Advice on how to involve your community

Involving community groups in your partnership can increase the sustainability of your partnership and strengthen relations within your own community.

Benefits for the community

School partnerships can make significant contributions to the curriculum and can be of great personal benefit to teachers and pupils. By extending the outreach of a school partnership, these benefits can also be shared by the wider community.

As with schools, partnerships can bring your community a better understanding of different societies, cultures and religions and an appreciation for global dimension values, i.e. concerned with social justice, democratic processes, equality and sustainable development locally and globally.

Benefits for your partnership

Community participation can also considerably strengthen your school partnership. Involving community-based groups and individuals can add expertise, sustainability and of course extra enthusiasm to your partnership. Your community can be a valuable source of support for the development of projects, the arrangement of events and for the growth of the partnership in general. The longest-term and most successful school partnerships tend to have significant community participation.

How to involve the community

There are networks and organisations across the world dedicated to developing partnerships between communities. These organisations can help you extend the reach of your school partnership within the community or, if there are already good links between your school and your community, they can advise on how best to build partnerships between communities in different countries.

The UK One World Linking Association (UKOWLA) can help you identify relevant community groups and sources of expertise or assistance in your area. UKOWLA works alongside a network of similar organisations based in countries across the world. Contact UKOWLA for further information and advice on community-based partnerships and for information on partnership organisations in your area or country.

Who you could involve

There's no limit to the number of people in your community who may be willing to get involved in your partnership.

• Businesses may have grants available from their departments of community affairs. There is a big move nowadays for the private sector to have a social awareness and development policy and agenda. They may be able to support your partnership in other ways e.g. helping with communication, helping with production of partnership materials such as books or calendars.
• Religious groups e.g. churches, mosques and Social groups e.g. Lions, Round Table, Rotary, WI etc are likely to be interested in countries you are linking and may well contribute.
• Local communities, whose family origins are in the countries you are linking with, might be willing to support your school partnership. This will provide valuable insight into the cultural context of your partner school.