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The Community-led Development Programme is based on a community or hapū and the Department of Internal Affairs signing a partnership agreement and agreeing to work together.


In this partnership the Department will off advice and support and will work with other government agencies, tangata whenua, local authorities, funders, businesses and local organisations to support the community achieve their locally-led initiatives. As partnership communities put their plans in place, they will also be able to request investment from a contestable $4 million fund to support them to achieve their community or hapū goals.

The Community-led Development Programme is for communities of place and hapū within Aotearoa New Zealand

Communities of place are people who share a common location where they live, work or spend time. This may be all of the people in a neighbourhood or small town.

In our experience, the community-led development approach works best when the location or number of people involved is not too large. We will consider this when selecting communities and hapū to partner with us in the programme.

The focus of this programme is for communities and hapū to work together, following the community-led development principles to achieve their visions and goals. It is not to help community groups or agencies with their ongoing programmes, service delivery, or service development priorities.

Is a Community-led Development partnership for your community or hapū?

We encourage you to contact us to discuss your interest in the Community-led Development Programme and to explore with us whether it may be a good fit for you and your community or hapū. More about contacting us can be found at the link below:

Contact us

We have developed some examples and discussion questions based around the 5 Community-led Development principles. These examples and questions can be useful to find out if this programme is right for your community or hapū.

The journeys of the participants in the Programme and the outcomes they achieved can provide useful guidance if you are thinking about making a request for partnership in the Programme:

Journeys of the Community-Led Development pilot participants

The 5 principles are at the link below:

5 Community-led Development principles

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