comdev.org.uk

Community development can be both an occupation (such as a community development worker or health development, youth, sports, arts development, social, health and social care workers) and a way of working with communities. Its key purpose is to build communities based on justice, equality and mutual respect based on social justice, social inclusion, fairness and equality.

Community development may involve one the one hand changing the relationships between ordinary people and people in positions of power, so that everyone can take part in the issues that affect their lives, to empowering people to improve their own experiences of society through personal and social interactions, actions and behaviours. It starts from the principle that within any community there is a wealth of knowledge and experience which, if used in creative ways, can be channelled into collective action to achieve the communities' desired goals.

‘Community’ however is an ambiguous term. It can be and is used to refer to any collectivity or group of people, whether or not that group is large or small, aware of its ‘groupness’ or not, territorially contiguous, inclusive or exclusive, loosely or tightly structured, hierarchical or egalitarian, atomistic or organic, and so on.