Community owned solutions is an approach that promotes the abilities that are already found within a community. This type of approach is termed a strengths-based approach. It focuses on and explores the capacity, skills, knowledge, connections and potential of individuals within a community and of the community itself. 

This concept comes from observations that challenges within a community can be better solved by identifying positive practices from within that community and trying to promote their use, as opposed to focusing on behaviours that are negative and trying to fix them with solutions that have emerged from outside of the community (Table 1).

Community owned solutions are practices developed and carried out by communities themselves. The solutions contribute to the well-being of communities in the present and in the future. They are born, developed and implemented in the communities, by the communities, for the communities, with little influence from external stakeholders. They are fair to all members of the community and they do not negatively impact on the environment as shown in the list below.

What is a "Community Owned Solution"

• The community needs it
• The community does it
• The community controls it
• The community benefits from it
• The solution is fair
• The solution is good for the environment
• The solution is self reliant and not dependent on long term external support

Although many community owned solutions are developed from within the community, ideas can also emerge from the outside. If these are adopted and adapted by the community, then they can become community owned solutions. However, these innovations need to fit into, and support, the strengths of the community, rather than undermine community solutions.

As the image above suggests, importing food into a community for its food security might help and offer a temporary solution but also creates dependency and disempowerment. Promoting local solutions to food security (like local techniques and knowledge for food production) is empowering and promotes independence.

Why record and share community owned solutions?

You could easily identify community owned solutions without needing either to record them or showcase them to external audiences. However visual recording and sharing provides the following benefits:

• If a solution works well within one community, it could be used as inspiration for another community who might be facing a similar challenge.
• ‘Communities that share directly with other communities’ challenges the expert-led process, where ‘experts impose their ideas on communities’. Communities that share have a greater chance of understanding each other’s problems and finding the best solutions. Solutions are less theoretical, more realistic and engaging, showing how things actually happen in real life.
• It can encourage people who were initially hesitant or reluctant to participate to contribute, as they immediately see outputs which they can identify with.