As we previously reported Locality, the charity formed by the merger of bassac and Development Trust Association (DTA), has won the contract to deliver the Government’s Community Organiser programme in England. Full details of their proposals are now available and make interesting reading, starting with the document’s cover which combines quotations from community development pioneers Paolo Freire and Saul Alinsky with ones from David Cameron and Barack Obama.

The first two are quoted extensively as influences on the proposed learning approach. It proposes to “weave [them] into a worldview … that creates the conditions for ongoing collective action in the long term. The theory of change that drives our movement sees civil society as effectively disempowered because it is undervalued, undercapitalised and generally nonentrepreneurial and therefore not resilient. That means that even when organising leads to success this is often limited to changing the practice of the powerful (hard and important work in its own right) rather than transforming the world through self-directed mutual action”.

“We see this as a once-in-a generation opportunity to engage vast numbers of people in positive community-led action, and we are determined to seize that opportunity”.

• They are looking to recruit 500 senior community organisers, who will be given £20,000 for the first year, and
• 4,500 part time organisers who will be volunteers
• 10 ‘Kickstarter’ areas of England will start the programme in April, with more added later
• These ‘host’ organisations will have “a strong focus on under-represented and disadvantaged communities through cultural, self-help and advocacy organisations”
• “In many cases hosts will recruit the COs themselves, either from existing staff [!!!], volunteers and users or through publicity to attract new interest”.

“The biggest barrier to participation will be scepticism. We need to establish the credibility of the Community Organisers programme fast and effectively. It must be ‘liberated’ from government, and particularly disassociated from public spending cuts”. (Letter from Locality CEO).

This raises many questions: in England, if, rather than getting bogged down in promoting ‘entrepreneurial’ approaches,  the programme generates more American-style campaigning community  organising activity, then, as a Guardian journalist who recently observed similar training schemes asks, “Could the establishment come to rue its newfound commitment to community organisers?”

For Scotland, though such a programme does not offer an alternative to work which offers a long term commitment to building community organisations and skills for community action, as one or two extreme enthusiasts have suggested it might,  it should perhaps make us stop and ask whether we are doing enough to build skills for community activists and campaigners as well as professional workers and service delivery volunteers