Community Building

In Person Centred Planning giftedness is used to mean ‘unique attributes’ rather than talents. Used in this sense, a person’s gifts provide a key to unlocking connections in the community. Gifts are something, which makes a connection possible between one person and another. Discovering a person’s gifts requires empathy, insight and simply spending time with them.

Community building is about purposely forming and organising relationships, based on an emerging plan, which captures a person’s desire to explore and develop new networks and relationships. Community building is focused on extending a person’s opportunities to contribute to mutual relationships and is consciously orientated toward building the habits and skills of welcome in community settings.

Community Building stages

• Spending time getting to know people, their likes dislikes, hobbies, interests, the things they feel strongly about.
• Finding out and exploring what is in the person's community that may interest them. Arranging meetings with community associations, groups, and individuals. Asking "what do they need to make this happen? ".
• Supporting the individual to discover a greater capacity to provide leadership in his or her own life. By developing mutual relationships, friendships and social networks - connecting the individual.

Benefits

Benefits of this approach include:

• Inclusion in Action
• Richer and more diverse communities
• Communities having the talents and gifts of people normally excluded