Forever Manchester’s Community Toolkit is a collection of some techniques we’ve learnt that can help increase participation, discover new project ideas and forge even more connections between people where you live.

At Forever Manchester we’re here to help community groups to connect with people and build community spirit. We believe that the best people to make change to where they live are the people who live and work there and the the groups they are part of, over the years we’ve helped and worth with thousands of community groups to do just that.

We’ve also had Community Builders in some neighbourhoods working with residents and trying out some different techniques to discover hidden talents and new ideas for community activity. We’ve learnt that you can’t know what a community wants until you know what it already has and that by exploring the existing groups, buildings, spaces and people, you can uncover a wealth of hidden gems that can be connected to achieve extraordinary things together.

The Forever Manchester Toolkit is a collection of some techniques we’ve learnt hat can help increase participation, discover new project ideas and forge even more connections between people where you live. As these tools have been learnt from the community, you may already use some of them in what you do, others may be a twist on something you’ve tried and some will be completely new. All the tools are worth trying, and as we go through we’ll explain the benefits we’ve seen of carrying out each one and what you can expect to see happen as a result of using them. You can follow each step in order or pick and choose tools that you like the look of. Also feel free to adapt and change any to suit you, your group and your community.

We’d love to hear from you if you use these tools or find new ways of using them or have any other ideas. By sharing these tools and the stories from communities we hope to help more people to do extraordinary things together.

Contents:

  • About Forever Manchester
  • How to use this Toolkit
  • Finding the Things
  • Finding the People
  • Finding the Skills
  • Connecting
  • Creating & Sustaining Your Project
  • Stories
  • Celebrations
  • Checklist

If you’re interested in finding out more about Asset Based Community Development training from Forever Manchester, please click here. 

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