Community work as a mechanism for transformation – reflecting on ambitions and outcomes in
Ireland
Aiden Lloyd
This paper attempts to open up for examination the belief that community work or community development – the terms are somewhat interchangeable – can bring about a transformed society.
As this is a conference on community development, I am assuming that we share a general understanding of what community work is: i.e. a process of collective action for lasting and sustainable change based on participation and empowerment. However, pursuing this quest for social change brings different interpretations: an ambition for change can range from small scale actions to improve the day-to-day conditions of marginalised people to changes aimed at transforming people’s lives by addressing core issues such as poverty, marginalisation and inequality at a structural level. So, while there is a broad consensus about general principles and objectives, implementation is subject to values, priorities and analyses.
It might be useful at this point to unpack the notion of ‘transformation’. Transformation is described in the Oxford dictionary as changing the form, appearance or character of something. In recent decades it is a term associated with the ideas of Paulo Freire, the Brazilian educationalist whose writings inspired teachers, administrators and social activists in South America and beyond. Freire brought together strands of Christianity, Marxism and existentialism into an analysis applicable to the post-colonial world, enabling communities to become critically conscious and to challenge their inherited subordination 1 . It was a formula for social transformation - for liberation, equality and social justice, which by implication requires structural and institutional change.
The idea of transformation is not all that different to European Union aspirations to address social exclusion – to seek to heal the so-called ‘rupture’ 2 in society through strategies and measures that bring political, economic, social and cultural inclusion for those on the periphery of society 3 . Within countries such as Ireland, linking the quest for social inclusion to the concept of transformation offered new possibilities to achieve the community work ambition for social change linked to social justice. It provided the means to move on from approaches that prioritised self-help and
1 Pedagogy of the Oppressed 1968
2 In 1974, the French Secretary of State for Social Action, Rene Lenoir, coined the phrase when publishing Les
Exclus – Un Francais sur dix (one person in ten)
3 Social inclusion is generally defined as a sustained process of insertion and integration moving through transitional stages that enable the participation of the socially excluded in the planning and implementation of measures to bring about their inclusion into economic and social life. The mechanism of implementation involves the formation of partnerships of stakeholders supported with funding from both national governments and the EU. Measures are usually multifaceted interventions across existing administrative boundaries in order to be tailored to the multidimensional problems faced by the target groups. (see Silver, H and Miller, SM: The European Approach to Social Disadvantage in Poverty and Race: Sept/Oct 2002)

neighbourhood intervention - which had failed to seriously impact on marginalised communities - to approaches that addressed deeply rooted and institutionalised poverty and inequality.
Having already acknowledged the nuanced nature of community work, we must also recognise the different contexts that the application of community work must adapt to. Although sharing many of the common characteristics that are internationally recognisable, community work in Ireland is therefore quite different in many respects. Some of the formative influences are shared with the UK
- the collectivism nurtured through the trade union movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the direct action associated with post-industrial left wing ‘street politics’ and, to a certain extent, ideas stemming from Britain, including those gleaned from decolonisation processes and from the development of social work practices. Other influences are uniquely Irish. The development of a significant agricultural-based cooperative movement in the late 19 th century, the emergence of forms of local organisation to put in place rudimentary infrastructure during the heady nation-building years following independence, and the influence and learning from Catholic missionary work in Africa, Asia and South America have all been strong factors in the development of Irish community work.
In the early days of the independent state community development work was focused on self-help initiatives, mainly through parish based activity, and there was little recognition of social class, let alone gender, as an issue or focus. Following a rather late industrialisation and modernisation process in the 1960s and 1970s community efforts were largely about opening up service development for the more marginalised communities who failed to be lifted by the rising tide of economic development. Things were to change fundamentally with membership of Europe as new ideas, policies and funding streams began to influence and widen the parameters and possibilities for social change. European principles about social cohesion and solidarity, integrated socioeconomic development and subsidiarity accompanied the significant Structural Funds that came our way. New programmes contained objectives and organising methodologies that were socially ambitious and organisationally exciting, if challenging.
Separate to this European influence, the import of concepts and methodologies deriving from
liberation theology, itself a product of the more enlightened period that followed Vatican Two - including the idea that Christian love also had a material basis - eventually streamed back through the missionary work of religious orders and were promoted in a small number of innovative initiatives by the late 1980s. During the following two decades the fusion of social inclusion goals, promoted and funded by the European Union and a somewhat reluctant Irish government , and the aspiration for a transformed society held by many community development activists, educators and organisations brought about an embodiment of a model of work that could be termed transformative. It would be wrong to present this as a deeply, or even partly embedded, overnight achievement of ‘an age of enlightenment’. Indeed, it has and continues to be a struggle to promote widespread acceptance of this more radical community work approach, but it achieved a notable measure of acceptance and is still reflected in the policies and programmes of government
(somewhat tenuously at the moment), the learning imparted by many community work education and training bodies and in the aims and objectives of key community development organisations and networks. Transformative approaches remain widely subscribed to by community workers, despite

attempts to reintroduce more conservative models of community work such as ‘asset-based’ community development 4 , especially within local authorities.
Let us now fast forward through these decades of development in Ireland – European Community membership, significant structural funds investment and dramatic economic growth from 1995 to
2002, followed by reckless financial management, fiscal collapse and the prospect of decades of austerity and declining social services. While there are different opinions about the ingredients that raised Ireland to the second highest income per capita in Europe during that period, most commentators would agree that the form of corporatism adopted i.e. a social partnership of employers, trade unions and farming organisations, brought about the key conditions for economic growth, industrial stability and agreed development paradigms. For groups seeking to influence policy agendas this was an important institution to be part of. The community development sector, as part of a wider civil society grouping, did eventually gain access to social partnership, but it was a limited form of participation (they had no access to key economic decisions) and, although some social advances were included in various agreements, the sector was never capable of penetrating the established accord, or to be afforded an equal status with other players. The net outcome was that during a period of massive economic growth and national development the community sector was unable to convert its aspirations into tangible outcomes – inequality worsened and material poverty levels were not reduced incrementally. While national per capita income remained high,
Ireland remained one of the most unequal countries in the industrialised world 5 .
Let us now move forward to the present.
The series of events emanating from the economic collapse of 2008 have had a profound effect on the role, scope and potential of community work in many countries. In Ireland, even prior to the downturn there was a substantial effort by the state to co-opt the community sector into a postwelfare state reconstruction of service delivery – a common agenda amongst countries, such as the
UK, New Zealand and Ireland, operating out of an Anglo-Saxon economic model of development. In
Ireland, this was accompanied by actions to dampen the advocacy role of the sector – the introduction of charities legislation restricting the sector’s policy influencing role, increased control of funding streams and the development of partnerships between the state and big philanthropic organisations. The methods used to achieve this situation are typical of the centralised state acting to maintain ownership of all matters deemed ‘political’.
In many ways, the economic collapse, which brought about a parallel crisis in the public finances and thus a rationale for public service reform, enabled an acceleration of efforts to trim and reconstruct the sector. We now have a situation whereby there is no dedicated community development programme in place, where local development (a key area-based mechanism to address social exclusion) has a much diminished social inclusion propensity or capacity, and where the few national organisations supporting community work have been subject to cuts or even extinction. There have been other difficulties visited on the sector – a reduction in supporting infrastructure, declining budgets for statutory agencies normally supportive of local community development activity, and an
4 See McKnight, J Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a
Community's Assets (1993)
5 UNDP Human Poverty Index 2007-2008

increased need for support from marginalised communities because of unemployment, welfare reductions and cuts in services.
That is by way of a backdrop. However, the focus in this paper is the future of community work as a response to poverty, inequality and social exclusion. Those of us involved in modern community work - i.e. a period roughly concurrent with the introduction of the European Poverty Programmes 6 in the mid 1980s – have operated out of a belief that transformative change capable of radically altering the conditions of marginalised people was possible. Transformation provided a space between revolutionary struggle and slow evolutionary change that particularly suited the community work approach. Transformation did not set out to undermine the state, but neither was it content to leave matters to ‘developmental realisation’ – the slow process of learning that certain things were no longer pertinent or sufficient. Transformative community work was also conducive to democratic development and carried a potential to strengthen and augment democratic processes, particularly by widening citizen participation - and in an era of migration, aspiring or non-citizen participation.
Community work operating out of this analysis offered possibilities to educate and mobilise communities of interest, and, through networking and collaboration, build a movement capable of bringing about a more equal and socially just society.
Of course, not everyone operated out of this analysis. Many activists, especially in inner city areas, remained rooted in a class analysis, seeing community work as a means of organising working class communities to resist the structural oppression of the state – which they viewed as a committee for
the affairs of the wealthy, to quote Engels. Still another cohort within community work opted for a welfarist paradigm of analysis – narrowing the gap between rich and poor and lessening the power differentials that come about from extremes in wealth accumulation. Such devotees want a fairer society, but their aspiration may not stretch to a more equal one, for reasons of conviction or achievability. Although each of these approaches to community work is accommodated within the general theoretical paradigm, the reality is that the dominant stream of community work aspiration in recent decades in Ireland has been one of transformation. This is true both in terms of ‘theology’
– the vision, principles, practice and approaches expounded through key training bodies and supporting organisations, and by the dominant tranche of practitioners in their implementation of community work. However, in light of the outcomes and impacts of the growth and post-growth period experience – roughly a twenty year period – it is apparent that this aspiration or intent did not deliver any substantial societal alteration. During that period pre-existing inequalities were retained and only social welfare transfers prevented the most marginalised slipping into even greater poverty. Neither was there much improvement in gender equality. Women continued to earn less than men, to disproportionately carry the burden of care, and to be grossly underrepresented in decision-making roles. And many minorities did not fare any better.
Improvements in health and accommodation for Travellers (Ireland’s indigenous ethnic minority) were minimal, little protection was afforded vulnerable migrants and integration policies were neither sufficient nor sustained.
So, on the face of it, transformative community work, when judged against the big social indicators of income equality, health, education outcomes, social status and life chances did not impact.
However, many community workers would argue that some level of change was achieved,
6 Based on the First Programme of Pilot Schemes to Combat Poverty in 1974

particularly in the creation of organisational capacity amongst communities of interest, in achieving a right to consultation, and in the delivery of better services locally. Many would also point to the significant community sector infrastructure put in place at the policy interface level over that twenty year time span. However, while these advances could be construed as creating the conditions for consequential progress the reality is that substantial improvements in community sector organisation, access and capacity has not resulted in any identifiable material improvement of substance for marginalised people that is directly or partly attributable to community work. The appearance doesn’t really add up to the substance sought.
Could it be then that our implementation of the transformation paradigm was flawed, that somewhere in its transcontinental movement and subsequent fusion with social inclusion something was lost? Or was it simply not possible within, or adaptable to, the Irish context? Looking to South
America and Africa it is possible to see varying degrees of successful implementation. South America includes the home countries of Paulo Freire, Augusto Boal 7 and many others who laid down much of the conceptual thinking behind transformative approaches, and it is culturally rooted in the Catholic communality that may be a pre-requisite to its success. Brazil has made huge advances in literacy and health, and under the leadership of Lulu da Silva has taken 20 million people out of poverty in a single year – compare that with the European aspiration to achieve the same goal in 10 years 8 .
Venuzuela and Bolivia are other examples where transformative change has been achieved. Both of these countries were able to convert grass root movements to address social need into political power and through governmental processes to begin to disperse resources and the benefits of production more evenly. Even Africa, which has incurred the most enduring impacts of colonisation, has made some inroads into corruption through transformative means. Could it be then, that the model is simply not applicable to developed countries, where, for historical reasons the overriding concern is to maintain stability and where long standing political mechanisms and political cultures are resistant to new ideas and new means? Apparently not, if we look to the Nordic countries, where the ability of civil society organisations to partner the state in the development of their societies by coupling the productive capacity of capitalism and the redistributive principles of socialism, resulting in change that has been truly transformative. So, on the evidence, transformation is entirely possible and in some situations has achieved a remarkable degree of success.
That conclusion may have been internalised by those leading out various social movements in
Ireland that have sprung up following the economic downturn. Although these groups take civil
society rather than community as their organising concept, the methodologies are community development ones or draw on community development processes. These initiatives borrow heavily on current forms of social opposition in Iceland and the UK and they have developed some considerable momentum. However, this has been achieved at the expense of existing forms of community development organisation, especially at national level, and this has further weakened the sector in particularly trying times when it is subject to cuts to programmes and budgets. Given the historical lack of connection between popular movements and governmental priorities it is unlikely that the agendas developed on behalf of these initiatives (which are strongly related to current political and economic matters) will be advanced. In many ways this mirrors the social
7 See Theatre of the Oppressed, 1993 New York: Theatre Communications Group
8 Policies and Practices of Promoting Social Inclusion in Brazil: M. Andréa Borges David UNDESA Accra, November
2009

partnership experience, which diverted the community sector towards an unfruitful avenue in pursuit of social inclusion.
Based on past experiences Ireland is perfectly capable of building effective forms of organised resistance in the interest of excluded people, and community work or community development has been an important mechanism in this respect. The problem appears to be in converting these forms of organising into social and material gains. In some countries this is made possible through highly democratised systems of governance with strong traditions of active citizenship and civil society/NGO partnership (the Nordic countries). In other countries these social movements become the political mechanism (e.g. Brazil, Bolivia and Uruguay), while in others their attempt is to integrate their objectives by engagement in the nation building project (e.g. South Africa, Tanzania,
Liberia).
So, for those of us struggling within Anglo-Saxon type economies, where are we now in relation to community development and its ambition for transformation? Are we at the same moment that
Barack Obama experienced as a community organiser when he concluded that change in the existing order of things was only possible through purely political processes? Or is it that the mobilising methodology (community development) remains sound but its ambitions became blunted in the strategic implementation – too many tangential journeys along routes that went nowhere and gained little?
On the evidence, the context that is presented to us in Ireland is grim - a gloomy economic backdrop with rising poverty and high unemployment, a reduced or diminished social inclusion infrastructure, and a sector battered into submission with precious few gains from three decades of activity. And the future does not bode well either. There is nothing of any substance relating to community development in the new Programme for Government and the government department that housed community development, rights and equality is to be broken up and its functions dispersed to other departments.
Whatever about the dismal backdrop and the unfavourable indications from government, by far and away the most important question relates to the community sector itself, for this is the bit within our own control. Perhaps even the concept of a ‘community sector’ is itself a contradiction since the assumption of a sector automatically assumes coherence and a grand plan. The alignment of community development with the voluntary services sector, especially in the social partnership era, has copperfastened this incoherence, and has left community development vulnerable to the state’s desire to convert it to a ‘services’ role.
But by far and away the more worrying aspect is the complete absence of a plan, a comprehensive position on the role, contribution and potential of community development, and the specific types of
programmes and architecture to implement such a plan. As a result of this incoherence and lack of strategy a valuable opportunity was missed during a period of considerable fluidity in the setting of new national priorities as Ireland attempts to chart its way out of economic stagnation.
In conclusion, there is no doubt that transformative community development approaches have resulted in significant gains in some countries, especially in South America where there is a capability to convert grass roots activism into popular movements for reform, and ultimately into political action. It is equally obvious that northern European countries, especially the Nordic block, also have

a capability to directly convert social aspirations into political action by virtue of their integrated models of development, their strong tradition of civic participation and their openness to civil society collaboration.
Community work in countries operating under the influence of the Anglo-Saxon economic model in
Europe, Oceania, North America and Asia face greater challenges. Although there are notable exceptions, such as the introduction of the welfare state in the United Kingdom following the Second
World War, radical social change has mainly been attained through involuntary conflict or constructive protest – the struggle of Black and Native American communities in North America, marginalised young people in cities in the UK and France, aboriginal people in Oceania, disenfranchised Catholics in Northern Ireland.
In Ireland, and other countries falling under the Anglo-Saxon mantle, a number of key matters require discussion and resolution if community work is to reconstruct itself for a meaningful role into the future. In that sense, the potential for community work to bring about a transformation in the lives of marginalised people needs to be re-evaluated. If it is concluded that community work can contribute to the achievement of more ambitious goals but, of itself, cannot deliver on these goals then let us be clear and stop laying foundations upon clouds. Alternatively, if transformation is entirely possible but the fault lies in weak implementation strategies then let us name those failures and begin to address the infrastructural and organisational dysfunctionality that led to little gain in the past.
This paper does not conclude with easy answers to complex problems. That will require a wider and deeper discourse that might get underway in this conference space. Neither does it seek the abandonment of transformative community development approaches, for there is every indication that they could be adjusted to particular circumstances and contexts. But it does call for a distinction to be drawn between aspiration and outcome, between hope and possibility - and it is offered with the distinct intention of promoting better strategising and ultimately better results for the communities that are the target of community work interventions.