Creating a Community Development Strategy for Reading
by Catherine Surtees
30 November 2004
By the time you read this, a one-day event to kick start the process of creating a Community Development Strategy for Reading will have taken place on 24 November 2004.
Reading Community Development Forum is working with CDX (The Community Development Xchange), RVA and Reading Borough Council to organise to bring together decision-makers and grass roots Community Development workers from voluntary and community organisations, Reading Borough Council, Reading Primary Care Trust, Thames Valley Police and Probation Services to work together.
Why a Community Development Strategy?
We all have the common aim of tackling social exclusion. The Community Development approach is an essential and effective method of empowering those who are excluded and particularly those who are hard to reach.
We at Reading Community Development Forum want the benefits of the Community Development approach to inequality to be widely understood in the town. We would like to see a partnership approach that is strategic in the identification of the common priorities we have and in maximising the use of precious Community Development resources to promote joint planning, joint training programmes and joint working. We want Reading to be a town known for its impressive deployment of Community Development resources delivering identifiable outcomes that improve people’s lives.
The 24 November event examines the successful community development work going on in the town and look at the benefits gained from taking a strategic approach in other towns. At the end of the day, we will have convened a working group to get on with the task of writing the strategy.
