Using Community Development to support small community groups, voluntary organisations and networks in your local area.

This is a new emerging and developing Big Lotteries funded project set up by the Federation for Community Development Learning (FCDL) and National Association for Voluntary and Community Action (NAVCA), with FCDL being the lead organisation. The project runs from October 2009 until March 2013.

Creating Changes is a project offering free community development training to a wide range of local support and development organisations, so that they can improve their practice in supporting small groups and networks.

The courses are mainly aimed at community activists and paid and unpaid workers who, within their ongoing roles, support the learning, development and actions of small groups and networks and who are interested in developing their skills, knowledge and understanding of how to use participative approaches in facilitating informal community development learning as part of such work. Workers do not need to be generic Community Development Workers.

Course E Supporting and Managing Community Development is specifically aimed at managers or supervisors who are responsible for supporting and supervising Community Development approaches, through managing workers or teams of people who support small community groups as part of their ongoing unpaid or paid roles.

This project is not targeted at statutory/private sector employees but some places may be available for a small charge of £25 if there are places available. Priority will be given to free places for community and voluntary sector participants.

The training courses will take place in different places of England. Venues and dates will be uploaded onto the FCDL website as they are being confirmed.

If you are interested in discussing the possibility of a training course to be run in your area (has to be England and the participants have to fit the criteria described above), please do get in touch with Suki Shergill Tel: 0114 2536774 Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Menu of FREE Creating Changes training courses:

Participative Facilitation Methods for Working with Community Groups
FREE two day training course Course Code A
Course aims: This course will introduce creative facilitation approaches to support the development of small community groups through creative and participatory facilitation. Facilitation here is taken to express the process of helping the ongoing learning and development of community groups through a wide range of informal community development methods.
This course will include exploring how to use visual art, drama, games and other creative approaches to support learning within the ongoing group work activities rather than just through workshop type events

Introduction to Planning and Delivering Community Development Training
FREE two day unaccredited training course Course code B
Course aims: This course offers the opportunity for course participants to develop an awareness of participatory and inclusive methods of planning, delivering and evaluating short Community Development taster sessions.

Supporting Group Work and Policy Engagement
FREE one day training course Course Code D
Course aims: This course will offer the opportunity for course participants to develop an awareness of how to support community groups in identifying their own needs, in order to take actions and influence the decisions that affect the quality of the lives of the communities they are part of.

Supporting and Managing Community Development
FREE one day training course Course Code E
Course aims: This course will enable managers and supervisors to critically explore the opportunities, tensions and challenges of supporting and managing Community Development practice.

Creating Materials for Working with Community Groups
FREE one day training course Course code F
Course aims: This course will offer the opportunity for course participants to develop learning resources whilst supporting the development and actions of community groups.