Clearinghouse publishes new Issues Paper on community mobilisation

The Clearinghouse has published Issues Paper 8, Creating Change: Mobilising New Zealand Communities to Prevent Family Violence.

Written by Sheryl Hann and Cristy Trewartha, the paper looks at principles, challenges and ways of assesing change in community mobilisation (CM) approaches. Community mobilisation works to build local leadership and ownership around an issue, highlighting the central role of community members in addressing complex problems. The paper looks at the available evidence and includes New Zealand examples.

Key messages of the paper are:

• Community mobilisation is a complex and long-term approach but has the potential to transform communities.
• Principles of community mobilisation include: a social change perspective; whole community engagement; collaboration; being community-led; and, a vision for a better world.
• Community mobilisation approaches make theoretical and practical sense. As a recent approach, the necessary components of community mobilisation are still emerging, and projects are learning as they go.
• Supporting this work to develop requires thinking in new ways from all involved, from funders and policy makers to NGO leaders, practitioners and community members.
• It also requires some different and sustained investment in coordination roles, workforce development, and new leadership skills.
• Internationally, there are a few examples which show promise in terms of effectiveness, and there are also promising NZ initiatives. However most have not been evaluated. There must be investment in research and evaluation to learn more about what works to create change.
• Findings from international projects indicate that CM efforts can result in substantial reductions in violence in relatively short periods of time, e.g. 2-3 years.

The paper is available on the Clearinghouse website.