Civil society organisations and other independent community actors have observed a dynamic of disengagement and mistrust with the communities they accompany.
Well Grounded has tried to understand this dynamic, and has been able to identify some of the reasons for it. They include civil society actors’ loss of legitimacy, a top-down approach with communities, external-led approaches to accompaniment, the very short-term vision of actions carried out at the community level and the low participation of these communities.
In response to these challenges, Well Grounded has developed a learning programme based on the Community and Asset Based Approach (ACCA).
This learning pathway is offered to community development practitioners and aims to:
1/ Question power dynamics and discover different approaches that put communities and their assets at the centre of their actions and destinies;
2/ Share bottom-up approaches that put the community and its assets at the heart of the action and that promote collaboration between the different entities of this community;
3/ Question the notion of “beneficiary” attributed to communities when we work with them;
4/ Analyse the place and power of the community in so-called ‘development’ projects;
5/ Create a community of practice of people committed to empowerment and Community Resilience;
6/ Developing a community empowerment benchmark.
Testimonial
I have been active in the development world for almost 13 years and it took the ACCA training with Well Grounded to finally understand the social dimension of development projects. Indeed, this training allowed me to realise that asset-based development is a decisive approach to development. Noam Chomski says “true education, in the end, is about pushing people, communities to think for themselves”