PART ONE: INTRODUCTION
The Community Story Framework is a tool for helping communities to explore what is
really happening and what is needed to make life better for everyone. The Community
Story Framework has proven to be a very powerful tool for getting community members
involved in thinking about and taking action on their own for the improvement of the
quality of life for all.
The Community Story tool recognizes that a community consists of many different groups
of people with different interests, needs and experiences. One way to think about these
different groups is to think about the life cycle:
• children (0 to 12 years of age)
• youth (12 to 25 years of age)
• women (20 to 55 years of age)
• men (20 to 55 years of age)
• elders (55 and older)
The Community Story tool also recognizes that individuals do not live in isolation. They
live in families and communities. Families and communities have different dimensions.
Some of the dimensions of community life that can be analyzed in order to build a human
and community development plan are:
• family life
• political life
• economic life and the care and use of the environment
• social life
• cultural life
The Community Story tool brings people together in small groups to look at these different
aspects of life by focusing on the following general questions for each of them:
1. What is life like now?
2. What can we learn from the past?
3. What would things be like if they were good (i.e. in a healthy, balanced future)?
4. What has to happen