framework.

Credit: Rich Harwood

Summary:

The Harwood Approach is a community development practice underpinned by authentic community engagement. It is applied in place-based work to support communities and society to move forward.

Real world application:

From 2020-current paul has led a place-based, cross sector, workforce planning and development initiative in George Town, Tasmania. The project seeks to increase the community’s access to primary care, disability, and aged care services by increasing health literacy, supporting system navigation, and by building the workforce, especially the “own grown” worker required in the care economy. paul has supported the project team to apply the principles of The Harwood Approach to authentically engage with the community and perform highly intentional actions that supports change and builds momentum for further community led change. An example of a highly intentional action was the support of 20 community members living with disability to test their eligibility for the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). Approximately half the cohort were eligible and have received funding packages. The ripple effect has been other community members with additional needs gain a better understanding of the NDIS, testing their eligibility, as well as NDIS participants spending more of their packages on local professionals and support workers. This directly supports the growth of the local economy and builds confidence for additional allied health businesses to delivery services in a traditionally thin market.

Concept detail

The following is a quote and graphic from the Harwood Institute website (see link to the right):

Civic Faith. The Harwood approach is rooted in a practical philosophy of Civic Faith, which holds that placing people, community and shared responsibility at the center of our shared lives will create a more just, fair, inclusive and hopeful society for all. To make civic faith real, we need to turn outward.

Turning Outward is first and foremost an orientation—a mindset, a posture—of using the community, not our conference rooms, as our reference point for creating change. The Turning Outward practice provides frameworks and tools so you can make more intentional choices and judgments to produce greater relevance, significance, and impact in your community.

How change happens. Based on over 30 years of work, The Harwood Institute has learned that change ripples in communities through the interaction of highly intentional actions and often serendipitous results, all of which can be proactively created. This change cascades and spreads through a series of chain reactions over time, and restores  people’s belief that they can get things done together.

How you show up. When we step forward and turn outward with intentionality, we know what we stand for and what we value, and we rely on this grounding to guide us, especially during hard and challenging times. All of this requires showing up differently because turning outward, creating impact, and growing greater civic faith requires that we all step forward, figure out our contribution, and become agents of authentic hope.