COMMUNITY
Community Capacity Building
The Step to the Future Foundation has been the catalyst within communities for closer inter-generational communication where working together has brought a much greater sense of understanding and appreciation. Since each STTF youth forum reaches hundreds of young people from many schools within the surrounding region and has developed many new friendships between schools and within communities, these new networks greatly increase the capacity of communities to work together for the common good.
Four key elements of Community Capacity Building as:
1. Commitment
Harness the commitment of the key local community stakeholders to work with local youth to develop an environment that promotes resilience, self-reliance, achievement and aspirations to develop to their full potential.
A Step to the Future youth forum provides the setting for a variety of issues to be raised by those who attend with the opportunity to discuss their issues in greater detail either in the Q/A session or with the individual speakers during the day of the forum.
2. Resources
The aim of the Foundation is to challenge each local community and its key stakeholders, local government authorities, businesses, schools, teachers, youth organisations to pool their resources and work together and take ownership of creating the future for the next generation.
The key is gaining community participation in the process right from the start for each forum location. The development of a common goal and the community team approach greatly leverages the capacity of the community to effectively and efficiently use its resources.
In addition, input of resources from the Foundation supplements those of the community to ensure equity of participation and maximum opportunity for participation by youth in the community.
3. Knowledge
The knowledge and wisdom gained from conducting over 75 forums nationally, involving over 1400 SOC members and over 55,000 participants is imparted to community stakeholders and greatly increases their capacity to plan and conduct the forum in their community.
The feedback via the evaluation forms completed on the day by all who attend and the additional feedback gained from school principals, teachers, parents and students after the forum are continually monitored and reviewed and added to our knowledge base to ensure constant improvement and the best possible delivery of the future forums.
A list of examples which support the best use of the resources and continuous improvement are found in the following illustrations:
- The number of schools nominating to be involved on the SOC from one year to the next has steadily increased to the point where more schools are nominating each year than are needed for the committees in most locations.
- The increased number of schools attending their local forum from one year to the next continues to increase from one year to the next on average this increase is between 20 to 25%.
- The increased number of students attending from the same school from one year to the next continues to increase on average this increase is between 25 to 30%.
4. Skills
The Foundation youth forum model requires the identification of the skills and talents not only of the youth of the community, but also the expertise of local community individuals and organisations who team with the local youth in their combined pursuit of staging the best forum in their community.
While knowledge can be learned from formal education, the ability to use this knowledge in a strategic way requires skills which are honed through experience. One of the fundamental goals of STTF is the give communities a project that allows them to experience and develop the skills that are needed for personal and community development.
The capacity for communities to function much more effectively is greatly enhance by the experiential approach taken by STTF.