Activity 5 focuses on identifying the challenges the community faces now and, in the future, and identifying solutions to these.

Objectives

To discuss and identify the key challenges facing the community now and in the future.

Duration

2 hours

Who should be involved?

The community team selected in Activity 1

Process

Step 1

Divide the community team into two groups of 4 or 5, depending on numbers, and ask them to discuss the current and future challenges or changes the community face.

Step 2

List the challenges and ask each group to present their lists and then combine the lists into one.

Step 3

Ask each community team member to rank the full list of challenges in terms of importance based on their potential impact on peoples’ lives and the environment. Ask them to rank the importance of each challenge from 1 (not important) to 3 (important).

Step 4

Get each group to discuss whether the most important challenges are within the power of the community to solve, outside the power of the community or can be addressed by the community with help from others. Ask them to fill out the first 4 columns within the Challenges and Solutions table below.

Step 5

Discuss whether any of the community owned solutions identified will help deal with any of the future challenges or changes. Fill in the community owned solutions column in the table below.

Step 6

Look again at the Community Viability diagrams produced in Activity 3, Step 3. Look at the strategies that the community team did not think were important and were not community owned solutions. Do any of these strategies have to be improved or changed to cope with future challenges to the community? Fill in the strategy column in the table below.

Step 7

Hold a community meeting face-to-face or online to discuss the current and future challenges for the community and which strategies the community currently have that need changing or need improving. Ask the community members for feedback and suggestions.

Step 8

Produce a video of the challenges facing the community.

Challenges and solutions table