Castlereagh Community Visioning Project

The aim of the Castlereagh Visioning Project was to support five communities in the Borough to develop a community plan framework using the community visioning process, thus enabling them to move towards becoming sustainable communities. Within this aim was the expectation that greater two-way communication and linkages would develop between the community and statutory sectors.

Through looking back on how the community was in the past, and then looking at the community today, communities were supported in identifying what they liked about living in the neighbourhood. When looking at the present day community participants were encouraged to identify successes and highlighting issues and difficulties to which they would like to find solutions. Through this process they then started to identify a vision for the future of their community, and in so doing be better able to take ownership of the plans and vision for their own community in the future.

The intention was that each community would develop a community action plan framework which would identify objectives, those who would need to be involved in working towards achieving this objective and the timescale that was envisaged in working towards the objective.

Sustainable Northern Ireland employed two facilitators to work directly with the communities. Representatives from statutory agencies and other community support organisations were also involved with the visioning process.