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May 27, 2015 at 4:19 PM

The New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse has just released Issues Paper 8, Creating change: Mobilising New Zealand communities to prevent family violence.

This Issues Paper, written by Sheryl Hann and Cristy Trewartha, has these key messages:

• Community mobilisation is a complex and long-term approach but has the potential to transform communities.
• Principles of community mobilisation include: a social change perspective; whole community engagement; collaboration; being community-led; and, a vision for a better world.
• Community mobilisation approaches make theoretical and practical sense. As a recent approach, the necessary components of community mobilisation are still emerging, and projects are learning as they go.
• Supporting this work to develop requires thinking in new ways from all involved, from funders and policy makers to NGO leaders, practitioners and community members.
• It also requires some different and sustained investment in coordination roles, workforce development, and new leadership skills.
• Internationally, there are a few examples which show promise in terms of effectiveness, and there are also promising NZ initiatives. However most have not been evaluated. There must be investment in research and evaluation to learn more about what works to create change.
• Findings from international projects indicate that CM efforts can result in substantial reductions in violence in relatively short periods of time, e.g. 2-3 years.

You can read the paper here