In conjunction with Metropolitan Housing Trust at Nottingham and Refugee Centre at Coventry, MODA offered a community development training programme to refugee organisations and communities in Derby, Liecester, Nottingham and Coventry in August 2004. The programme, which benefited 59 participants, included 15 days of training in capacity building for individuals and refugee community organisations from a community development perspective. It covered raising awareness for refugees, understanding British socio-economic system, raising capacity of individual refugees, methods of identifying community needs, starting up community projects, accessing resources, identifying funding sources, understanding fundraising procedures, developing funding proposals, building up the capacity of organisations in terms of managing people, finances, quality services and premises, ensuring administrative capacity, leadership, team building, project planning, networking and partnerships, etc. The training programme was designed and delivered by MODA’s Director Dr Kamal Rasul.There was an external evaluation of the training programme as well as two internal evaluations through feedback from participants and a participatory appraisal session at the end of the programme in each city.

The feedback was 100% positive with 90% of participants strongly agreeing that the programme was very useful and helpful for them and demanding more similar targeted training to help them develop their knowledge, skills and self-confidence to involve their communities in self-help activities and set up and/or develop and manage community organisations.

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