Marking 10 years of SCDC as an independent organisation

In 2019 we’re delighted to be celebrating 10 years of SCDC as an independent Scottish charity and a 25 year history of supporting best practice in community development.

Building on a foundation of work which began in 1994 when SCDC was founded, we have focused our efforts on supporting communities to act on their own issues and to influence the decisions that affect them. 

We have also worked hard to advocate for community development approaches to be part of policy and legislative developments in Scotland concerned with community empowerment, public services reform and participatory democracy.

To mark the occasion, we’re publishing Ten for 10:  Ten articles across ten weeks, featuring the thoughts and reflections from SCDC staff members, exploring how the practice and policy environment for community development has changed.

We hope that this work will help to stimulate thinking about how me might achieve a collective and coherent approach to community development in Scotland in the years ahead. We believe that community development is ‘everybody’s business’ and over the next decade we want to continue to work with our partners, national and local, to collaboratively address the inequalities which still exist and support our communities to be strong, resilient and enterprising in a time of global uncertainty. 

To start us off I’ve written a short piece exploring how now more than ever there is a need to develop a coherent, sustainable and long-term approach to community development in our communities. Read it here. 

Finally, I’d like to thank everyone who we’ve had the pleasure of working with over the last 10 years. We look forwarding to continuing the journey together.

Fiona Garven,
Director, SCDC