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Community capacity building and community engagement
Community capacity building is focused on working directly with people in their communities so that they can become more confident and effective in addressing community issues and build on their strengths. This distinguishes it from community engagement, which is essentially about the relationship between communities and public bodies:
'Developing and sustaining a working relationship between one or more public body and one or more community group, to help them both to understand and act on the needs or issues that the community experiences'. (National Standards for Community Engagement).
Although capacity building and engagement are thus distinct, they are related. The National Standards recognise that for community engagement to be effective, there must be an investment in community capacity building. For example, the indicators for the Improvement standard set out that:
'All participants have access to support and to opportunities for training or reflection on their experiences, to enable them and others to take part in an effective, fair and inclusive way
Each party identifies its own learning and development needs and together the participants regularly review their capacity to play their roles
Where needs are identified, the potential of participants is developed and promoted'
So, community capacity building is an important condition for effective community engagement, and a particular role for CLD within community planning. Effective engagement with and action by communities requires support to the development of their skills and confidence. Equally, even the strongest community groups can only be effective if there is sustained attention to the means of engagement with public bodies and of facilitating self-help action.
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