Our Approach
A Countercultural Movement
WEvolution stood at the forefront of a fundamental shift in how we worked alongside communities. Where traditional models often focused on deficits and needs, we saw assets and potential. Where others created dependency, we fostered self-reliance.
Our Self-Reliant Groups (SRGs)/ Small Powerful Groups (SPGs) model represented a deliberate departure from conventional community development approaches. It challenged the status quo by recognising that sustainable change came not from external intervention but from within communities themselves.
Asset-Based at Our Core
At WEvolution, we believed:
People were not problems to be solved. Every individual brought valuable skills, experiences, and insights to their community.
Communities already possessed what they needed. Our role was to help unlock and mobilize these existing resources.
Economic empowerment mattered. Beyond social connection, SRGs focused on building financial independence through collective enterprise. At the time most organisations focused only on the social. We knew it needed to be both/and. Not the social without the economic. And not the economic without the social.
Relationships of equality transformed communities. We met people as equals, not as beneficiaries or service users.
Our approach respected the whole person and their environment, recognising that people responded to environments, not just strategies or processes.
From Gatekeepers to Nurturers
Traditional community development often positioned workers as:
Gatekeepers who controlled access to resources
Regulators who monitored compliance with external requirements
Messiahs who "saved" communities from their problems
WEvolution embraced a different role: The Nurturer. Nurturers created fertile conditions for growth, providing support while allowing communities to determine their own paths forward. They trusted in people's capacity to drive their own development.
The Carefronting Approach
Our work moved beyond traditional models of engagement:
Beyond Preaching: We didn't lecture communities about what they should do.
Beyond Encouraging: We didn't simply cheer from the sidelines.
Toward Carefronting: We engaged in honest, direct, and sometimes challenging conversations that pushed members toward their goals.
Carefronting combined care with confrontation—it was about caring enough to have difficult conversations that led to real growth and change.
The Challenge and the Promise
We recognised that this way of working challenged deeply entrenched systems and mindsets. It asked organisations to give up control. It required communities to take up responsibility. It demanded patience as true change often developed slowly.
But the promise was profound: communities that solved their own problems, individuals who discovered their own power, and a legacy of change that will continue long after WEvolution's direct involvement ends.
The framework below explores the journey of a woman involved in a Small Powerful Group.
Funding Partners:
