Scottish Community Development Centre

Achieving Community Empowerment (ACE)

The Scottish Community Development Centre’s programme aims to build the capacity of emerging community groups by providing mentoring support, developing learning materials, facilitating the sharing of knowledge, experience and learning between participating groups and communicating key lessons more widely.

They will work with 10-12 groups per year to support them to assess the motivations and capacities of their own organisation, and those they seek to influence or work with. They will encourage groups to build awareness and support in their community, and to build the evidence to support the case for change. Such change may involve establishing community-run services or facilities, working with public agencies through community planning processes, or advocating through other means. This will be done through a series of structured workshops that focus on the four key considerations in effective community action: assessment, planning, doing and reviewing.

From their initial announcement in October 2009, they have received a high level of interest from a range of groups and organisations across Scotland. They will be contacting them with details of the application process in the next week. If you want to find out more about the ACE Programme please visit their r website at www.scdc.org.uk or contact Aileen Skillen at 0141 248 1964 aileen@scdc.org.uk for more information.

Key words: Sustainability,Support