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The National Empowerment Partnership (NEP)
Empowerment
Empowerment is what happens when people feel able to get involved in their communities and make decisions that affect their lives. It is central to CDF’s vision of an inclusive and just society – we want people to be involved in local decision-making, so that communities can change the way things work for the better.
The National Empowerment Partnership (NEP) is committed to supporting and improving empowerment activities across England. We gather evidence of effective community empowerment and promote the powerful benefits of involving communities in decisions that affect them. Our focus is to lead the empowerment agenda by providing a regional infrastructure for empowerment. This helps to bring together the work of local authorities, government departments, statutory agencies and community organisations in empowering local people.We do this by:
Growing the demand – getting more people involved in local activities and decisions.
Growing the supply – helping people, community groups, parish councils and other organisations become more effective in having a say in how their communities are run.
Growing the network– providing regional systems and structures to support empowerment work and to share information on all aspects of empowerment.
The regional empowerment partnerships
The practical work of the NEP programme is carried out by organisations working together in regional empowerment partnerships (REPs). There is a REP in each of the nine English regions, and they bring together a range of statutory agencies, voluntary and community organisations, networks and people who are running community empowerment activities. The REPs use their collective expertise to support local authorities, statutory agencies and community organisations to work together. This helps to give more power to communities and local people to make decisions about what happens in the areas where they live.
Across the country, there is great work being done to empower communities. We believe that in order for empowerment to be effective, we need to share knowledge about what really works. We need co-ordinated action to show communities the difference that they can make. This is where the National Empowerment Partnership comes in.
NEP national work
NEP is also commissioning work at a national level looking at important issues relating to community empowerment:
- the provision of practical support measures to young people engaged in civic roles and encourage others to become involved
- assessing the impact the current recession is having on community empowerment action and delivery
- developing a more comprehensive understanding of Place Survey data and its relationship with NI4
- testing how community governance can be strengthened through establishing neighbourhood councils
The brief for each of these pieces of consultancy work can be downloaded below. The deadline for each of them is Monday 26 October.
