"Taking down the fences between sectors has benefited all parties and increased the chance of sustainable results through community ownership and collaboration"
Philanthropy NZ 2009 conference participant

Community-Led Development

Defining community-led development

Community-led development (CLD) is happening in communities across Aotearoa/New Zealand.  It  has many faces - it may be Iwi creating jobs in Opotiki, neighbours coming together in Taita or Porirua people working together to overcome cycles of debt in their community.  So how do we sum up what CLD is?

  • CLD is about place – local communities.
  • CLD is about people from all sectors (residents, business, funders, iwi, local and central government, schools) within local communities working together to release local resources, energy and ideas to create opportunities and solve problems.
  • CLD can embrace economic, cultural, social and environmental issues—with the driver being local vision and priorities.
  • CLD is not a service delivery model, project or programme, but a planning and development approach, underpinned by several key principles. We present these as a Framework for CLD.

Championing community-led development in Aotearoa New Zealand

Inspiring Communities’ strategic focus is to growing the recognition, understanding and practice of CLD, and to notice the difference it makes in Aotearoa New Zealand.

As well as the ongoing learning we are doing together with a core learning cluster of initiatives around New Zealand, our work involves: 

National Initiatives

Neighbours Day Aotearoa

Victory Village Forum

Regional Networks 

Regional Forum Reports

Leadership Development

The Framework in Practice