Welcome to Elevate, a new Capacity Building Programme for Northern Ireland. The Elevate Programme has something to offer everyone. You may wish to deepen and improve your community development practice or find out more about health inequalities or perhaps you would like to strengthen your connections with other people who work in the same area.
The publication of the tender to deliver the programme was something of a ‘have- to’ moment for us. Tackling health inequalities through community has been the core work of CDHN for over 20 years so the opportunity to deliver a capacity building programme on that topic was too good to miss.
A year, however, is not a long time and in the context of community development, it is one small step but an important step nonetheless. We know we are not starting with a blank canvas – there is a vast range and depth of knowledge and skills in this topic across the community, voluntary and public sectors but what we hope to do is build on those firm foundations. We want to provide opportunities to critically reflect on practice, to build connections and to try new ways of working. We want to create a better understanding of what affects our health and wellbeing, how our life chances are determined by circumstances largely outside of our control and how to move from supporting individuals to collective action.
We have a great team to help us do this over the coming months. Our core partners are Rural Community Network, Prospect Awards and Community Evaluation Northern Ireland – collectively we have years of experience and expertise in community development, supporting action on social determinants, training, mentoring and impact practice. We have also identified five fantastic organisations, one in each HSC Trust area, which have great experience and practice examples to share with others through Elevate’s Community Mentorship Programme.
An Elevate capacity building staff team has been recruited and will be situated in the community across Northern Ireland supporting the roll out of the programme and delivering the training programmes in each HSC Trust area.
We look forward to delivering this really exciting programme with you.
Joanne Morgan
Director, CDHN
Alone, we can do so little; together, we can do so much’
