Access Centre - Increases access to education, training, employment and other services (e.g. health) within a local setting. Can be either physical or virtual.
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Accountability - The obligation of one person or body to answer for the performance or the duties assigned usually to the line with a delegated authority or financed by another body
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Action for Change - People working together to bring about a difference in their lives, in their neighbourhood or in their community of interest.
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Action Planning - Focusing ideas to decide what steps may be needed to take to achieve particular goals within a given timescale.
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Anti-disciminatory Practice - Working in a way that actively removes barriers that might prevent people or group from taking part.
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Assessment - Measuring the extent to which a leaner has met stated learning outcomes.
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Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) - Asset Based Community Development is a bottom up approach to community regeneration; an effective way to solve the socio-economic problems that face some of our communities today.
ABCD is based on assets; it builds on what a community has already got rather than looking at gaps and negatives. For example, rather than looking at what a community hasn’t got it looks at what it has got, meaning the glass would always be half full and never half empty.

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Asset-Based Development - Strategy to secure the future of community organisations and charities through possession of tangible assets such as land, buildings or a dedicated income. Ensures self-sufficiency, independence and sustainability.
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Autonomy - Individuals, groups or organisations, independently taking responsibility for their actions.
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Beneficiary - The person or organisation receiving support from a project
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Best Practice - Superior performance within an area of policy, policy intervention or practice. It is usual for best practice to be rolled out to other areas or projects, developing widespread performance improvements.
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Big Lottery Fund - National Lottery funds distributor formed by the merger of the Community Fund and the New Opportunites Fund.
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BME - Abbreviation for Black and Minority Ethnic group.
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Can Do Exchange - A website which links up individuals, groups and organisations, locally and nationally. www.candoexchange.org
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Capacity Builders - An independent, innovative, flexible, responsive and sustainable voluntary and community sector which achieves its full potential in: service delivery; policy analysis; community development; and campaigning.
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Capacity Building - Activities, resources and support that strengthen the skills and abilities of people and community groups to take effective action and leading roles in the development of their communities.
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CFO - Co-financing Organisation
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Coaching - Providing guidance, feedback, and direction to ensure successful performance
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Collective Action - People working together towards a common goal.
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Community Call For Action - Councillor takes up communities concerns about persistent or serious problems in their area.
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Community Chest - Small grants of up to £5,000 available to community groups for projects to help them renew their own neighbourhoods. Often part of Neighbourhood Renewal and Single Regeneration Budget programmes.
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Community Cohesion - There is a common vision and a sense of belonging for all communities; The diversity of people's different backgrounds and circumstances are appreciated and positively valued.
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Community Engagement - The process of involving communities in the prioritisation and development of services in their own area. Community Engagement includes Community Consultation, but also goes beyond this, to include the more active processes in which communities play a greater role in actually formulating plans or influencing local developments. This can include formal partnerships between statutory agencies and community representatives.
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Community Group - Groups of people with a common interest who have come together to bring about some agreed change.
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Community Leaders - People sometimes nominated by themselves and somtimes by others to represent a community's views to the publice and to decision-makers.
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Community Network for Manchester (CN4M) - The Community Network for Manchester is the part of the Manchester Partnership that works specifically on behalf of voluntary and community groups.
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Community Networks - A structure to enable community representatives to represent and co-ordinate themselves.
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Community of Interest - A group of people with the characteristic, cause, need or experience in common.
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Community Planning - The process where local authorities where a local authority and partner organisations come together to plan, provide and promote the well-being of their communities. It promotes the active involvement of communities in the decisions on local services which affect people's lives including for example health, education, transport, the economy, safety and the environment.
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Community Sector - The whole range of autonomous collective activity undertaken by neighbourhoods or communities of interest, to improve collective life and conditions. It is a spectrum which extends from the community groups and similar informal activities as a whole.
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Community Strategy - An overarching plan designed to improve the delivery and quality of services in local authority areas. It draws together the plans of all service providers working in an area covered.
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Compact - An understanding between government (national or local) and the voluntary sector (in the guise of its representative bodies or through wider consultation) on how relations between the two should be conducted (e.g. funding doesn’t prevent organisations from expressing views on policies).
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Continuous Improvement - Continuous improvement involves reviewing performance on a regular basis to ensure the ongoing success of an organisation. This is an integral part of quality assurance.
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Council for Voluntary Service (CVS) - A CVS is a voluntary organisation which is set up, owned and run by local groups to support, promote and develop local voluntary and community action. CVS support their members by providing them with a range of services and by acting as a voice for the local voluntary and community sector.
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Cross-Sector Working - Cross-Sector working involves collaborating with individuals, groups and organisations that work in a different sector to you. This may mean working with voluntary, statutory or private organisations. Or working within different areas of work, for example a crime reduction organisation may link up with a mental health forum.
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DfES - Department for Education and Skills
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Direct Discrimination - This means treating a person differently from other people simply because of their race, colour or ethnic origins, or because of their sex e.g. rejecting a person’s application for a job, for which they have all the right qualifications and experience, simply because they are Black.
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Discrimination - Making a adverse distinction between people and groups based on prejudice and/or stereotyping.
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DTI - Department of Trade and Industry
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Empowerment - To work with people, groups and communities in a way that builds confidence, encourages autonomy and enables them to take greater power over their lives.
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Equal - An ESF Community Initiative Programme, funds projects which test and promote new means of combating forms of discrimination and inequalities in the labour market, both for those in work and for those seeking work, through transnational co-operation
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Equal Opportunities - Achieving equal opportunities means changing how we do things, how we behave, and how our organisation encourages diverse groups to access advice and support. It means more women, people from minority and excluded groups, and disabled people will be given the same chances to take part, progress and succeed as white males.
Most equal opportunities policies include a range of other groups i.e. gay men and lesbian women, people with various religious beliefs etc but the legal framework focuses mainly on sex, race and disability.
New legislation covers sexual orientation and religious belief. Age discrimination is soon to be included in the equal opportunities legal framework.

The basic premise is that talent and ability are evenly spread throughout all the groups and between women and men. However women, people from minority and excluded groups, and disabled people are unevenly distributed in employment. They are also concentrated in lower grade jobs because of the effects of past and present discriminatory practices, and of social and educational disadvantage. Equal opportunities policies and practice aim to remove the barriers which prevent these groups from fully taking part in an organisation so that the workforce, and the people your organisation supports, will reflect the population at all levels.
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ERDF - European Regional Development Fund. Provides regional funding to stimulate socio-economic development in the least prosperous regions of the EU
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ESF - European Social Fund. Provides financial support towards the running costs for vocational training schemes, guidance and counselling projects, job creation measures and other steps to improve the employability and skills of both employed and unemployed people
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ESFU - The ESF Unit, a part of the DfES with overall responsibility for administering ESF
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EU - European Union
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Evaluation - Using monitoring data and other information to make judgements on how your project is doing.
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Every Action Counts - This is about how groups of people can have a bigger impact for the better future by working together to take simple and effective actions to protect and improve their environment, now and for generations to come.
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Expenditure - Amounts paid by an organisation for goods or services received or services rendered
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Experience-based Learning - Knowledge, skills and understanding acquired from doing something or having been involved in something.
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Firm Foundations - The government's framework for Community Capacity Building.
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Fundraising - The soliciting or receiving of monies, resources or other benefits from organisations, trusts or individuals. Usually drawing in resources in this way is for a charitable purpose or for the support of an organisation having a charitable objective.
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Geographical Community - A group of people living or working in a geographically defined area. Within this geographical community may be several communities of interest.
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Governance - Various ways in which political, economic, social and cultural life is co-ordinated at global, national, regional and local levels.
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Grassroots - People or society at a local level, rather than at the center of major political activity
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Green Paper - A green paper is “a government report of a proposal, without any commitment to action, on which the government wishes to obtain public views and opinion.”
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Ground Rules - A list of conditions mutually agreed to govern the conduct of a particular event or organisation.
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Impacts - Impacts or final outputs are those outcomes which occur as a result of a project's activities
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Indirect Discrimination - Indirect discrimination
This can occur even when people are treated the same. Eligibility criteria or a particular condition for a job may mean that in practice a considerably smaller proportion of women or people from particular racial groups can meet the requirements. In the past Fire Fighters were required to be a minimum height. This meant that efforts to recruit more women and people from racial minority groups were unsuccessful as the height requirements ruled out many women and applicants from the Chinese and other Asian communities. On close examination of the rule I became clear that strength rather than height was required.
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Infrastructure - The physical facilities, structures, systems, relationships, people, knowledge and skills that exist to support and develop, co-ordinate, represent and promote front line organisations thus enabling them to deliver their missions more effectively.
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LAP - Local Action Plan
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Local Area Agreements - An individual contract between a local authority, in partnership with the LSP, and central government which sets out how national and local outcomes will be achieved in an area.
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Local Development Framework - The name for development plans for an area.
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Local Public Service Agreement - The reward part of the LAA - delivering services that achieve greater targets than would otherwise be expected.
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Local Strategic Partnership (LSP) - A Local Strategic Partnership is a single non-statutory, multi-agency body, which matches local authority boundaries, and aims to bring together at a local level the different parts of the public, private, community and voluntary sectors.
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Local/Neighbourhood Charters - These set out the service standards and priorities for action local people can expect from their local authority.
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LSC - Learning and Skills Council
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Mainstreaming - A process that enables activities to impact on policy and practice. This process includes identifying lessons, clarifying the innovative element and approach that produced the results, their dissemination, validation and transfer. More specifically, mainstreaming also defines the phase of transfer and the way in which other parties take account of the results, approaches and key elements elaborated.
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Manchester Partnership (MP) - The Manchester Partnership is Manchester's Local Strategic Partnership (LSP). It brings together the main public service providers in the city who work together to improve the quality of life for Manchester people
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Match Funding - Match Funding is an essential part of how the European Social Fund (ESF) works. ESF can only meet a part of the eligible costs of a project and the balance has to be found from other sources. Match Funding is the amount organisations (other than ESF) give towards the eligible costs of a project. Match funding can be either public funding or a combination of public and private funding. Co-financing organisations are able to provide match funding on behalf of the applicant.
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Monitoring - The routine, systematic collection of information for the purpose of checking your projects progress against your project plans.
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Networking - Establishing a series of contacts for mutual benefit.
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NWDA - North West Development Agency
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NWRA - North West Regional Assembly
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Outcomes - What impact the group/project wants to have; what the group/project wants to have changed by its activities; they are measureable and are often long-term goals.
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Outputs - What the group/project actually produces; activities, events, publications etc.
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Outreach - Process by which a group seeks to involve all parts of the community, not just those who happen to be interested or have free time.

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Participation - People having the opporunity to fully contribute to, and share in the decision making process in collective action, and the life of their groups and communities.
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Partnership Working - Partnership working is identifying and joining up with local stakeholders with an interest in your area of work or the beneficiaries that you serve.
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Performance Indicator - A way of measuring how a service is performing against its objectives.
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PMFC - Public Match Funding Certificate
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Positive Action - People from minority and excluded groups have different educational experiences and may have experienced discrimination in life and at work. Their apparent achievements are below their actual ability and potential. Positive action creates opportunities for people from these groups to access training that will help them to gain the skills needed for work, and to encourage them to take advantage of opportunities for doing that work. The law defines the circumstances and the kinds of action that can be taken:
• Where within the previous 122 months there were no persons of the sex or race in question doing that work, or
• The number of persons of that sex or race doing the work is comparatively small
Positive action does not mean giving preference at the point of offering a job but is about creating the right climate for minority and excluded groups to apply.

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Power Toolkit - A powerful, easy to use set of tools to help start the process of finding resources, mapping assets and consultation within communities, rebuilding them from the inside out.
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Prejudice - This is a feeling of superiority towards people from minority groups and women. It stems from the belief that all people from particular groups share similar characteristics.
Prejudice is expressed in common generalisations e.g. ‘women are emotional’, or through the use of negative, stereoptypical language or derogatory words. The victim groups maybe disparaged or caricatured and become the butt of ‘jokes’.
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Private Sector - The range of businesses that exist for the prupose of making profit for the people who own them.
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Processes of Social Change - Involves working with communities to enable people to contribute their energies, initiatives and participation to the achievement of goals and to the definition of those goals. On a wider level, as professional groups and agencies incorporate community work ideas and skills into their work to develop ways of working in partneship and developing approaches that facilitate the involvement of local people in decision-making.
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Public Service Agreement (PSA) - Voluntary programme set up by central government to raise the performance in key policy areas by setting specific targets.
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Public Services - Services that are wholly or partly publicly funded and are delivered by public, voluntary and community and private sector agencies.
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Quality Systems - The organisations arrangements and resources for implementing quality management. That is to say, a way of working within your organisation whereby you strive for continuous improvement by monitoring and evaluating your performance and ensuring that all processes are well managed.
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Regeneration - Area-based development usually taking place on a time-limited basis.
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Social Capital - The idea of trust and cooperation that can be measured within communities. This is increasingly seen as being of fundamental importance to social inclusion and regeneration programmes.
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Social Change - Comes about largely as a result of political, economic, social, environmental and technolological forces happening on a global, national, regional and local scales which have an impact on the lives of individuals. Community development work aims to bring about a different kind of social change in a way that involves the people being affected by locating local conditions within the wider context.
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Social Enterprises - Businesses with primarily social objectives whose surpluses are principally reinvested for that purpose in the business or commuinty rather than being driven by the need to maximise profit for shareholders and owners.
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Social Exclusion - This is a current ‘buzz’ term that is often referred to in funding criteria. It usually refers to people who are socially and economically excluded from the norms of the society they live in – long term unemployed people, homeless peoples, people without literacy and numeracy skills, people with mental health problems, ex offenders, substance misusers etc.
To enable people from excluded groups to become ‘included’, special training and empowerment programmes are needed.
For people from excluded groups equality of opportunity is many steps away.
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Social Inclusion - Active involvement of disadvantaged and oppressed individuals, groups and communities.
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Social Justice - Fair treatmant of all people and groups.
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Stakeholder - Someone with an interest in a particular activity, not necessarily financial.
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Stakeholders - A stakeholder is an indivdual or organisation who is interested in your project. It may be the funder, partners, users, trustees or staff and volunteers.
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Statement of Community Involvement - Produced by local authorities to highlight how councils intend to engage the community on all major planning applications.
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Statutory Sector - Bodies that exist as a result of a Government statute or which carry out statutory requirements, such as local authorities and health authorities.
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Steroptyping - This involves making assumptions about the behaviour or skills of someone based on your perceptions of how people from that group behave. It involves the use of generalisations that are perpetuated in the media and which have no factual basis.
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Strategic Relationships - Developing contacts or working with other individuals, groups, networks or agencies where there are specific benefits to the relationship (e.g. political, social, financial).
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Strategic Working - Working collectively to a commonly agreed plan towards commonly agreed goals within a perspective taht is wider than the individual or group itself.
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Structural Arrangements - Formal and informal systems of organisation for a group or event.
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Sufficiency - Enough to meet the needs of the requirements for an award.
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Supervision - Provision of support, reassurance and feedback in a framework that allows time to think about the work being done, the freedom to make mistakes and to have open discussions and to ensure accountability to the organisation.
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Support - To be there to give strength to people who need it and to assist, encourage and confirm. Support may be provided in a range of different settings in a variety of different ways.
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Sustainable Development - Activity which achieves mutually reinforcing economic, social and environmental benefits without compromising the needs for future generations.
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The Compact - The agreement between government and the voluntary and community sector in England to improve their relationship for mutual advantage.
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Third Sector - This is made up of organisations that are not fully in the private or public sector, for example, voluntary organisations and community groups
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Together We Can - The government's plan to enable people to engage with public bodies and influence the decisions that affect their communities.
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Verify - To check whether something is correct or meets the awarding body's standards.
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Voluntary Organisation - An voluntary organisation is a group of people which come together for a common purpose and have some agreed rules for how they operate together. A voluntary organisation may be run by volunteers, have charitable status or operate as 'not for profit'.
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Voluntary Sector - The range of groups whose activities are carried out other than for profit but which are not public or local authorities. These organisations would normally be formally constituted and employ professional and administrative staff. They may or may not use volunteer help.
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Volunteer - A volunteer is someone who performs or offers to perform a service out of his/her own free will, often without payment. The year 2001 was the International Year of the Volunteer. 2005 was the UK Year of the Volunteer.
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White Paper - A white paper is “details of proposed government legislation, signifying a clear intention to pass new law. It may also include consultation on the details of the proposed legislation”
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Work with Communities - Working with groups and communities of interest to organise and work with other groups and communities for the protection of their interest in a broad social context; valuing diversity, ensuring participation and encouraging collaboration.
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Work within Communities - Helping people and groups to organise to achieve their interests in a broader social context, helping local residents or a community of interest to articulate their needs, provide new amenities, replace or rehabilitate their physical living conditions and improve services and access jobs and training.
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