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Take Part
The Take Part approach
Take Part helps people gain the skills, knowledge and confidence to become empowered, enabling them to make an active contribution to their communities and influence public policies and services.
Take Part learning is a distinctive and proven approach that enables people to make a difference in their community by focusing on:
- community-based learning to build the skills, confidence and experience needed to tackle local political, social and technical challenges
- an informal, practical approach that gives people an understanding of how power works and how they can learn to influence decisions and policies
- open dialogue and reflection as key learning tools, recognising that change in a community emerges from individuals working together
The Take Part pathfinders
The Take Part Pathfinder programme, built on the existing Take Part network, funds the provision of Take Part learning around England. Each local pathfinder is a partnership between local authorities, third sector bodies and educational institutions, coordinated by one lead organisation. Links to each of the pathfinders can be found on the right.
A Pathfinder has responsibility for providing learning using the Take Part approach in their local area through a programme that includes:
- learning opportunities that build skills and confidence
- community leadership development offering tailored support leading to civic activism and/or lay governance roles
- information about the availability of opportunities for influence and lay governance involvement across the public sector in the locality, and support for greater mobility between such roles
- access to accreditation for citizenship learning and skills development where it is required.
The Pathfinder programme is intended to help meet the government's objectives for improving public services through improvements in the following indicators:
- People feeling that they can influence decisions in their locality (Indicator 4 of Public Service Agreement 21)
- Narrowing the civic participation gaps between disadvantaged groups and others in society (Indicator 3 of Public Service Agreement 15)
The national support programme
There is also a national element to the Take Part Pathfinder programme which aims to promote and develop the Take Part approach across the country. This includes:
- ‘Train the Trainers' courses so that more people will have the skills to provide practical support, leading to more people trained in areas outside as well as inside the pathfinder areas.
- Development of the existing Take Part learning framework, by drawing on other existing models and materials to extend its scope, by developing new resources and trainers' packs and by advising on its wider use. This work, carried out by Ekosgen in partnership with the Institute of Community Cohesion and IT-West, resulted in the development of an online resource, the Take Part directory.
- Targeted ‘How To' guides and other tools to meet identified gaps of support to help particular groups assume community leadership positions.
- Initiatives to encourage and engage more learning providers beyond the Take Part pathfinders to adopt the practices successfully rolled out by the pathfinders.
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