Communities

REAP recognises that good sustainable development at a local as well as global level has a social dimension in addition to the more obvious economic and environmental elements. Therefore, our work in the community means we must be prepared to engage with individuals and groups and address the issues which they feel are important to them.

REAP aims to promote cohesive communities that have the ability to meet their own needs. We do this by supporting local groups in a number of ways.

Social Auditing

Social auditing is a straightforward process by which agencies, organisations and local groups can gauge and illustrate their social, economic and environmental benefits and limitations.  Simply, it is a method of self appraisal to determine whether an organisation meets its stated values and objectives within its own working community.

Organisations that have been involved have varied widely and represented all sectors of the community including community enterprises, credit unions and after school clubs. Feedback from participants has been universally positive!

Electronic Voting Equipment

REAP makes use of interactive keypads as a tool for community consultation events. They can be hired out for groups/consultants to use or REAP can be commissioned to run a consultation event for community groups, agencies, events, businesses etc.

This is a fun, easy, non-threatening and quick way of gathering in or feeding back information.

Administrative Support

REAP staff offer the use of their expertise gained in running a small social enterprise as a service to other social enterprises or community projects.  Services offered include financial administration, payroll services, desk top publishing etc. As REAP is a not-for-profit company, and can integrate our own administrative mechanisms with any contracting organisations, this means we can offer a service which will save voluntary organisations time and money.

Working with Community Groups and Agencies

We believe that people are key to the concept of sustainable development and aim to bring this approach into all that we do.  REAP has a good track record in working with a wide range of stakeholders on initiatives which can achieve realistic and robust outcomes for projects.

Examples of REAP’s work include community consultation and engagement work within the context of community planning; healthy eating and food access; youth consultation processes; and community led action research.