscombe celebrating 70 Year of IACD (Darwin, Australia)
You can read more about our global conferences, practice exchanges and other areas of work on the relevant pages of this website.