North West Community Network
North-West Community Network has, since its inception in 1994, been a focal point for community development in the North-West. A North-West that, looking at membership alone, has traditionally included community groups from Derry~Londonderry as well as the neighbouring areas of Donegal, Limavady and Strabane.
The organisation grew out of clearly identified needs as described by community organisations at a number of levels: a need for practical support in ensuring that organisations were able to function legally and of course develop strategically; a need for an accessible resource around good practice; and of course the need for a totem around which community & voluntary sector groups could gather so as to communicate powerfully and eloquently when issues of clear community relevance brought about reaction and resistance.
Much has changed for the community & voluntary sector over the last fifteen years and indeed for North-West Community Network. As we close the first decade of the new millennium, there is no shortage of pressures for the sector as a whole and for organisations that adopt a supporting role for other local community organisations of all types and sizes.
Core Values
Although a different organisation today than five, ten, fifteen years ago, North-West Community Network has kept its core values intact. While funding streams have come and gone, targeted projects have been devised, delivered and evaluated, the guiding principles of NWCN have remained constant - equality, inclusion and participation.
It is easy to adopt such laudable principles, widely regarded as the core values of community development, but it is inarguably more responsible to adhere to them and, beyond this, to promote their practice in all community activity. Importantly, it is to be remembered here that neither these values nor community development as an approach are the preserve or possession of the community and voluntary sector. Much of the work of NWCN involves sourcing, building, and sustaining strategic linkages particularly in the public sector so that these values can be highlighted and ways can be found to embed them in approaches to public services across a much wider base than via community organisations alone.
A community development approach to public services that enshrines equality will militate against policies that all too often treat citizens unequally and consequently fail, as they are economically unsuccessful. Social policy that seeks to meet the needs of all, to include the rights, views and interests of all parts of our society, comprising those who are hardest to reach or less frequently listened to, will be more successful than a policy approach broadly aimed at the common five-eighths or unguided by targeted engagement.
A society and system of government that is structured so as to facilitate citizens in engaging with decision-making, contributing and conversing at all levels on a basis of value and respect and to participate in civic life will yield benefits: community cohesion, enhanced volunteering, innovation and meaningful partnership working are but some of the obvious outcomes.
Development Plan
NWCN has adopted, in its Strategic Development Plan 2006-2010, the mission of “working to achieve a genuinely participative democracy”. For too long, participative democracy as a concept has occasioned at best lukewarm reaction in certain quarters, usually due to an incomplete understanding of what it represents. Many remain unaware that participative democracy is actually alive and well and already being exercised in several ways in this part of the world. The concept is not one of supplanting the established representative style of democracy, where individuals and political parties stand or fall over their manifesto-based offerings and the perceived benefits thereof. Rather than seek to replace or undermine this form of selecting our decision-makers, participative democracy sees the addition of a diverse, civic contribution to those of political interests as generating a much more useful and engaging mechanism: one which captures the expertise, experience and penetration of those who are quite often closest to grassroots experience and sentiment, and who can communicate, advocate and lobby in ways that preserve the values of equality, inclusion and participation. Not in competition with but supportive of and in partnership with elected members - at local government and legislative level.
Membership
Since its beginnings, NWCN has been a membership-led organisation, seeking to create multi-level connections between itself and as many community organisations as possible in the North West and public sector bodies, including on a cross-border basis. It is governed by an Executive Committee made up of member organisations, and it is this collective, comprising, and extremely broad range of sectoral interests that sets organisational policy, aims, and objectives. This is what makes NWCN, like all community development organisations, a genuinely and confidently “bottom-up” organisation.
NWCN has been a key player in a range of community-oriented initiatives over the years and will continue to seek out opportunities to advocate on behalf of the community development approach, with which it believes community relations has a strong synergy.
Significant attention and effort have been diverted since 2008 towards the “One Plan” regeneration effort, led by the city’s Strategy Board. NWCN has been a member of this group since 2006 and in that time has brought its influence to bear in many ways, not least in securing additional membership for the Community & Voluntary sector in the shape of Neighbourhood Renewal Chairpersons and Foyle Women’s Information Network, as well as advising on developing community engagement in ways that promote the fullest inclusion and participation possible. The success of this plan will depend on, amongst other factors, real buy-in by ALL parts of our community/city/region, and NWCN will continue shaping the approach to this process so that the benefits it aspires to deliver are felt by those most in need.
Walled City Community Partnership
As a member of the Walled City Community Partnership, this organisation senses a tangible opportunity to boost the regeneration of this city and the region it serves. Whether at a spatial development level or, more crucially, adding an extra beat to the heart of the local Community and Voluntary sector, this partnership represents an extremely significant fillip to furthering cohesion and mutual understanding in this city and beyond.
Long established as being in the vanguard of community leadership, this city and its surrounding region stand on the cusp, despite ongoing challenges at many levels, of yet another exciting venture. What is being constructed here, outside of bricks and mortar, is a genuine flagship for communities continuing to help themselves and help others.
The Walled City Community Partnership embodies the diversity that this city and region are progressively enjoying, and, let us not be modest, it is to our credit that we embrace this.