DESCRIPTION
Our story started over twenty years ago, founded by Bob Marshall and Paul McColgan. The premise was to use community development methodologies coupled with holistic case management and apply this to small, deprived neighbourhoods to see if we could lift the whole neighbourhood out of poverty.
Our vision is a Scotland without persistent poverty or inequity. Our mission is to innovate, learn and share how to lift neighbourhoods out of poverty using whole-person, whole-neighbourhood approaches.
Our values lead everything we do:
- The most important element of any support relationship is listening to what the person wants deep down and working alongside them to achieve it
- We stick with people for as long as it takes
- Many people find it hard to articulate what they want at first and so need to be able to experience an environment of trust and safety in order to uncover buried aspirations – this cannot be rushed
- People don’t resist change – they resist being changed.
- People in deprived communities already know what is required to improve their lives – what they need is help with how to make it happen.
- Compassionate listening is a basic human need and is central to the way that we engage with people.
- Every individual and community has assets
- Sustainable transformation in communities is possible but needs a long term commitment.
We have worked in seventeen neighbourhoods and achieved huge impact both in terms of supporting individuals and building sustainable community capacity/leadership. In two neighbourhoods we have created and then spun-out independent community development trusts.
Currently we focus our work on work in two neighbourhoods in Edinburgh – each acting like a community development trust but within our group structure. These are:
- Community Renewal Pennywell (in Muirhouse and West Pilton)
- Community Renewal Lifting Neighbourhoods Together in Bingham, Magdalene and the Hays
ORGANISATION ACTIVITIES
