What is a Community Activist?
May 20th, 2009 by Tracey Todhunter
Today I’m at Trafford Hall in Cheshire running a workshop for North West Together We Can Partnership. This is event is for community volunteers in all sectors, not just environmental projects. One of the big issues that we’ve been discussing today is “What is a Community Activist”?
There has been quite a debate and it seems people are either proud to call themselves and activist or see it as somehow a negative term. For me, an activist is someone who is active in their community – or as one delegate put it “We’re the people who get things done”. There are some volunteers here from Creative Industries in Salford who are filming some of the sessions and interviewing people who are taking part – including me! I’ll add some information about them later.
I’m interested to know what motivates these volunteers to keep going, so in my session I asked the group to make a list of their successes and things they are proud of – it’s quite a list and I’ve posted here as an example of how proud we should be to be called “community activists” and the real difference we are making in our communities.
“It’s Not All Bad…”
- We’re child led / community led “We Listen”
- We have a knowledge of what local people want and need
- We cater for all ages, anyone is welcome “we are inclusive”
- We teach kids to grow veg – and to cook and eat it!
- There is a “knock on” effect, improved self esteem and confidence in kids who take part
- Be bold – convince people you can do “it” – even if you think you can’t!
- We are good at building relationships and finding key contacts in other organisations
- We all have success stories – but no-one to share them with
Of course there have been the usual gripes about lack of core funding, about local councils who invite communities to take part in “tick box” consultations and the need for support and advice for hard pressed volunteers.
What I will take away from here is a reinforcement of my belief that unpaid does not mean “unskilled” and that we have an under utilised, under resourced team of willing and able community volunteers who can, and are making a differnece in their own neighbourhoods. These are the people who don’t need to be “empowered”. But they do need support to enable them to help others in their communities to choose to get involved and recognise that a true community only exists when people who live and work in the same neighbourhoods spend time together learning to respect each other and share common aims for a better community.
