Community Action

If you want to do something about alcohol in your community and want to know where to start, you are in the right place.

What is Community Action

“Community action means any collective action taken by a community to address or take steps toward addressing a particular community issue in ways that will benefit that community and achieve a specific outcome.”

(ALAC, 2011)

A recent review on Community Action, conducted by SHORE/ Wahriki, highlighted that there were a range of consistent themes across national and international literature.  These included:

• working ‘in’ and ‘with’ communities towards achieving outcomes that positively influence social change
• communities identifying their own issues, owning them and playing an active part in addressing them
• collective efforts aimed at increasing community control over factors that influence positive social change, and therefore improving the social outcomes for the community (a theme closely connected to the concept of community empowerment).

When referring to ‘communities’, within the definition of ‘Community Action’ it is taken to include both geographical communities (location) and communities of interest (group with a common interest).

“A key element of Community Action is it enables communities to increase control over their own wellbeing, equipping them with skills to sustain change according to their own priorities, draw on existing resources to advance strategies, and develop new strategies responsive to changing circumstances”

(Moewaka-Barnes, 2000)