Communities of Hope is about something very precious. It is about a community's capacity to learn, to change, to grow-and to build that most invaluable of commodities-respectful connectedness.

This is a truly generous book giving a step-by-step blue-print for a 'strengths-based' approach to community capacity building, as developed by St Luke's Anglicare (Bendigo, Australia).

 

Preface from Communities of Hope

 

Revitalising Community and Rediscovering Hope

By Russell Rollason, Executive Officer, Anglicare Australia (From the Preface to Communities of Hope, April 2004)

 

In the mid-1990s before the drought devastated rural Australia, it was community services such as banks, post offices and government services that were drying up and undermining community wellbeing. One organisation that responded to the challenge in an innovative way was the Bendigo Bank. It drew on its rural experience and established a community banking model that not only mobilised and motivated local leadership and assets, but hit a responsive chord and spread rapidly to rural and suburban centres across Australia.

 

In an address to an Anglicare Australia Annual General Meeting in 1997, the Bendigo Bank chief, Rob Hunt, described their approach to community banking: 'We believe there is no shortage of leaders-only a shortage of opportunities to focus, educate and engage them. Much of what has occurred in the country has left individual communities feeling powerless, and yet with appropriate leadership there is a clear opportunity to involve, unite and develop such communities. Each community must take ownership of the major issues impacting upon it.'

 

This caused Anglicare to reflect. Do we, or does the Church have a community development model to assist depressed communities (rural or otherwise) to come together, identify their resources and develop their own leadership? Can we help local communities recover hope out of despair? Out of this reflection came the Communities of Hope project and a welcome grant from the Engaging Australia project of the General Synod to help give the project legs.

 

Four basic considerations stand behind the project. The first three are expressed in the form of questions. What can we draw from our experience of community development? What resources can we offer to local churches and agencies? What training is needed to assist church and community leaders use a community development approach? And fourthly, we understood that the approach should be piloted to ensure it is relevant.

 

It is thanks to St Luke's Anglicare, and particularly to Wayne McCashen, that I am now writing the preface to Communities of Hope. This practical book aims to provide ideas, inspiration and resources for local church and community leaders to use in developing a strengths approach to community capacity building. Via the workshop program outlined in the book, we hope to provide a range of tools and skills to assist church and community leaders to empower and inspire their communities.

 

Theological insights, faith convictions and prayer are key resources for church leaders. The compendium booklet to this kit explores theological and biblical perspectives on community development in the hope of revitalising church engagement with the community. It also seeks to help fellow travellers to access the spiritual insights of Christianity.