Key learnings

Over the past 12 years we have shared valuable insights on what our evaluation and learning has told us about what works and what doesn’t.

Our key learnings have been:

• The community is the front-line; the key door in a ‘no wrong door approach’ where you get support early. Prevention starts here and delivers the biggest return on investment.
• Enabled and supported community workers operating in this space can deliver material change at scale (health & wellbeing, education, employment, willingness to access support); change that is mostly individually and collectively self-managed, not reliant on expensive public sector interventions.
• Embedding such initiatives in the fabric of the community provides a consistent and stabilising force in people’s lives for the long-term, preventing crisis, aiding recovery from it and building community resilience. Something time-limited public sector interventions cannot achieve.
• Such work becomes the ‘cornerstone’ in the community, the reference point by which all other parts of the community support infrastructure and systems can be set. It becomes a two-way bridge to services and vice-versa. This is made possible, because as the cornerstone, its workers have the deepest understanding of community networks, voices, needs and aspirations.