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Community Empowerment

Communities know what they want. SDN's role is to support them to attain their needs. We do not provide direct development assistance for infrastructural projects or give direct aid but we empower communities and build their capacity to identify, lobby for and implement projects that address their key needs.

SDN believes that in a resource rich region such as the Niger Delta it is the structural make up of community bodies that determines their ability to present a coherent and consistent argument for development to both the state and oil majors. SDN works to promote local representative bodies and ensure that that have the social tools they need to drive local development efforts within existing government frameworks.

SDN helps partner communities to identify, lobby for and implement projects that address their key needs. It takes longer, but what is delivered is truly sustainable and based on a shared sense of community ownership and achievement.

Training for Claiming

SDN trains community bodies to effectively identify, claim and uphold their rights. Through supporting the formation of strong community bodies, that are representative of the community and can represent community interests, SDN acts as a facilitating agent of change for these groups to voice their needs and desires to government and others undertaking development projects in their locality. With time, SDN's support will lead to focused and targeted community led sustainable development.

Asset based community assessments

SDN works with communities to identify what they can build upon, not what they are lacking. Through identifying key assets that can be built upon SDN works with community groups to achieve tangible objectives.

"Taking sustainable development beyond the fishing rod"

SDN believes that in areas of immense resource wealth the government bodies should be responsible for meeting the needs of their citizens. The resources at the disposal of SDN and other NGOs will never be able to address the needs of the people, nor should they. SDN targets its resources at supporting community and civil society leverage and partnerships that improve the performance of the state.

Conflict Management and Transformation

The conflict in the Delta is impacting on everyone. Communities need the skills to stay together and recognise that non violence pays.

Negotiation / Mediation

It is often how, when and why you ask for something that determines the outcome.

Community Governance

In dynamic time youth and women groups are becoming more important. SDN works to ensure that this social transformation has a positive and unifying impact within the communities it works.