Community-based initiatives for meeting social need and promoting social change are widespread and expanding throughout the globe. Part of conservative Prime Minister David Cameron’s Big Society alternative to the Big State is the Community Organiser Programme (COP). Begun in 2011 the COP met goals to hire and train 500 “senior” community organizers and educate and engage 4500 volunteers in community organizing basics by 2015. Obvious contradictions and limits about its neoliberal underpinnings, theory of change, and selected organizing models notwithstanding, COP is one of the boldest initiatives in the field in a generation, not the least because it is funded by the national government. Its innovativeness is especially evident in comparison to efforts in the US, where community organizing is heavily reliant on charitable donations and where, in our contemporary political economy, public-funded hiring and training of community organizers is unheard.

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