The Citizen's Handbook
The Citizen's Handbook (http://www.vcn.bc.ca/citizens-handbook/) comes from Vancouver, Canada and aims to "encourage the emergence of more active citizens - people motivated by an interest in public issues, and a desire to make a difference beyond their own private lives."
While some of the information is specific to Canada and Vancouver in particular, there is a lot in this site that is applicable to any community building campaign.
The site focuses on campaigns that encourage community participation, that have small, winnable goals, and which are fairly short term. Even though this is sometimes not enough to make real change in a community, it can be a starting point to get people active and to begin looking at greater changes that need to be made.
The site provides information on:
- community organising: e.g. planning, leading, fundraising, involving people, evaluating;
- community building activities: e.g. community gardens, street reclaiming, festivals and parades, study circles, organising on hot issues;
- a range of articles on social movements, organising theory and practice, and participation;
- a great set of links to other campaigning resources.
http://www.vcn.bc.ca/citizens-handbook/