Planting Seeds. The closure of the Community Development Resource Association (CDRA) as one further development in a living process
By Sue Soal, Social and Organisational Consultant
Sue first encountered CDRA as a trainee in 1989. She was a staff practitioner with CDRA from 1994 – 2011. Between 2019 and 2022 Sue was part of the team that guided CDRA’s closure, and she is the lead-volunteer for Tiny Trust going into the future.
‘There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.’
From The Way It Is – by William Stafford
How CDRA came to life
In 1987, Allan Kaplan, Hamo Hammond and a Board of devoted and principled leadership of faith – and service-based organisations of the anti-Apartheid movement created the Community Development Resource Association (CDRA). This initiative was founded to offer quality organisation development (OD) services to the myriad of community organisations that were a part of the movement. Its first work was with the Montagu and Ashton Gemeenskapdiens (MAG) an activist-service organisation based in the winelands of the Western Cape.
In a time of very little freedom, CDRA offered a thoughtful, disciplined, and free space in which practitioners could reflect systematically on their practice, develop their thinking and ability – in association – and frame and test renewed intention. Over 34 years, CDRA’s work reached far and deep into the development thinking and practice of practitioners, activists and organisations across the country, the southern African region and eventually the world.
Initially offering organisation development facilitation and training, CDRA’s work grew to include a range of practitioner development programmes, bespoke and subsidised OD accompaniment and developmental evaluation services, and extensive writing and publishing. In its time, thousands of practitioners, leaders, activists, donors, and organisations were reached by CDRA’s work.
Concluding CDRA’s life work
In 2019, it became clear that CDRA had completed the work for which it had been established. Discussions amongst its remaining staff, broader associates circle and Board members began about how best to conclude the work of this remarkable organisation that has extended so deep into the understanding and practice of so many around the world. Indeed, and as conversations grew, it became apparent that CDRA’s spirit and intention would not be closing any time soon and that even in its closing, the remaining material, social and spiritual resources of the CDRA impulse could be directed towards sustaining the very thread that it had been pursuing all this time.
How the spirit of CDRA will live on
As the conversations continued, so some practical ideas came to life, the traces of which are very much alive in 2022.
- Over several years, including the Covid period, a range of people engaged in reflecting on and writing about the practice of CDRA and what it offers to contemporary practice. Eight papers have been produced and an online workshop series that will run until July 2022.
These workshops have drawn people from all over the world. There has been reflection on CDRA and lamentation over its ending, but also stimulating and engaged conversation about the challenges of social transformation: What it takes to support meaningful change, and what that asks of individuals and whole collectives of practitioners.
The papers will be compiled into a book. They are also available online, as are recordings of the workshops and information about those that remain to be run. https://www.cdra.org.za/our-closing-workshops.html
- CDRA’s building has been donated to the Social Change Assistance Trust (SCAT). SCAT and CDRA have enjoyed a long relationship over decades, with their origins in a similar shared understanding and social justice commitment. SCAT’s mission is to empower communities, strengthen civil society, and promote social change in partnership with local development agencies which act as community-driven responses to social justice.
In making the gift CDRA has acknowledged, supported, and valued SCAT’s work and the ethos and practice behind it. Given the shared history and values of CDRA and SCAT, the gift of CDRA’s building to SCAT is seen in the spirit of an inheritance, of transferring value that was built from one to another, and with that an expression of mutual trust, regard, and appreciation. The purpose-designed building, long appreciated by its visitors and now known as CDRA House, remains as a space for inquiry, reflection, and connection amongst those who seek to contribute to a better world.
- As part of its ongoing programme of work, SCAT will host CDRA’s website as a static resource for practitioners and researchers into the future. The final papers from the workshop series are housed on the website and will be published as a book, also in hard copy, as CDRA’s last publication. https://www.cdra.org.za/writing.html
- Finally, a small fund has been created using seed funding from SCAT, and CDRA’s reserve. The ‘Tiny Trust – sustaining a legacy’ – will be housed and administered by SCAT and will provide small grants to practitioners and activists in the development sector. Grants will be for practitioners’ personal and career development, towards sustaining a continued reflective practice, perpetuating the spirit and intentions of CDRA’s work. The Tiny Trust has been conceived as an expression of the spirit of volunteerism, sufficiency, and trust that characterised CDRA and it is intended that through this modest initiative, the spirit of CDRA will live on, planting and nurturing seeds for transformative practice into the future.
Providing seeds for the future
This process of closing has opened up so much. In addition to the tangible legacy of CDRA’s writing, CDRA House and the Tiny Trust, hundreds of people have been engaged through the writing and workshop series. And running through all these conversations has been the refrain that while the forms through which practice is expressed may have changed, the need for a practice that enables reflection, healing, transformation, and human connection is all the more pressing.
And as CDRA has closed, so the connections between people have been ignited and inspired. It is my hope that these will persist long after the organisation is gone and that the seeds that have been planted through this manner of closing will contribute to a future practice that sustains the thread laid down all those years ago.