First blog posting of the new National Community Development Forum (NCDF)

This is the first blog posting of the new National Community Development Forum (NCDF). More will appear shortly.

To date, two national programmes supporting our poorest communities have been hit with savage cuts. The first is the National Drugs Strategy. Secondly, there is the Community Development Programme which funds 180 Community Development Projects in the poorest parts of Ireland. The twin-effect of these cuts on poor people is life-destroying.t specifically f

This BLOG comes from people involved in Community Development throughout the country as we stand up for our communities rights to fair play. The Government is playing a card-game with people's lives. Cutting funding to the poorest communities just because they are (perceived as) too weak to protest makes crude political sense, but is as morally repulsive as closing children’s hospital wards.

Our 180 Community Development Projects will not see out the year if the cutbacks continue. So, we’re now getting very organised.

- Our CDPs have united and organised themselves nationally. First time ever we set up an independent body for the projects. Widespread support for our work. Huge potential to speak up for and with the voiceless and vulnerable. We'll be heard at local and national level and we are here to stay.

- The workers and voluntary management committees have organised under SIPTU. Yes, employers and staff united on an issue and supported by a trade union. The Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs has pushed projects too far with cuts by email and decrees demanding for instance that projects stop networking. There will be action at local at national level, starting up very very shortly.

BACKGROUND:

So - what's the background?

The Community Development Programme was established in 1990 to tackle huge challenges in Ireland’s 'poverty and unemployment blackspots'. People in these areas were dismissed by many so-called educated people as being too lazy to work. Those who criticised the poor overlooked barriers to work that effect women, lone parents, people who were failed by the school system, people with disabilities, and people in rural areas without cars (to mentions but a few people facing barriers).

Over the last 19 years, volunteers in these communities have made a real difference nationally by managing our 180 projects and working to lift the barriers. The work counteracted many of the effects of poverty on people, and also aimed to challenge the causes of poverty and discrimination.

Though funded by Government, the projects have been steered in recent years by Government away from work that might challenge Government policies at national level. They prefer us to provide and manage services in communities (training, creche, FAS schemes, etc) than to empower people to participate in society. It appears that the Government wants us to manage the poor, to keep the lid on things, and not to be ‘rabbiting-on’ about the deep-rooted structural causes of poverty and inequality.

CURRENT SITUATION - POOREST COMMUNITIES LOSING OUT FASTEST:

There are 2000 volunteers (many prefer the term ‘activists’) in our 180 projects, some of the finest people in Ireland. But - on top of political pressure to conform, the savage 20%-plus cutbacks are forcing the volunteer managers to pull back on the work they engage their staff to do.

The Department is trying to manage the projects by email dikdats, issing new rules like decrees and making financial demands that are forcing projects into impossible situations. There is the possibility that many projects are now – in a legal sense – trading recklessly. Who wants to be a volunteer manager and company director in these circumstances?

If the volunteers leave bit by bit, the projects will collapse in ones and twos and the Programme will vanish without trace. It might suit Government politically and financially but it would be a disaster for disadvantaged communities. If the current policy continues to be pursued, the Government will succeed in shutting down the core community infrastructure in Ireland’s poorest parts.

€20 MILLION ANNUALLY IS NOT BIG MONEY!

The national Programme can get by on €20 million, small change in the scheme of things and great value for money (Reference: Nexus Report 2000, ERN Report 2003).

But if the Community Development Programme is done away with, the Government will have destroyed 20 years of hard. Imagine seeing closed-up or unused community centres in the areas of greatest deprivation - what a poison that would be.

Neither the project staff nor the voluntary management committees accept being party to cutbacks that condemn deprived communities to oblivion for years to come. Volunteers are also gutted to see other national programmes cut, education cuts, welfare cuts, etc – on top of job losses heading for 50% in disadvantaged areas.

COMMUNITIES UNITED BEHIND CAMPAIGN

As stated, the projects recently set up a National Community Development Forum (NCDF) to represent themselves and their communities.

The projects also meet in clusters and at regional level. Staff and management are today often paying the networking costs themselves as project budgets have been so drastically reduced.

Currently there are 2000 volunteers involved and 300 or so staff engaged across the country in the Programme. All are committed to their communities and we are lobbying the Government to see fit to continue to support the projects, management and staff in the Programme.

GOVERNMENT SHOULD SUPPORT, NOT PENALISE, THE POOR

Pulling drugs-funding and community-supports from disadvantaged communities is counter-productive and the cost of killing off the Programme in human, financial and societal terms will far outweigh any savings.

We'll have a measure of the cost of cutbacks so far in a new posting.

As many formerly middle-class people are driven into poverty and social welfare dependency, we need to invest imagination and continued funding into our increasingly hard-stretched communities.

The Government should ideally support the poor as the poor fight the notion that they should bear the brunt of the costs of a recession.