Community Wealth-Building | Freire Institute

Paulo Freire’s philosophy of education has had a profound impact on people throughout the world working for social change. His work has been applied not only to formal educational settings but to many diverse social movements.

Status: enrollment_closed
Price: GBP 250.00

Community Wealth-Building

Democratizing the local economy

Cultivating wealth from the  ground up

Communities can contain considerable economic activity while experiencing little lasting prosperity. Money may enter a locality through wages, public expenditure, investment, consumer spending, or major institutions, yet much of that wealth can quickly leave through external ownership, distant supply chains, insecure employment, extractive business models, land speculation, or financial flows over which local people exercise little control. Community Wealth-Building offers a different way of thinking about local economic development. Rather than relying primarily upon attracting external investment and expecting prosperity eventually to spread through a place, it asks how existing...

What could change if the wealth already generated within a place were organized strategically to strengthen local ownership, democratic participation, shared prosperity and community well-being?

This participatory workshop introduces the philosophy and practice of Community Wealth-Building while placing questions of participation, power, and economic democracy at its centre. Drawing upon Paulo Freire’s pedagogy, participants will begin with the economic realities of places they know, identify patterns of ownership and extraction, and examine whose interests are served by existing arrangements. Community members are understood not simply as beneficiaries of economic development but as potential participants in analysing, designing, owning, and governing economic activity. Participants will explore practical levers including progressive procurement, fair and secure employment, plural...

What you learn

Analyse the principles of Community Wealth-Building and the ways in which ownership, investment, employment, procurement, land, assets and financial flows shape the distribution of wealth and opportunity within a place.
Compare different models of enterprise and ownership and analyse their implications for economic power, governance, participation, accountability and the distribution of benefits.
Critically evaluate Community Wealth-Building strategies, including the use of procurement, employment, assets, land, finance, enterprise development and anchor-institution capacity, in relation to their potential contributions, limitations and interactions.
Develop and justify a contextually grounded Community Wealth-Building intervention or strategy that combines appropriate economic levers with meaningful community participation and democratic decision-making, while recognizing institutional constraints and opportunities for continuing reflection and action.

Availability

For organizations: This workshop is available in virtual, in-person, or hybrid formats to meet diverse organizational needs and preferences. We can tailor the focus to your specific institutional context.
For individuals: We will run occasional virtual workshops, and you are encouraged to join the notification list to be informed of upcoming dates.

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Duration

You will continue to be registered in the course area for 3 months following the workshop.

Course Certificate

You will receive a certificate upon successful completion of the course.

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