We aim to contribute to this vision through working for three years (July 2004-June 2007) with two demonstration project partners and sharing the learnings from these practical projects.

The two demonstration projects are:

• Sustainable Communities Sustainable Catchments (SC²): building community strength in Project Twin Streams in Waitakere City

• Progress Papakura: engaging the community and agencies active in Papakura district to achieve the community’s goals

Our approach to sustainable community development comes from research undertaken by the Department of Internal Affairs, Ministry of Social Development, Community Employment Group and Child Youth & Family. The research and framework is published on Internal Affairs’ website.

Sustainable Communities also holds occasional learning groups or forums to share experiences and other ideas relating to sustainable community development. Download our summary from the October 2004 learning group. (PDF 185kb)

The two co-leaders for this workstrand are Suzanne Sinclair from the Department of Internal Affairs and Louise Mason from the Auckland Regional Council. To find out more about Sustainable Communities, read this overview (PDF 183kb), including an outline of the two projects and our approach to evaluation.

Sustainable Communities commissioned Rachael Trotman to undertake a literature review of approaches to evaluating sustainable community development projects. Download these insights from local and international experience (PDF 244kb), published in October 2005. Formative evaluations looking at the first year of operation of the two projects and the work stream were also completed and published in February 2006.

Contact:

For more information on Sustainable Communities projects
please contact Viv Sherwood, project manager, at the Department of Internal Affairs.
viv.sherwood@dia.govt.nz