Paddy McKenna could talk for hours about communities, collaboration and social justice, it just comes naturally to them.
For 17 years, Paddy’s been working with communities, everything from charities supporting children in poverty and people with disabilities, to advocacy work and managing teams within the housing sector. Paddy is now a freelance community development collaborator and consultant providing services within the third sector. Paddy also volunteers on two boards for local charities and with a small food solidarity group.
“The first time I heard the term ‘community learning and development’ was when I was travelling in Cambodia. After seeing the poverty and inequalities in many places, I asked around and found an organisation who I volunteered with for a few weeks. It felt right and authentic.” Paddy said.
Before this, Paddy had finished a degree in psychology at the University of Glasgow, but said: “There wasn’t a sociological lens on it at all, and it never quite sat well with me. Growing up, I’d seen poverty first-hand and also how much people were impacted by mental health issues from the environment they lived in, and I thought, ‘no wonder people are feeling unwell! Of course they would, that’s what living in poverty does to you. So, when I found community development, it just made sense to me – it’s about social justice and collective change, and that was the turning point for me.”
After working in different community development roles, Paddy went on to study for a master’s degree in CLD in 2015, and from there they progressed into a senior leadership role, whilst still continuing to volunteer on boards and also tutor masters’ students.
Recently Paddy starting freelancing, and they’re thrilled to be back working directly with communities after 8 years mostly in a management role.
“Every day is different, I might be hosting community-led action research workshops, designing and delivering projects, or running creative consultations through art and play, it’s just so varied and I’m always learning!”
“One of the reasons I became freelance is to be a resource for organisations – community development officers are often so time poor. A big ethos of mine is to do collaborative work with smaller groups who don’t have the infrastructure of a larger organisation to support them.”
As for being part of Scotland’s CLD Standards Council, Paddy likes to keep up to date about the work happening around Scotland and what others are doing. Paddy regularly uses the CLD competence frameworkto guide their work too, saying, “In my management role, only one of my team had a degree in community development, so the CLD competence framework was really useful as part of our induction package, and our team referred to it regularly.”
When it comes to the best things about working in CLD, Paddy says: “I see CLD as the pathway for social justice and working towards all types of justice using a connected-up approach. Knowing you’re embedded in that is incredible, we’re doing something that’s bigger than ourselves; if everybody had an asset-based community development approach, everything would change for the better!”
“It’s the best job ever, but it’s a serious job too, it’s not all fun and feel good about yourself which I think is a common misconception, it’s about recognising mistakes you’ve made, or structural inequalities that you might have upheld before and taking the time to reflect on that in your work.”
To find out more about membership of the CLD Standards Council click here