Community Organising
A relational approach to building collective power so communities can act on issues that matter to them.
Citizens UK / community organising field
This page is a plain-English practice summary. It attributes the source field and avoids presenting the framework as Positively Devious intellectual property.
What this framework helps with
- building local leadership and collective action
- moving from consultation to organised power
- training people to listen, act and negotiate
Three questions it helps teams ask
- Who has a stake, and who has power?
- What issue is specific, winnable and meaningful?
- What relationships need to be built before public action?
How to use it in youth and community work
Use Community Organising as a lens for better decisions, not as a script. Start with the local context, invite the people affected by the work into the interpretation, and turn the framework into practical questions, design choices and learning habits.
For Positively Devious, this framework matters because it helps explain one part of the wider conditions around positive deviance: the relationships, opportunities, skills, systems and power arrangements that make uncommon positive outcomes more likely to be noticed and learned from.
What to watch out for
- organising is not the same as service delivery
- campaign choices should be led by people affected
- power analysis must be explicit