CAMA launches to save Community Sector

national | rights, freedoms and repression | news report Saturday November 07, 2009 09:42 by Communityworker

The Community Development Alliance has set up a new agency to protect the most vulnerable people in Ireland. CAMA aims to protect the Community Development Projects that are being closed down at a time when their services are most needed. Community Development Projects give a voice to those people and communities who consistently experience poverty; we empower people to set up the services, politics and programmes aimed at reducing poverty and inequality. CAMA aims to articulate and protect those those voices.

The Community Development Alliance has set up a new agency to protect the most vulnerable people in Ireland. CAMA aims to protect the Community Development Projects that are being closed down at a time when their services are most needed. Community Development Projects give a voice to those people and communities who consistently experience poverty; we empower people to set up the services, politics and programmes aimed at reducing poverty and inequality. CAMA aims to articulate and protect those those voices.

The board of CAMA and the Community Development Alliance calls for the retention of the CDP programme, with all of its values and ethos protected, including the bottom up approach, and the retention of all community assets that were sought for and fought for in the name of those people and communities who are poor, vulnerable and left out on the margins.

We urge the government to listen to us and reverse the decision to close projects down. It will only hurt the young, the old, the poor, the disabled, the excluded and the marginalised – and it will cost the state more in the end. CDP’s have a proven track record as a ‘value for money’ and it attracts five times more funding that the Department gives to the programme.

The first public event hosted by CAMA took place at 11am on Friday November 6th at a Press Conference. The venue is a public one, outside of the GPO, on the streets, in solidarity with those communities and CDP’s who will soon lose their projects and community premises and services. CAMA announced it’s alternative vision for a more equal society.

Speakers included those who experience poverty and disability, voluntary boards of management, and board members of CAMA.

Video of launch available here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23mk2p4sanw