In some IACD global regions there are already well established CD associations/networks. These are independent of IACD, but we seek to forge close partnerships with them and, whenever possible, we would only organise our international and regional events in those regions in partnership.
Since 2001 we have been developing partnership agreements with several regional/national associations. Our first was with the U.S. Community Development Society in 2001 (which we renewed in 2015. Picture below of IACD President, Charlie McConnell and CDS President, David Lammie signing the MoU in Kentucky, USA).
Attached is IACD’s policy on developing partnerships with other organisations. IACD Partnership policy paper
Others include the European Community Development Network (EuCDN); the Hungarian Association for Community Development (HACD); the Philippines Community Development Society, the Scottish Community Development Network (SCDN); the Aotearoa/New Zealand Community Development Association (ACDA), the American Community Development Society (CDS) and the Nigerian Association of Community Development Practitioners. With all of these we have also organised international and regional conferences in recent years.
In 2014/15, we had a short life task group co-chaired by our then Vice Presidents Stuart Murdoch and Randy Adams, that oversaw a mapping exercise to try to discover how many active national CD associations/networks there are around the world. We were only able to identify around thirty active national CD associations. The research discovered that in some countries CD associations/networks had existed but were now defunct.
As an outcome of this work, the Board decided to introduce the post of Country Correspondent. These would be IACD members in different countries who would agree to help promote IACD and build links with existing CD networks or perhaps help initiate new ones. Our first Country Correspondent was for China, where historically IACD has been weak and where there was no national CD support network. You can download the report of IACD’s mapping study that was presented at our 2015 AGM. http://Download
IACD is very committed to supporting national CD networks and we are keen to post information about their activities on our website and Facebook site. If you are involved in a national CD network in your country, and wish to share information with IACD which we in turn can share with IACD members through the website and our Facebook sites, please make contact info@iacdglobal.org
Over the past decade, we have been seeing a negative trend in the organisation of community development practitioners and scholars at a national level across most countries. Whereas in the 1990s there existed dozens of national community development associations across the world, since the early 2000s and especially since the financial crisis of 2008, over half have closed and of those remaining many do not appear to be active. We last looked at the ‘health’ of national community development networking in 2012 and it was clear then, and more worryingly now, that our profession and movement is far, far weaker at national level than it was in the past.
There are many reasons for the fracturing of our support infrastructure. The ideology of neo liberal privatisation led to severe contractions in the numbers of CD practitioners and programmes through reductions in governmental (national and local) investment as the State withdrew from its previous Post-WW2 interventionist role. ‘Government’ was in retreat across most countries. Not all of course, China was bucking the trend, but as yet with a government not committing to supporting community development as part of its sustainable social/economic/environmental development programmes.
The 2008 financial crisis and election of more financially conservative governments introducing severe austerity programmes and further budget cuts compounded and speeded the contraction in commitment to spending money on community development. Whilst the more recent election of Right Wing populist and nationalist governments in countries like the USA is seeing even heftier budget cuts and a political agenda that views the values propounded by community development programmes as a threat, for example as in Hungary.
CD jobs have been cut by the tens of thousands across the developed and developing world. And as the number of practitioners falls so too have those that are left become ever more isolated. One by one national CD associations have shut down, from England and the Nordic countries, to India, Canada and numerous African countries and beyond. The British Association of Community Workers, one of the oldest closed after forty years, ten years ago. Other associations, including the strongest, the American Community Development Society has seen a drop in member numbers. The European Community Development Network is fragile.
New associations have formed or reformed in recent years, for example in Nigeria, New Zealand and the Philippines, but they are the exception and a brief look at their respective Facebook sites will show limited and often dated news posting. A tiny few, as in Scotland, Australia and Ireland are alive and kicking. As Community Work Ireland, our local partner for the WCDC2018 in June so ably demonstrated.
National associations, and in the case of the larger countries, regional networks, such as the ‘state’ level societies in America were set up for a reason. To help support and represent the interests of their members; to promote the ideas and practices of community development; to encourage learning exchanges, continuing professional development and collaboration. In all cases such national associations were set up by a small handful of people taking on the leadership role, many of such as the founders of these associations in the 1970s now retired. These leaders in our field underscored Margaret Mead’s quote to never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has. We owe a great deal to those early organisers of our field and honoured them in the special 65th anniversary issue of Practice Insightspublished earlier this year.
As practitioners and scholars it is vital that we support each other, ever more so in difficult times for the funding of community development programmes and the employment of professional staff, across both the governmental and non-governmental sectors. The tragedy of course is that never have vulnerable communities more needed community development support to help them deal with the huge environmental crisis, growing poverty, conflict and xenophobia. And it is clear that the smooth World Bank language of encouraging community-led development with the mushrooming of so called community development consultants is very far from filling that huge gap in access to free technical assistance and skilled community education and community organising support caused by the cuts.
This crisis underpinned the recent Maynooth Declaration endorsed at the WCDC 2018 which readers can find on the IACD website Policy Statements Page. And this has led to an emerging debate amongst some in IACD that perhaps IACD can and should help fill some of the support and networking void facing ever more isolated practitioners. At IACD we have long avoided parachuting into countries and for good ‘bull in a china shop’ reasons. Indeed where we have organised events in any country, such as our many conferences, we have always done so in partnership with a local association. Indeed we could never offer such hugely successful conferences as Glasgow, Auckland, Minnesota or Maynooth had we not worked in this way.
But has the time now come to rethink this ‘set in stone’ mantra of avoiding parachuting in? Recently for example we have been encouraging members in different countries to become Country Correspondents for their country, posting information about what is going on in community development in their country on the IACD members’ Facebook site https://www.facebook.com/groups/IACDglobal/ and to help promote IACD in their country.
So how about going further? Should we be encouraging IACD members in each country to collaborate and exchange ideas together more, to perhaps form local chapters? In some countries for example we have well over the dozen members who are the critical mass necessary to establish a network. And ironically, in comparison with almost all national CD associations IACD is growing – indeed we had an over 20% increase in membership in the last twelve months.
Whatever steps IACD might take over the coming years, we know that we must do this sensitively and certainly not to cut across existing national associations where they exist. But what of countries where they don’t and where isolated practitioners want to be part of a support network locally as well as internationally.