Download the full report here: The Community Organisers Expansion Programme

The aim of the Programme was to train 3500 people in community organising. This would in turn enable residents to take action together in and across England’s most deprived neighbourhoods for social change – focused on the issues that matter most to them.

This new programme was different to the previous one. The previous model employed Community Organisers centrally through the prime contractor and then invited locally rooted organisations to host them. People gained their experience of community organising through paid work experience in the community. The approach of the COEP sought to embed community organising at a local level working with and alongside locally rooted organisations; building their capacity to train and support local people to get involved with community organising. People were recruited and trained through one-day courses and longer qualification courses. In addition, to build on the growing interest and demand for community organising people were trained within different settings – community, public sector, youth services and voluntary organisations.

One of the main reasons the COEP took a different approach to the original CO programme was to focus on ‘scaling deeper’ rather than ‘scaling wider’. By concentrating the work in a smaller number of areas and over a 3 year period (rather than one year like the original programme) the ambition was to embed community organising locally and build the capacity and skills of local people and local organisations so that community organising could be sustained after the programme had ended. The previous programme, whilst effective in training individuals in community organising skills, did not seek to embed the work at a local level.

The Programme attracted a wide range of individuals from a diversity of backgrounds. Those who participated in the programme were not generally people looking to become professional community organisers, although some were. More often they were people who wanted to support or take part in community action within their work or home lives as citizens, volunteers, tenants, activists, councillors, professionals and workers.

Community organisers across the country supported social action on health, food security, transport, youth, social care, decent housing, street safety, loneliness, community cohesion, the environment and stronger communities.

See our Stories of Action report which highlights some of the grassroots action that was inspired by the programme. We also commissioned a Learning Report which captures the lessons learned.