Radical community development missions push communities to focus on ‘what must we do’ rather than the status quo approach of ‘what can we do next’. This is important if communities are to properly address the enormous challenges we are facing (see ‘why we do what we do ). Focussing on mission-led change is a core part of our approach.

But mission-led change is hard. It is a big mindset shift for most people, organisations, businesses, governments and municipalities. It means working very differently to how most of us have been trained and rewarded to operate so far.

So, significant and sustained support is needed to help build capacity across communities for taking a mission-led approach. By providing this support, the Thriving Communities collective is working to fill an important gap in the types of support that is currently on offer to communities in SE Europe.

We deliver capacity development for mission-led change through online materials, trainings, workshops, shared learning, co-creation sessions, learning-by-doing and bespoke coaching – covering these areas:

• The case for radical community change & examples of good practices
• Nurturing community imagination, co-creation and deliberation processes
• Social innovation and entrepreneurship
• Local mission development
• Mission branding, communication and storytelling
• Enablers of mission-led change
• Mission incubators and governance models
• Partnership agreements, including City Climate Contracts and Local Green Deals
• Mission portfolio development
• Transformative investment, business & economic models
• Government policy innovation to support community missions
• Aligning local missions with EU priorities
• Mission monitoring, evaluation and collective learning