Community Organising Training

A week ago, 22 people gathered at the Open University for a community organising training

day. St.Frideswide’s church, a member institution of Citizens MK, was represented by 8 keen

learners 5 of whom were new to thinking about building community in this particular way.

‘What way is that?’, I hear you ask. Read on to find out the answer!

Building community in a way that strengthens civil society. As part of civil society, we often

forget that we are powerful enough to make change, change that is for the better. We can

find ourselves working in silos, forgetting to build solidarity: three are better than two, a

group working together is stronger, a church working together for a single purpose is

powerful. But the best examples of civil society working powerfully is when we join with other

institutions in our community. This was clear to see in the role-play exercise which the

trainees took part in.

Building community in a way that works for the common good. When we make every effort to

listen to our community intentionally, we discover what common good might look like. The

trainees learnt about House Meetings and were given the challenge of carrying out such

small gatherings within our church and some external ones too. I’d like to invite you to take

part in the House Meetings which will take place in the coming weeks and months.

Building community that develops leadership. ‘I’m not loud and confident’, said one potential

trainee when she was invited to attend the training day. Some aspects of the training day

made her feel nervous and this is even before she’d said ‘yes’ to the invitation. Another

trainee is a regular volunteer at the WECC Community Hub; her desire to see change in this

our Water Eaton community compelled her to attend. ‘I’ve only been in this country for less

than 5 years, but I can see that we need to change things for the better.’ Yet another trainee,

so drawn by the daily example of community that she sees at WECC, attended the training

day and then a Citizens MK meeting! ‘I’ve never seen community work like this. Where I

come from, we never had a community. I really want to get involved in this work.’

Building community that works across difference. Our trainees represented a range of

groups that take place at WECC; the thread that binds them together is their experience of

community at our church centre and their deep desire to see things change for the better.

Nudrat