Panama Community
Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland | Late 2023—Early 2024
We collaborated with the Panama Riverside Committee over six months to engage the community, organise inclusive events, and present popular project ideas through a visually appealing report for further development.
The Panama Riverside Committee in Mt Wellington, Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland, was granted one year’s funding under the Community-Led Development Partnership with the Department of Internal Affairs. Their goal was to work with the community to develop a shared vision and project ideas for a full five-year CLDP project in the area.
Community Think worked with the committee over a six month period. In order to engage diverse parts of the community, we contracted four Community Connectors and provided them with training in community-led development and participation culture.
Under our supervision, the four Community Connectors worked with the local community to develop ideas for projects that would bring the community together and increase local cohesion and capacity.
In late 2023 and early 2024, the Community Connectors ran small events—x, y and z—that were both examples of broad participation and also platforms for people to start engaging with the project and offering their ideas of what would enhance and serve the Panama community in the future.
Through a community budgeting exercise, we determined the most popular ideas that the committee would work up as a proposal to the DIA. We presented the results back to the committee and the wider community in a short, visually appealing report.
